After involving a few startups myself, I've a few advices to give you all:
1. Try hard to make a name that is not more than Three syllables: see how Apple names their names from corporate name "Apple" to products like "iPod", "iTunes", "WebObjects", etc. Chances are, you'll chain your company name with another product: "Apple iPod". So keep it SHORT!!
2. Make sure you speak the name 100 times to yourself, just make sure it is easy to say. Imagine your operator has to say "Welcome to XXX" thousand times a day.
3. Make sure non-English speakers can speak it easily, and not embarrased. So please, no weird "Z" or other tricky accent. If your Chinese/Japanese/Korean/French/Italian friends have no problem speaking, you're A-Okay, otherwise do it again.
4. Make sure you get the name right the first time. It is pain in the butt to change company name later.... bank accounts, merchant accounts, address, and other paperwork will drive you crazy. I learned it the hard way.
On a side note, I run a little online flower shop that is catered to a smaller market in Asia. We named it fleur.hk instead of some super long abc-flower-shop.com names. Well, I can tell you we have the shortest flower shop name in Asia, super easy to remember. No problem getting traffic whatsoever.
So if your company only focus for a specific country, go ahead to use some their .com TLDs.
On the other hand, I run a little online shop with my girlfriend, that is getting pretty respectable income: I handle the technical things, and she handles the customer services/inventory/shipping stuff.
It surely beats working for somebody else: more time to spend together, less grunt work and potentially more income too.
You do not need VC/Angel funding for your startup... it is definitely possible to grow your business, have a life and be rich at the same time. Don't be ruled by the 'Tyranny of Or'.
Well, 12-14 hours a day is pretty much the norm for a startup right?
I am, too, living thru prelaunch of my startup. But think of looking back at yourself 10 years later... you will be proud that you live through this. If you have the passion, this is the time to be.
Not necessarily - 12-14 hours is what the startup mythology says, but there's a wide variance depending upon lines of business, business models, growth strategies, capital structures, etc. Working 12-14 hours/day for sustained periods of time is more likely to indicate that management sucks than that you're actually getting stuff done.
A few data points:
Before college, I worked at a VC-backed startup selling remote-access software to large corporations (well...planning to sell...they never launched). The core engineers typically worked 12-14 hours/day to put out a very buggy product.
Same startup, I knew an engineer who was employee #35 and later VP of Engineering at Stratus Computers. She said that yeah, if you have to hit a deadline, 10-12 hour days may be normal, but if you're doing it regularly you're doing something wrong. You should not have to work more than 8 hours/day to put out a decent product.
I'm currently working at a bootstrapped financial software startup, selling direct to hedge funds. The founder works about 10 hours/day; the rest of us work about 8 hours/day. The company is profitable.
My other job offer was for a VC-funded financial software startup, selling to smaller brokerages. Founders typically worked 12ish hour days, most of the rest of the employees worked 9-10 hour days. The company was not profitable at the time I applied, though they've been growing well since and may be by now.
According to Founders at Work, del.icio.us and Bloglines were both founded by single founders who kept their day jobs, and Steve Wozniak spent the first year of Apple Computer's lifetime employed by Hewlett-Packard. I'm assuming that means 3-4 hours/day on weekdays, plus full weekends.
I'm in a similar position: 3-4 hours/day of work, keeping my day job, about to launch after 5 months or so (including a month hiatus when we worked on a side project).
C'me.... with the age of EC2 and S3, there are no reason you cannot bootstrap the whole thing yourself?
And there are tons of other ways to make money, if you are smart enough to build a startup.
Surely is nice to have somebody written you a $10,000 check to start of with... but believe me, you will never forget the moment you received the first payment from the credit card gateway company.
It is better if you can grow your business with your own money, if you have a choice.
If your startup is looking for an Asian market, you can try PayDollar. I used PayDollar at Fleur.hk http://fleur.hk/ , which is a WebObjects site I made for a flower shop.
They offer Paypal style redirection but the meat is their API which does not cost extra. The trick part is, you have to ask and you have to implement your own POST routines if you are not using Java. Wouldn't be hard if you are a STARTUP right?
Most Asian based cc gateway only needs CC number, name and expiration date for transaction, which is a "plus" to get you paid. You have to be careful about potential fraud though.
I am using another Asia Payment Gateway comapny called <A href="http://www.paymentasia.com">PaymentAsia </A> and they have the 3D secure with Visa/ MasterCard. Is it good or not?
In the worst case, pretty sure it is no brainer to hookup an Apple Wireless Keyboard or even a cheapo PC bluetooth keyboard with it.