On August 1, 2010, my startup, http://SproutVideo.com, had it's first full day of public operations. I've learned a lot in the last year and would like to share my experience with you. Ask away!<p>p.s. I figured I'd give doing an AMA a shot on HN, but if it's the wrong place for it I'll move it to anyasq.com or somewhere else.
What is your infrastructure like? AWS? shared hosting? self hosted?<p>Are you using any interesting solutions for storage of the video?<p>Are you using any interesting solutions for streaming the video?
Can you please talk about the economics of doing a video based small startup?<p>I have a couple of ideas that would involve users uploading large video files and me having to store them at least temporarily.<p>I don't yet know if this is a show stopper for what would be a on the cheap side project.
NYC is different than the Bay area with respect to moonlighting/IP-ownership issues when you have a full-time job and you do projects. Did you clear this with your employer, were you in a contract that didn't have restrictions, did you hope for the best, etc. ? Thanks for sharing!
How did you determine this was a service businesses needed? It appears to me they could do it all on any number of other well known video hosting services.
How did you get your first set of customers? After those were done, how did you get your second set? What marketing, if any, did you do to get those customers? How much time did it take to get them? Did the standard stuff work "AdWords, etc" or did you need to do more innovative stuff to get them?