Slipping out of the Honeymoon Phase. Waking up Scared.

"Basically, we are spending my entire life-time earnings every four weeks"<p>What the hell, did I seriously just read this? So this guy hasn't even made $18,000 in income in his entire life yet he is funded for a startup at approximately $216,000 per year. Thats great that he can get funding given his complete lack of real work experience but thats just a bit unsettling and scary, are we really going down the dotcom bust road again?<p>I'm similar in age (26) and have made well over 18,000 in my lifetime earnings (anyone who works as even the juniorest of junior dev's should blow that number out of the water in half a year even), work as a dev and I don't think I would even dream of taking any amount of money in funding anytime soon, what ever happened to working for a few years, learning from more experienced peers and then maybe trying it on your own (once you actually have some real financial stability of your own)?<p>I realize everyone thinks they have the next big idea but if you don't have solid dev experience (without any oversight) you are going to mess up on something, probably something that matters (and won't be realized until later down the road) and this is best prevented by working with more experienced developers early on

Looking at your team (<a href="http://about.retickr.com/retickr-team/" rel="nofollow">http://about.retickr.com/retickr-team/</a>) it seems rather top-heavy. Two people have the title of "Co-Founder and Vice President" ... VP of what? Additionally, there's a CTO, yourself the CEO, a sysadmin, plus two software engineers. It's no wonder your burn rate is so high. This seems like the kind of app that would get developed by two "devops" kind of people.<p>Some comments on your home page: it's being dominated by a screenshot that's impossible to read and doesn't convey what the heck it does. There are a couple of teaser bullet-points-in-boxes that gives a high-level view, but I think the home page would really benefit from an in-your-face description conveying the clear <i>benefits</i>. At a minimum, start out by replacing the static screenshot with the video that is immediately clickable. However, this is speaking to user acquisition and doesn't address the problem you state of your 8% user retention rate.<p>I haven't used your app, but from the description it looks like it doesn't solve a hair-on-fire problem. The problem is that people have information overload. There are only so many things a person can follow that they quickly get overwhelmed trying to keep up. Your app looks to just throw it in their face which only highlights the fact that they can't keep up, and it does so in a distracting fashion by continuously animating the information they already have a difficult time reading. In a way, it sets their hair on fire.<p>A better value proposition would be to solve the information overload problem by only showing them news that is valuable in a manner that is not interruptive to their workflow. Trivially, this could be done when a piece of news is liked/+1'd/tweeted beyond a certain weighted threshold or for the infrequent news that comes from sources the user specifies as being important, like a friend's blog that is updated a few times a month. Something to the effect of "You only have so many hours in the day, but there are dozens of news sources you'd like to be aware of. Who has time to follow every single news item? Retickr lets you follow as many news sources as you want, then gives you a summary of the top three things you need to be aware of every hour. Then, just click to read the full story. If you have time to kill, our easy to use app lets you browse additional stories by source, topic, author, and many other criteria."

Your jobs page brags that you have 14 servers on your site. WTF? I've run 15+ hardcore porn totally dynamic websites taking millions of hits on just 3 servers and two of those were just for redundancy! Seriously, I've never heard of your company and you are burning through that much cash? I'm sorry, but this really just sounds like a case of 'doing it wrong'. It really sounds like time to hit the reset button before you are completely broke.

I understand that you are located where you are and that is how you ended up with the lampost group but I have to say that I don't see in any way how these investors and this incubator is the correct support group that you need for what you are doing.<p>If you look at the experience of the leadership of Lampost it simply doesn't appear knowledgeable in things that would be important to a company such as yours. Read the bios. It seems like a "me too" from a bunch of guys that saw The Social Network and decided to give investing in internet startups a whirl.<p><a href="http://www.lamppostgroup.com/lamp-post-leadership/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lamppostgroup.com/lamp-post-leadership/</a><p>Look at the other companies that they have invested in and you can clearly see what their focus is on.<p><a href="http://www.lamppostgroup.com/company-roster/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lamppostgroup.com/company-roster/</a><p>While there is probably little you can do about this now this is something for others to keep in mind before they take an investment and end up waking up scared.

I'll give you just two sentences of advice:<p>Cut your burn-rate until you've figured out what it is that you are doing. You will need that money badly later on.

&#62; I just found out yesterday how much money we are spending.<p>This strikes me as a stunningly stupid thing for a _CEO_ to admit to in public, and should give any potential investors pause.

There will be lots more criticism here. Either way, thanks for sharing the story in such an honest and complete way. Writing like this is rare in the startup world, and it's extremely positive to have around.

&#62; What can I do today that will help justify the eighty-hour work weeks that Adam and Josh have been putting in for the last six months?<p>What is everybody else on your roster doing? Cut some fat. And if your devs are pulling 80h weeks, why are you watching TV at night?

My question is just how the heck have you only made 18k over 10 years of working. That's only 56 weeks of full time 8/hr work. I don't get it.

How do you have a burn rate of only $18,500/mo with seven (apparently) full-time employees? Is that burn rate net of some kind of revenue, or are your seven employees making an average annual salary of about $31K each? Even for TN that seems awfully low.<p>As a point of reference, in SV a ballpark OPEX for 7 employees in a startup would be $80-90K.

"<i>Take comfort in the fact that the poor start-up founder and the rich corporate CEO both go home at the end of the day, eat dinner, watch TV, and go to bed.</i>"<p>Dinner, maybe.<p>The other two are not guaranteed.

Curious about the 14 servers mentioned on your careers page -- why so much hardware to support only 325 active users?

Comforting words from pg...<p>If you start a startup, you'll probably fail. Most startups fail. It's the nature of the business. But it's not necessarily a mistake to try something that has a 90% chance of failing, if you can afford the risk. Failing at 40, when you have a family to support, could be serious. But if you fail at 22, so what? If you try to start a startup right out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Which, if you think about it, is roughly what you hope to get from a graduate program.

One of the most comforting realizations is when you find out no one else really knows what they're doing either and that all startup founders are on the edge.

Hi there.... I went ahead and downloaded and installed the app. Really had trouble with the popup agree to terms and conditions thing. Had to force quit several times before I succeeded in registering.<p>Tried the wizard selecting technology news but when the ticker started, it was filled with stuff from Fox News and other stuff that is irritating more than informing.<p>What I was looking for, and hoping for, was a simple ticker for sites that I am interested in, such as this site, slashdot, NYtimes and WSJ technology SECTIONS, etc.<p>Even when I deleted my playlist, stories from 'The Beast' flowed across the screen. In sum, I had no sense that I was in control of your application. I could see myself using such a feed--if it did what I wanted--while relaxing, but in it's current form.....<p>Best of luck with this! I do hope you persevere. I'd suggest completely rethinking how the USER can drive this thing.<p>...and you might want to add a direct download for those of us who don't always want to log into apple's app store just to try something like this. Almost quit at that point.

I think your landing page could use a reasonable facsimile of your product running across the top of the screen. I appreciate it might need to be in Flash or in HTML5, but it might bump your conversion rate if your main selling point, "stuff, in front of you, now," is clearly set out on the landing page.<p>But second thought, haven't we already seen PointCast crash and burn? Not sure if I have the name right, but I'm thinking of the push technology that was such a buzz word in the original internet bubble.

Quick feedback, on the product - rather than the blog post.<p>Easy download &#38; quick install.<p>I am news junkie who works for a large offline &#38; online publisher who needs to keep tabs on stuff as it happens.<p>The idea of a ticker is interesting, but the usability of a scrolling feed is tough for me - I'd much rather see a series of headlines pop up, and disappear, than constant across-screen motion.<p>There's no way I could leave this on all day with that motion across the screen - but I could if the UI was less distracting.<p>Just my 10 cents - good luck with your product.

Cut your costs down to just rent plus servers. Keep only the technical people plus yourself. Have everyone work for free in exchange for equity until you see traction. The ones that believe in the company and the idea enough will do it.

The lack of a professional graphic designer in a lead role is a fatal oversight. It's the reason your user experience is lacking and the reason your website sucks.

Big button for Mac download. No button for Windows download. Perhaps that's why you have so few users.

You need to hire a good designer.