On Starting a Startup

&#62; they call themselves “domain investors” and believe that they’re a legitimate market force. But all they’re doing is stifling innovation<p>You can't get the domain name you want for the price you want to pay.<p>Boo-hoo.<p>I can't get tons of things for the price I want to pay.<p>That's life.<p>You've got no moral claim on a domain name that someone else already owns.<p>If you're use of that domain name is going to generate a ton of value, you'd find a way to get the money and buy the domain.<p>In fact, you don't do this. The market is working properly: you're not prepared to demonstrate with cold hard cash that you're the best use for the name, therefore you probably are NOT the best use for the domain.<p>* UPDATE *<p>Just noticed this:<p>&#62; when multiple people register a backorder on the acquiring backorder service, there’s an auction held for a few days and the domain goes to the highest bidder. It’s capitalism at its not-so-finest.<p>What alternative do you propose? The person who really really wants it bad gets it?<p>Isn't that what's already happening?

This article should be renamed to "On Starting a Project". You built something using some cool technology, bought some Facebook ads because some of your friends had some luck, now you have to get paying customers.<p>Until then, it's all just a (side) project, not a startup.

For what it's worth, I thought the name is quite clever. I'm more impressed with the name actually :)<p>I am, however, feeling cautious about the internet as well. There are so many curated/aggregated content sites these days; Each one claims to be the best at stringing popular content together. For instance: Reddit, HN, Digg, Slashdot etc. Obviously new sites further break this down into specific niches.<p>I hope there isn't less of an appetite for original content creating platform going forward (or else my officecheese site isn't going to be fun!)<p>-V.

I've always enjoyed seeing what other startups choose for their stack. With your thoughts on heroku, what do you think about the new Google Cloud aimed at competing with AWS?

&#62; Until I started at Upworthy, I didn’t appreciate how nearly everyone is on Facebook. Normal people.<p>I wouldn't call it nearly everyone when there are 7 billion people in the world and only 1 billion of those are on Facebook.