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October 2007

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On Validation

O

There’s nothing more satisfying these days than someone liking your idea. Loving it is even better. Especially if they are someone who knows their stuff, knows what to do, and knows who to talk to. It validates all the sweat equity you’ve put in to your work.
Can’t wait.

My Lack of Faith in Online Advertising

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Advertising has been one of the favorite (attempted) revenue sources for many startups, dating back to the Web 1.0. The general idea is, build something interesting that people will use, throw some ads (brokered through a third party), and just wait for the cash to come in. This doesn’t work for me. Maybe that’s a bad opinion for me to have, as it is the popular choice, and...

Burn the Boats

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The conquistador Cortes provided a model for all intrepid souls….that
is to burn the boats on the shore and ensure no way back and the stark
need to make the expedition succeed or go down trying.
Inspirational post by Will Price. Made my day.

The Man In The Arena

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If someone has failed before he’s even more likely to invest – “It makes them want to win even more,” he said. He generally doesn’t look at business plans at all, and just invests in the individual. I remember meeting Yossi Vardi when I was in Israel a couple years ago. Mike Arrington has a great writeup on him. I remember a bunch of my colleagues ran up and gave him their business...

LinkedIn Will Open Up… and I Am Happy

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I like the idea of LinkedIn developing their own API. I think a lot of good application ideas that initially were developed for the Facebook platform will be a lot better suited to the professional attitude of LinkedIn. I have a few myself, which would be wasted on Facebook, but I believe would thrive on LinkedIn. Facebook is for my social life, where I interact with friends, and generally, play...

Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria, and CrazyCaptions!

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I love when the gov’t prevents you from working for them. So instead of actually doing anything productive, I made a fun Facebook application, from start to finish! CrazyCaptions lets your friends add funny captions to your Facebook photos! Create caption contests that show up on your profile in one step! Developing on the Facebook platform definitely has it’s benefits. No user...

Marketing Using a Facebook Application

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Since the Facebook Platform has been launched a number of months ago, allowing anyone to write an application that can interact with Facebook users in any number of ways, thousands of such applications have been released. While many startups are forming (and existing ones) focusing solely on Facebook applications, a viable business model for a web app existing solely within the walled garden of...

Tilt Shifted Photography Experiment

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I was reading the latest issue of Wired the other day in the gym, and flipped to an article about tilt-shift photography. Tilt-shift photography is a technique of taking a picture so that it looks as if the shot is of a scale model. This used to be done with expensive camera equipment, but recently people have developed Photoshop tutorials that achieve the same effect. I decided to give this a...

Zvi Band Relationships are our most important asset.

Zvi Band

Founder of Contactually.
I'm also passionate about growing the DC startup community, and I've founded Proudly Made in DC and the DC Tech Meetup.

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