Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, writes about startups, product ideas, domains, and online identity.
Commenters cite his 2005 "Ten Rules for Web Startups" and his view that domains matter less, and one praises the site's readable layout.
First and foremost,I admire the frankness with which you have written this article.
But I certainly did feel you were criticizing yourself a tad too much, and perhaps over-simplifying some of your real issues.
Here's a blog article of Evan Williams written in 2005, which rings very true, even today.
http://evhead.com/2005/11/ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp
I sincerely wish you the very best going forward.
Rise from the ashes,go for the riches! :-)
A Niall Kennedy startup ( http://evhead.com/2007/05/startupsearch.asp ). I wonder about these metric collectors in startups. Hollywood also uses a setup like this ... a private cosy little web chat site for insiders that measures (and decides) the confidence of how a movie is progressing. One bad review there ... a bit of bad gossip, the group confidence drops and the bears start running.
The most attractive website, with a catchy name, and all the bells and whistles amounts to nothing if your product is nothing to be proud of.
Why not choose a simple name with a different TLD? Basecamp has been basecamphq all these years. Also, read Evan Williams' thoughts on this: http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-important.html
"User experience is everything. It always has been, but it's still undervalued and under-invested in. If you don't know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board." - Evan Williams CEO of Twitter
http://evhead.com/2005/11/ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp
No, it is not. may be in the 90's but this is 2015, we have search engine optimization, apps are not acessed on the domain, they run in the users device (case study http://vine.co ). Read advice from co-founder twitter, founder of blogger and medium http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-important.html
I think a lot of points mentioned/not mentioned in this article are debatable...Security,Features,Target audience... But this article by Evan Williams is almost timeless( written in 2005, Pre Zynga, pre Facebook)
http://evhead.com/2005/11/ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp