Jason Calacanis

I love that you're working on the TC competitor. Strangely I've found that I just don't read the LAUNCH stories very often.

I know it may sound trivial, but I suspect it's partly because of the grey on grey text and inline formatting of the topic headers.

The format of "WHEN/WHERE", etc also seems pretty boring. It's like I'm reading a LAUNCH application for a company. The reason people used to love TechCrunch was because Arrington would take all that detail then condense it down, add perspective, and make it interesting to read.

It also doesn't seem like you're really keeping up to your mission of quality over quantity. Tons of the stuff on LAUNCH is news-of-the-day linkbait. It looks like there are 10+ articles per day now, most of which are covering the same kind of crap that TechCruch does.

And the company profiles don't seem particularly great all the time. Look how sparse this one is: http://www.launch.is/blog/hottest-techstars-company-debuting-tomorrow-inboxfever.html

Just some feedback. I think you're on to something pretty cool with LAUNCH. I just don't feel it's up to snuff quite yet.

One of the nicest parts of this is the client focus - the idea that you can send a build with BugHerd optimized in to make the issue easier to describe. With the plethora of consumer apps, great idea, but also in enterprise verticals like healthcare, where the users are experts, but not at computers/browsers/technology. For that reason alone - awesome - this would have saved us person-weeks of work, and even in some cases, plane tickets.

Good example from Launch Live Blog, here:
http://launch.is/blog/live-blogging-500-startups-demo-day-aug-16-2011.html

1:38pm: Same scenario of sending client the build, but BugHerd is installed. The client clicks new issue, types in the name of problem rather than sending email. BugHerd knows their browser, time they created the issue. BugHerd plays nice with others, over 1,400 users.

1:37pm: Matt of BugHerd takes the stage and says he had difficulty communicating with clients about bugs. Could spend hours trying to figure out what client is talking about -- not time that you can bill.

How far is too far for building a culture of "fun with a little bit of weirdness?"

I find Zappos dedication to fun weirdness to be a little much to begin with. But now buying land surrounding your call-center with plans to build an entire city for employees to live/work/play in? And "dorms" to live in? That's a lot.

I'm all for free jet flights (http://www.launch.is/blog/leak-zappos-ceo-gives-employees-free-private-jet-service.html) but this is a bit much for me. Guess that's why I don't work there.

Amazon Prime and Amazon "subscribe and save" are two excellent products. I love reducing trips out to crowded stores and time thinking about shopping choices. I don't have to worry about customer service, returning defective products (relatively, way easier on Amazon), etc. I think Jason Calacanis' article about the "Cult of Amazon Prime" hits on a lot of what has made it so successful, and what will make it successful going forward: http://www.launch.is/blog/the-cult-of-amazon-prime.html