Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, writes about startups, investing, patents and the economics of web businesses.
HN commenters cite it for data on startup pivots and web economics, though one warns he is biased as a Stack Overflow investor.
VCs usually list job openings at their portfolio companies, so for NYC, check out the Union Square Ventures jobs page (http://www.unionsquareventures.com/jobboard.html).
Silicon Alley Insider also has a jobs page with some startups listed (http://jobs.alleyinsider.com/).
And you can use "Reg D" to find out about startups which have just gotten funding that may not be listed anywhere else (http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/06/the-death-of-st.html).
The nextNY (http://groups.google.com/group/nextNYdigital) and NYC Tech Boosters (http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-tech-boosters) boards also list jobs from time to time.
Also, even though it's not a jobs board, you should subscribe to Jay Sulzberger's mailing list (http://lxny.org/correspondence.html) to find out about tech events in NY.
Dave isn't giving you a solution. He's pointing out a number of problems that need to be solved. Just because technology works fine doesn't mean it's the optimal solution. Tech develops incrementally.
Stack Overflow has a search feature and it works fine. But wouldn't it be cool if someone aggregated results from different programming websites? (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1854731)
Check out Union Square Venture's blogpost from May: http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/05/stackoverflow.php. In addition to describing their investment, the post describes problems in the space. If you had never heard of Stack Overflow and you only read about the problems in that post, would you say the solution was too complex?
Support from Fred Wilson's blog that most of his successful outcomes (success defined as "exit) were pivots:
"Of the 26 companies that I consider realized or effectively realized in my personal track record, 17 of them made complete transformations or partial transformations of their businesses between the time we invested and the time we sold. That means there a 2/3 chance you’ll have to significantly reinvent your business between the time you take a venture capital investment and when you exit your business."
Source: http://unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/why-early-stage.php
You have enthusiastic users and you think you're going to sneak up on an incumbent?
(suggest reading: http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2008/06/the_spooky_econ.html )
I'd add a donate (or tipjoy!) button. Or a bounty page where people can buy their favorite feature request to the top of the list.
If people want to help, maybe you could release an API? Or open-source your software?
"When we raised our first Union Square Ventures fund, I told prospective investors to expect 1/3 of our investments to fail. I always like the 1/3 rule, which is that 1/3 of the investments will fail, 1/3 will under-perform expectations, and 1/3 will meet expectations."
http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/failure_rates_i.html
So I guess then that Union Square Ventures doesn't count as a real company:
http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2008/02/were_hiring.html
And neither does Blue Whale Labs:
http://www.socialtwister.com/2007/01/27/a-few-good-mammals-we-need-them/
And don't even get me started on these guys:
http://www.ycombinator.com/