Viewing profile — bharath

I am trying to enter my pre-launch startup in a b-school business plan competition. One of the things I am trying to do is project new user growth based on referral rates. Dropbox …

We are a seed stage startup (havent raised money) in the bootstrapping phase. So far, we have relied exclusively on writing to/contacting individual members of the target community…

Its easy to create perceptions of yourself that are simply not true. I was one of the people who got that mail. I really thought about shooting an upset sounding email to Paul. But…

How about this one? http://tinyurl.com/2os5mw

A relevant quote that stuck to my mind from the movie "contact": "Young Ellie: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets? Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd…

If you have questions regarding the application, could you please cc everyone in the team on it? This is to ensure that whoever sees it first has a chance to respond - and you have…

For an experienced team -- probably not. A bunch of 26 year olds will definitely have a crisis of credibility -- even with a functional product (which is the case with us). To a ve…

There are too many competitors in this area. The web market in India is relatively nascent and good for "me-too" ideas.

Given YC's precedence of funding only US based startups, how do you feel about funding a startup targeted at the Indian market? The founders will be in the Bay Area through the end…

From your latest essay: "Sometimes it literally is software, like Hacker News and our application rating system." This is the 1st time I've heard about you guys using some kind of …

"Acquirers are less prone to irrational exuberance than IPO investors. The closest you'll get to Bubble valuations is Rupert Murdoch paying $580 million for Myspace. That's only of…

This could be good news for India-focused Web 2.0 startups given the Orkut demographic.

Here is an example: http://www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads/success/sixflags.htm...

One country that has a lot of gain from maintaining the peg is China and it happens to have the resources to do so if it comes to it.

"I can guarantee that you won't go in the order or at the pace you expected. You will need to adapt the pace of the presentation to the needs of the VC." -- This is something I can…

Awesome. Now I can get back to reading Tom Friedman.

Startups that make what people really want are likelier to survive the downturn when it does come. For example, Peter Lynch has said that downturns are a good time to invest in com…

Its interesting to see Google try and accomplish the same goals (marketshare in the online office space) through much smaller acquisitions (writely, zenter).

Interesting read on the challenges that Tor poses for law enforcement

Seems like yet another application of Luis Von Ahn's notion of "human computation". Using human cycles to solve computationally intractable problems: http://tinyurl.com/2wtrco Its …

There are 2 cases to look at: 1) Personal email IDs: Most people used some form of web-based email. For those of us that use Gmail for example, I dont know if spam is that big of a…

Dubai is run by folks with vision. Folks who realize that oil is a finite, non-renewable resource and they need to spend their petrodollars preparing for the day that it runs out. …