I am tired of feeling like I live in an apartment complex where I have no control over how things function or look. It's not even like a complex anymore. It's more like a prison.
Best quote in a long time...
"If you aren't paying for a product, you are the product."
Your data is being sold to advertisers so they can find sneaky was to throw their ads in front of your faces. And who is going to take the time out to actually go through on FB and customize your ad experience so they are relevant to you? Not me.
For the past year and a half I have been working on a solution to solve these problems and many others. It's been a very difficult journey. But I am so passionate about it that I will stop at nothing to see this vision come to life.
I have had my car repo'd, 3-day notices from my landlord almost every month for the past year, cell phone service canceled for good, family and friends giving up hope and not believing in me and to make matters worse I have a wife and two kids under the age of 4. For 6 months I had to ride around Orange County on a beach cruiser pulling a trailer w my two kids in the back. Not complaining at all, it was a humbling experience and we had a lot of fun with it. There have been days where we literally haven't had anything to eat besides rice. It's been the single most biggest trial of my entire life. But I'm pushing forward because life is too short not too.
The good thing is, I have a very talented team behind me. Also a bunch of influential people that are backing us and this idea. We are wrapping up our prototype and will begin seeking funding soon to bring on more incredible engineers & designers.
My start-up's name is Seshn.com (http://seshn.com). Seshn is a network comprised of personal websites (not profiles) where content is aggregated to feeds that are based on interests/passions and people are ranked based on influence within those areas. Our people discovery engine will allow users to discover the top people in areas that interest them. It's very minimalist and the UI/UX is stunning.
Unlike Tumblr we are focused on full-blown sites and people only. Blogging and syncing your social media to automate as posts will be a big part of our network, but we also want the user to be able to tell a story about who they are through different pages on their site and we have made it so easy to do so.
Another huge thing is data and style portability. If I wanted to take my Facebook profile with me along with all my content and self-host it, there is no way to do that. Same with Tumblr, same with Twitter, etc. Our platform has 100% full data AND style portability so you can take everything with you to a new host if you chose to leave someday. The bad thing is you won't get the benefit of the network, but you will have all of your data and style in tact to go where you please.
We are about to solve a HUGE problem with the broken web design industry through an innovative approach to e-commerce within our site. I can't really tell you details on how this is going to work but it's going to allow people to have gorgeous sites that look like they paid thousands of dollars for them. Some say this problem has already been solved, but it really hasn't because for a completely custom look on somewhere like Tumblr or a self-hosted site, there is still a learning curve involved or you still have to shell out some major bucks for the design. These problems will be solved within our platform and we can't wait to show everyone how it works.
I have been reading some of the news here on HN about people's complaints with Facebook lately and I was inspired to let you know whats coming from Seshn. I've put my life into this and so have the rest of the members of our team.
I encourage anyone thinking about starting a business to just go out and do it. Don't worry about anything. Embrace the journey and embrace failure, because you will learn from the experience and it will be invaluable throughout the course of your life. Even live throws major roadblocks at you, figure out how to go around them, over them or through them. Don't give up!
Stay tuned for what's coming very soon. I know you'll love it. Coolest thing I've ever worked on and will inspire everyone to create more and consume less.
Thanks for reading!
Sign up for a beta at http://seshn.com or you can follow us here:
http://angel.co/seshn http://twitter.com/seshn
-Brand