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Database optimization techniques you can actually use
I just saw an article on Smashing Magazine titled "Speeding up your website's database". I love Smashing's contribution to the webdev community, but their articles are getting longer and more basic at...
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Finding co-founders – Technical founder POV
First, a prelude - though I've mostly written technical articles on this blog, it's called techfounder for a reason - it was my original intention to also talk about startups from the view-point of the...
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Breaking down the PayPal API
PayPal is the most popular platform for receiving online payments. The relative ease of opening a PayPal account and receiving payments compared to opening a merchant account for a traditional payment...
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Generating graphs from MySQL table data
Graphs and charts are a useful visual way to view historical data - they make it easier to detect trends and get a big-picture view of data. All we need is timestamped data - table rows that are...
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Don’t Mix Business And Personal – Why Facebook Comments Is A Bad Idea For...
I like to leave comments on articles and blog posts I find interesting, and interact with the author. However, if the only option to leave a comment is through Facebook comments, I probably won't use...
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Building an app does not make you a startup
I just read Andrew Chen's Mobile app startups are failing like it’s 1999. He raises a good point about the closed nature of mobile app development, which for the most part is a reflection of the Apple...
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Why we stopped raising until we no longer need the money
There's a well known mantra in the startup world that I used to believe in - "Launch early". The concept is to launch a minimal product (MVP in lean startup terms), get real world feedback and iterate...
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Developers vs. Bigcorp
With all the rage recently on Twitter's changes to their API and how it affects developers and their apps who rely on it, it's easy to forget that Twitter is hardly the first major tech company to take...
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Suggestion to Twitter: Here’s how you monetize without ruining your ecosystem
As you probably heard, Twitter recently tightened the noose around API developers with new limits and restrictions. Twitter is possibly the biggest public API provider today, with 13 billion API calls...
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Solving the wrong problems
As a power user and an entrepreneur (not to mention a developer), I often look at a software product or service and think how I would've done it differently. If the concept is interesting enough, I...
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The Real Cost of Software Development
In a previous lifetime (until about 3 years ago), I was a web development contractor as part of a small webdev-shop team of 3. Our focus was building MVPs for aspiring entrepreneurs, while guiding them...
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Medical Care in the U.S is Bad, But Insurance Sucks Too
There's been a lot of media attention recently to the high cost of medical care in the U.S compared to other countries (see some nice graphs on this NY Times opinion piece). Most of the attention has...
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There are no x10 developers, but there are certainly 1/10 ones
I keep seeing the term "x10 developer" pop up recently. I think this sets the baseline at the wrong place - the so-called "x10 developers" are the bar, and there are some developers, who for various...
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Recapping Week #1 at 500startups accelerator program
The first week of the 500startups accelerator program is in the books, and I definitely feel accelerated. Keeping with the current Star Trek theme at the 500s offices, I'd say we're about Warp 7 right...
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Twitter is the new RSS
I've been watching from afar the outcry over the shutting down of Google Reader. Previously a heavy gReader user, I've gradually moved away from the service, the move coinciding very much with the...
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The awkward relationship of tech bloggers and startups
Today Robert Scoble came to visit our batch at the 500startups offices. He did some 1-on-1 sessions and later gave a free-form talk, mostly about Google Glass (not surprisingly), but also about...
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The ABC of raising your seed round
After failing miserably to raise 18 months ago, digging deep and bootstrapping our way to profitability, we made another attempt earlier this year and got a huge break by getting into 500startups. We...
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Post mortem: Why and how you should apply to 500startups
A couple of months ago, I wrote about our first week in the 500startups accelerator program. With the program now officially (?) over, I wanted to share my experience with it and help interested...
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After reviewing 300 startup applications, this is what I learned
In a previous post, I wrote about why and how you should join the 500startups accelerator (or any premier accelerator program, for that matter). I briefly mentioned that I've been given access to...
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An Accent Can Be An Advantage
A recent interview with Ycombintator's Paul Graham on Inc. created somewhat of a backlash online for his comments on using startup founders' accent as a filtering criteria for future success. .@paulg...
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