a blog for young and growing entrepreneurs 
Sproutly
April 2008
The Archives
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04.30.08Apply To Amazon (1994)
InternetI wonder which stealth company around now will be the next big thing 10 years from now. Gotta start scanning that craigslist ;)
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04.29.08In A Strange World
StartupThe thing that excites me about the startup world is that you know never know what's around the corner. One day, it seems like everything is going great; the next day, your world is falling apart. You are on your own. You must make every decision on your own. No one knows the right answer at first. It seems like everyone is trying to give advice about what makes a startup. Sure, there are some general tips that can be applied to any business, but each startup is in a different context. The strange thing is that even with all ...
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04.27.08Digg Is Getting Worse
TrendsBack when Digg's focus was technology, it used to be my favorite site. When it started to mainstream, I still liked it. The geek community was not as tight, but new audiences added extra value. I enjoy reading about politics, business and odd news, and Digg kept me well-rounded. But for the past couple of the days, I've just been seeing the content deteriorating. For example, just yesterday, it seemed like every other article was about pot. How did this get so many diggs? There needs to be some smarter way of categorizing or ...
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04.26.08CakePHP vs. Ruby on Rails
ProgrammingI can't decide whether or not to just go with Ruby on Rails, or stick with CakePHP. Working off a framework is important nowadays. It is very hard to maintain a large project at startup without a proper Model View Controller (MVC) setup. Here are some of my quick thoughts: I like PHP because I am more familiar with it, and don't have the time learn a completely new language. Many libraries I use are written in PHP; it would seem like a big hassle to find all the tools again for Ruby. It does seem like the ...
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04.25.08Back to Firefox, on SEO and Hacker News
ProgrammingI've recently changed back to FireFox to my default browser preference because of its invaluable extensions (sorry Safari). One extension that I use is an SEO tool. One of the features of this extension is that it highlights in red the a href links that have the nofollow attribute defined. Setting a nofollow tag basically tells a Google crawlers to not crawl through pass credit through that link. One specific use case is in Wordpress comments, where nofollow tags are set to the commentator's url. This prevents spammers from simply commenting for PageRank. Installing this SEO tool gives me ...
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04.24.08Startup Idea Generation
StartupThinking of an idea is the first step and also the one of the hardest parts of a startup. I was lucky enough to talk to Steve Wozniak after his talk about idea generation. One of the inspiring things that he said to me was to think limitlessly. In other words, do not care what is possible and what is not possible. Many times, I get trapped thinking inside the box of what web applications can do. I have a good sense of what you can do with PHP/MySQL, and have also revolved all my thinking about code. Rather than thinking ...
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04.22.08Steve Wozniak Speaking Live at UC Berkeley
EventsSteve Wozniak is coming to UC Berkeley today to speak about his journey in the world of technology, entrepreneurship and the early days of Apple. I will for sure be this event and live-casting, using Justin.tv. Watch live video from Sproutly on Justin.tv
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04.22.08Startup 101 Metrics at Web 2.0 Expo
EventsI'm attending the Startup 101 Metrics at Web 2.0 Expo right now. Dave McClure and Hiten Shah are giving at talk about at Web 2.0 about Startup 101 Metrics. They break down the key points in online marketing: (1) Acquisition, (2) Activation (3) Retention (4) Referral, and (5) Revenue. You can remember as AARRR, like a pirate ;) Below are the slides. | View | Upload your own As you guys probably realized, I was able to get into Web 2.0. Can't exactly say what happened, but am lucky to know some people. The atmosphere was definitely different from that of Startup School. I felt young again as everyone was older than me. I've learned a lot from this workshop and attached my own key notes below:
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04.21.08Web 2.0 Expo, Sneaking In?
EventsWeb 2.0 Expo starts off tomorrow. I'm pretty pumped about the event, though I don't really have a real pass. I'm going to go anyways, but I'm not sure how I'm going to get in. I never really understood why conferences cost so much. I suppose in the past, there was no other way to receive the information delivered at workshops and keynote. However, nowadays, with blogging and video broadcast, you can get everything in real-time. But of course, the real reason why people go to conference is to ...
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04.21.08I Like iJigg
StartupI met Zaid, one of the founders of iJigg, over startup school. iJigg hasn't had as much press as the other Y Combinator startups, but I think it deserves a look. Personally, it helps me solve my problem of finding chinese music. The site has a pretty strong international presence; supposedly most popular in Thailand. Being in the US, it takes a lot more effort searching for what music is popular across the Pacific. Of course, the site also has a good amount of indie music. Check it out!...
About
Writer: Jeff Wang. I am currently a student at UC Berkeley, majoring in Computer Science. Most posts will be dedicated to young entreprenuers.
My previous work experience include Microsoft and TechCrunch. I am an aspiring entrepreneur.
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