I agree. Thats what I did. I made spotted.at and just want to get as much feedback as possible. My steath mode = My product sucks and not many people use it. As my product gets better and more people use it I guess im not stealth anymore. LOL

do you get an error?

"Uncaught Error: Page does not have permission to access location information using Google Gears"

I was thinking about this same thing. But instead of connecting people simply based on proximity I choose to connect them based on proximity and intent (http://spotted.at). I think that adds much more relevance to the connection. I don't want to sound like a hater but I really just don't get this chatparty.com thing. Even as far as chat apps go its really just not very good.

Thanx man. Its probably best not to use from work because people post up some really odd stuff. That was my main reason for adding the search screen and not just having a map. I didn't want it to turn into chatroulette. My hope is that people tag things properly so only people looking for X will see X.

Well... I just saw some news special on how Craigslist has become a hub for prostitution. So you'll have that.

You'll just have to keep policing it. But I don't think most people will mind a bit of NSFW content.

PG / YC rejected me / my startup idea but I made it anyway and its starting to get some traction. YC / TechStars etc.. are just programs that help you not make you.

If you don't take the initiative and get started on your own then why would they assume you have the tenacity to keep going in the face of constant opposition. There are lots of problems that you run into while running a startup and many days really suck. How can you make it through this if you are not even willing to move past a YC rejection?

I think adding financial incentive would add too much incentive to game the system. I would not pay. I would not use it.

I am. I usually pull about 150 - 175 a year contracting and now I am making 0 because I am working on my startup. Money starts to disappear fast when none is coming in.

Can I assume you meant 150k per year? Obviously money going out with no income depletes cash on hand. However, it would seem making 150k for a year or so should buy you a pretty big runway. I'm guessing you have a lot of outgoing if it feels like it's disappearing 'fast'.

Yea, 150k. I thought I had enough savings to last about 2 years; I was wrong so I am seriously cutting back.

If mainly feels like its going fast because I was accustomed spending what I want and not seeing my bank account drop.

Now that I don't have anything coming in thats not the case. The impact of what I spend is much more visible now.

I just went from "full time deployed contractor wage" to "use up vacation time, regular wage", and in a couple months, will go to no income. I should have 2 years of savings and no debt (finally!), but it's still scary. Every single dollar spent is less runway.

If I don't have income from my startup by next fall, I'll probably be doing consulting or getting a job, or at least seriously looking for one.

Same thing here, except I found out I was burning too much about halfway through my savings. Since then I realized I have to pay more attention to how I spend money. I'm glad this happened - it is unbelievable how much gets thrown away on stuff I don't really need.

what kind of consulting do you do?

how much of 150k were you saving annually?

I mostly work for banks and sometimes do military contracts. My last contract was with northrop grumman in SD and before that BOFA in charlotte. I saved appox. 36k a year.

cool. can you be most specific though? did you write software for banks/"defense" industry, or did you tell them what kind of software to write, or did you tell them how to wire their networks, etc.

Most recently I was doing data mining and warehousing for a new reporting system @ bofa.

Before that at NG I was part of a team developing firmware for gas detectors.

Funny how pulling in $150k/yr can actually be a downside. Reading between the lines, it sounds like you managed to adjust your lifestyle to match the income.

Most people can live comfortably in the US for under $2k/month all in. So in theory you should be able to save something like 4 years worth of runway with a single year's contracting.

In practice, you just convince yourself that it takes $10k/month to survive and as a result burn yourself into the ground 5x faster than everybody else.