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Hi, we're Hot Potato.: State of the Potato Vol. 2 →
Sup, friendos!
First things first, we want to thank all of you for your support and feedback over the past several months.
Our goal at Hot Potato is to make it easy to share what you’re doing with friends and connect with others who have similar interests. We’ve been hard at work on some new… -
A friend dragged me out to catch Manhattanhenge. I really should dust off the camera more often.
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Cooking up something good at Hot Potato headquarters. Stay tuned.
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Realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced. You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over.
– Marc Andreessen -
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.
– Here is New York, E. B. White, 1949 (via cdixon) -
If you are here, your network will be using all of the latest tools – Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, Nexus One, etc., before other networks in other cities will. These networks hit critical mass here earlier and are thus more valuable to the early adopters here. You’ll have a 3-month+ head start on people outside to see what’s coming next. Imagine trying to design next year’s clothing without firsthand immersion in this year’s fashion, in Milan or Paris.
–From a post titled “Why You Need to be in Silicon Valley”.
In general I hate posts like this. I don’t live in SIlicon Valley, but I do spend quite a bit of time there. I want to believe that twitter streams and blog comments allow anyone, anywhere to follow and make connections with the most plugged in silicon valley digerati. This ought to allow them to spot emerging trends from anywhere they chose to live without being sucked into the Silicon Valley echo chamber.
Is this wishful thinking or does being in Silicon Valley still give you an insurmountable edge?
(via brycedotvc)
I think this is just another case of how people assume their success is directly related to every choice they made and can recommend no other course. In my experience, if you ask anyone where you need to be to start a company, the chief indicator of what their response will be is where they live. If you ask if you should go to business school, the chief indicator is if they went. If you ask how to raise money, what investors, or just where to get your paper supplies, they go back to what they did.
Perfectly understandable but it completely overlooks all of the things particular to the person asking. Where should you start your company? Well, where is YOUR personal network the richest? Where can YOU find the best talent? Where are YOUR customers and investors?
Me? Thanks, but I’m going to ride this whole Brooklyn thing out. Viva la Hot Potato!
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Went to see Fuerza Bruta at the Daryl Roth Theatre in Union Square tonight. Good stuff.
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Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.
First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.
Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn’t take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.
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We’re live in the App Store!
Great news - the Hot Potato app is live. Thanks very much to Apple for the approval.
You can download it here or can search for hotpotato in iTunes.
Lots more detail coming on this over the weekend, and we haven’t forgotten those who have signed up for an email. We’re working on on the web that will make things easier to use and understand for all of our new users.
Thanks again for all of your support!
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Entrepreneurship exists in the tiny space between madness and genius; and, its journey requires a few cross border violations across both madness and genius to get to the final destination.
– comment by JLM on the The Herd Instinct (via fred-wilson)
