I’ve given accounts away to a couple of other startup companies in the hopes of getting feedback from them. I have a long list of “standard” features that every webapp should have and I’m checking them off one at a time.

Thanks for a great post that really sums up a good approach to the situation a lot of startups find themselves in!

I look forward to reading more of your experiences as you move ahead with your new idea.

I had a similar experience over the last couple of years. Two start-ups ago we had GlueNote, it was a “always on, always available” note taking application but it never even launched – we ran out of money because we were always second guessing what the users might want, always adding features, or redefining the feature set. Eventually it became bloated and fragile – something you don’t want in a start up. Gatherra then followed, similar story, although we did launch that one, but the market never took to it.

This time I tried something different. With no money I relaunched GlueNote, this time as glunote.com (dropped the e)
It’s a note taking application for Twitter. It’s still always on, and always available – but it’s simple, straight forward, with a minimal feature set. If it works great, if not no problem because it’s a few hours of my time and no money at stake. Plus, and it’s a big plus, for the first time in a long time, it was fun to develop something – no investors, no deadlines, no feature creep. The way it should be.