There are some common success factors like;

1. Build a product or service people want
2. Customers are willing to pay for it
3. Competitors can’t easily replicate it
4. Assemble the best management team
5. Hire only the best people

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: How to make your startup successful

How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)

How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)

It’s a pretty good bet that if you’re not making a Twitter or Facebook application, you’re probably making a lifestreaming application. Okay, so not everyone is into lifestreaming, but it is one of the hottest areas for development out there, and there are an overwhelming amount of services offering a way to aggregate all the little bits of your online life (which, for the purpose of this post, is the definition of lifestreaming that we’ll use). Richard MacManus wrote an excellent primer on lifestreaming in January

Via 35 Ways to Stream Your Life – ReadWriteWeb

Raptr has two components. A Windows based software download that keeps games up to date automatically, and a website social network that pulls game data in from the client as well. The product is similar to Valve-only Steam, although it has a lot more to offer users and is developer agnostic. Today, Raptr supports 1,000 titles, including World of Warcraft – Steam has a hundred or so.

The website is a game-centric social network. Users add friends and can see what games they are playing, installing, updating, uninstalling, etc. You can also see what games your friends are playing right now.

Raptr looks at the games you play, and how much time you spend, and compares that data to other players to recommend other games to you that you might like.

Via Raptr Gaming Network Opens For Private Beta

Me.dium is a web browser plug-in for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that turns web browsing into a social experience. It gives you a personalized map of the Internet showing where you are, and what web sites your friends are visiting in real time.  You can use it to discover new people and places that are relevant just to you. It also allows you to surf with friends in real-time. It’s just like hanging out in the real world, but online

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: Me.dium – a social web browsing experience

Flux,  Ning & KickApps

 

Via Flux Takes Off

Google Trends: silverlight, asp.net, ajax

Venture capitalists already don’t much like TheFunded, a site that launched last March that lets entrepreneurs post stories about how they’ve been treated during the fund raising process.

But now they’re really going to be angry – the site is encouraging users to upload term sheets so that people can compare and contrast individual terms from each VC.

Via TheFunded Creating Database of VC Term Sheets

Y Combinator is a new kind of venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups. We help startups through what is for many the hardest step, from idea to company.

We invest mostly in software and web services. And because we are ourselves technology people, we prefer groups with a lot of technical depth. We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your ideas than whether you have a formal business plan.

Y Combinator

Via Venture Fundings Hit $29.4 Billion in 2007: The Year in Charts