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ClutterMe Demo

Our newest and most recent ClutterMe Demo Video.

The road to launch...

Matt Brezina, one of the founders of Silicon Valley's Xobni, once gave me some good advice. He said "use the ycombinator three months to build up a war chest of code".

Well we did. We got off to a slow start (June 10th) and we've been taking weekends off, but we finally overshot in the code department. On the spur of the moment yesterday we decided to scale back features and release.

Why?

1) We were forced to. Pagii, jottit, and even Piczo, were just too close to our idea. Pagii uses SVG and are backed by Freewebs. Aaaron Swartz is a genius and Piczo has at least a two year headstart.

2) We were losing momentum. Better to release, bomb, and then make something else. The sooner we know, the better.

3) It's exciting. It's fun to make something and then let people use it.

What?

In the end we decided to forego the customizable webpage market and focus on customizable homepages.

We really think that our site would represent a neat acquisition by a search engine start-up or could integrate well into the front-end of a social network.

Until this happens, we're are going to keep grasping for that magic word - profitability, and maybe one day write our own paychecks.

Wish us luck, I'm sure we'll need every ounce.

Mark Molckovsky
ClutterMe.com

Cartoon

We release on October 1st, 2007.

DemoCamp Toronto 14

DemoCamp14 Toronto was AMAZING. Held at the prestigious First Canadian Place (Canada's Second Tallest building) it was a technologically studded affair. First, a review of the Demos:

Zoomii - We didn't hear much about their presentation, we just caught the last 30 seconds and the faq. If we didn't get stuck on the Expressway, I would have more to blog about. Check out the BETA.

Cytoscape - Looking at their website, I'm more impressed now then ever before. I was still a bit awed about Democamp so I didn't grasp the problems they were trying to solve the first time around. Cytoscape is Analyzing and Visualizing Network Data (in a nifty interface!).

AideRSS - It's almost like social RSS. I got the idea and concept immediately and I have to say I liked it. They've already launched so you can pick up an account here.

ePresence - Something like 7 years in the making, WOW. I liked Peter Wolf as a presenter. He's looking for developers, investors, anything, so you if you are interested take a look at the site.

shiftMode - Bryden and Brian from Bandofcoders presented as entertainingly as humanly possible, a framework for persons developing Web applications.

The next part of the DemoCamp, were the Ignite Presentations where you don't control the Presentation Slides.

Zerofootprint - Love the idea. They give you a calculator to calculate your environmental footprint. Expect to see this in Seattle and Toronto sometime soon we were told.

Greg Wilson's Beautiful Code - It's something that you don't see nearly as often as you would expect, and that is examples of beautiful code. A significant step up from 'Hello World' applications.


One Laptop Per Child - Surely you've heard of the OLPC project. We actually got to see the prototype. It's green, pretty cute actually. Apparently OLPC early adopters caught their students looking at pornography on the Internet. It's unknown whether these versions had filters or not. OLPC is a great project that apparently Google is targeting with their Google Phone. Hey, the faster we bridge the technological gap the better. Amazing project.

FacebookCamp Toronto - The first FacebookCamp in Canada. Toronto has the 2nd largest facebook network (behind London) and Canadian cities take up an abnormally large percentage of the top 10 facebook networks. It's probably due to our winters.

StartUpWeekend Toronto - They came close and this week LobbyThem should be finished. Sounds like a good idea too.

And the food was great!

Muchos gracias goes out to David Crow for organizing the first DemoCamp since TorCamp (it's been a short summer).

It was my first DemoCamp and for sure will I be there at the next one!

ClutterMe in one picture...

Blades of Glory: the review

Well, we watched Blades of Glory as a start-up. It was Alex's second time watching it (and my first) because we didn't have anything else worthwhile. So to save me some time, I've picked the best quotes from IMDB to re-hash here.

"No exaggeration, I could not love a human baby more then I love this brush. "

"I'm a sex addict. It's my cross to bear."

"We love you Denver! City by the Bay! "

"Chazz: She's as cold as the ice she skates on. She's like dry ice. No, wait! She's colder than that. What's colder than dry ice?
Jimmy: I don't know
Chazz: I'll tell you what is, Oksana. "

"I'd fire you... if you weren't so goddamn beautiful out there."

"Grublets On Ice Manager: You smell like urine.
Chazz: A lot? "

"Chazz: I am NEVER satisfied! It's a curse. "

"I just threw up in here, people. That's the reality. Just another layer to the legend."

"When I was eight, my dad had me get a circumcision to minimalize air resistance. "

4 Stars

An Interview with Paul Graham

If you check out my post on Hacker News I posted a couple of questions to Paul Graham [PG]. And as a very nice gesture, he replied.

So, my digital interview with Paul Graham...

MM: Hi Mr. Graham, I would like to ask some questions and possibly publish the results on my blog. I thought that YC news would be the best way to answer the questions, that way we can all read the answers right here.

Has YC ever considered investing in a not-for-profit start-up?

PG: No. We'd do charitable donations individually, not through YC.

To your recollection, are there any ideas that were rejected by YC that have made it big? If so, can you name them.

PG: I don't know of any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.

You seem to be one of Silicon Valley's busiest/most influential/hard-working persons, why all the fuss? Haven't you earned a respite?

PG: I like the stuff I work on. You don't need a respite from work you like.

Have you ever thought about franchising the YC brand?

PG: We wouldn't trust anyone else enough. We'd rather see if we can cook up some clever way of doing everything ourselves.

In your spare time, what does Paul Graham like to do?

PG: Write essays.

Rumor has it that you studied the Arts in University, at what point did you realize that you were more capable with the keyboard, if ever?

I haven't given up on painting. But the web has opened a window for writing essays that never existed before, so I decided I'd spend a couple years mostly writing.


MM: Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. They are as much a personal interest of mine as I'm sure they are for many others.

It's the small things...

...like a blinking cursor when you're typing in Firefox (or lack thereof).

This one has probably been the #1 complaint so far about ClutterMe. It's actually caused by a bug in Firefox, and looking around on Google it seems to drive other web developers nuts. It almost did for us - Mark and I both spent way too much time on it.

Well, it's finally fixed - and it's a reminder that while we get excited about a new feature or worried about a "critical" bug, it's small things like this that can really trip up our users.

Mr. Bean's Holiday

As a promotion to Mr. Bean's Holiday some street vendors were giving away Mr. Bean face masks.

Self interview with two entrepreneurs

We're trying something different, instead of finding a big name to interview, we asked ourselves relevant questions about our start-up.

What's the hardest part of a start-up?

"I'd have to say that the hardest part of a start-up is how demoralizing it can be. One day you're unbeatable and the next day the world is beating you." - Mark

"I'd have to agree with Mark, it's a rollar coaster of a ride. Luckily we manage to buoy ourselves pretty well." - Alex

They say that opposites attract, is that the case in your start-up, do you have a Wozniak/Jobs dicotemy?

"I don't think that the lines are drawn that sharply between us. I think that we are both risk averse individuals. We can both dabble in code, and we both wear khakis. It's more of a Gates/Allen partnership." - Mark

"Really? I couldn't disagree more. Mark would be Jobs, I'd be Wozniak. I guess that shows you were we stand lol. " - Alex

How has your friendship changed now that you're working on a start-up, & how have other relationships been affected?

"The odd thing is that we never hung out before ClutterMe. We weren't even on a talking basis for the three years after we met. However, I always felt that Alex and I would start a company. We talked about much too often when we were interning at the bank together. I guess we had a verbal agreement. We were going to start a company together, it really didn't matter what." - Mark

"There was no such agreement. After I graduated from University I started working at the Ontario Telemedicine Health Network. My eyes really opened however, after Mark went for a Ycombinator interview. We weren't that far off. As for your other questions, I still find time to 'hang with the friends'. I think it's essential to maintaining your sanity in such an uncertain atmosphere - I enjoy any semblance of what passes as routine nowadays. And yes, once your friends initially grasp that you're doing a start-up, they are supportive, and wonderful like that." - Alex

So who does what, what's your specialty?

"We're both hackers originally. Admittedly, Alex has far surpassed me in hacking ability but I get by. This is not a knock on my hacking ability, but rather a compliment to Alex's. We both have pretty good marketing, and other soft skills. However, because the code has become so intertwined in Alex's mind, I've been doing much more of the non technical day to day issues." - Mark

"We have two rules, I get the good chair, I write the code. Everything else is handled by Mark, it's a pretty good arrangement" - Alex (parsed by Mark)

So... why?

"My fault." - Mark

"Mark's fault." - Alex

"Truthfully, I was tired of working for the man." - Alex

"I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else." - Mark

We'd love to hear your comments. If you would like to link back to us we'd appreciate it and be happy to return the favor.

We'd love to hear what you think ...

Want an account? We'd love to hear from you.

Right now there is a sign up list for accounts. However, we're notoriously fickle about accounts if you are willing to blog about us I'm sure Alex or myself slip an invite into your gmail or hotmail inbox. Potential trackbacks are also available for flattering mentions.

Edit 1: Bad Reviews are still welcome, we'll probably keep track of them in one big blog entry.
Edit 2: Until the list becomes too embarrassing.


What are we making? Might help the review a bit.

Well we're making a MySpace and a Facebook, except that without profile pages you have your own webpage. Like Blogger? Yes, but there's nothing out there that works like us.

We released...

We've sent out over 70 invites, so now we have just over 100 people with ClutterMe accounts, and we've also given invites to those with accounts.

The reaction was mixed at best. To be fair, those that signed up for our release two months ago were probably more curious than in actually need of a ClutterMe account, so that could be why our pages haven't seemed to have 'caught on' to those who we invited.

Also, the 'type anywhere' concept could be a bit foreign. Even our reviewers had some trouble figuring out what to do. So that means we have a long list of fixes coming down the pipe. Usability will be our highest priority fix.

Are we going to release more accounts soon? Yes. Before that however, we'd like to iron out some more bugs. We had 75 eager eyes look at our product in the past week that we can never get back. Some serious changes need to occur before we send out our next batch of invites.

Keep your eye to the skies (literally, the Canadian National Air Show is in town). Sleeping in till 1 means being awoken by jets. Oh, and if you're using Hotmail, check your junk mail box.. we're gonna have to fix that.