This will likely continue to be a solid strategy. As new technologies and innovations come to light new generic groups are created. Maybe one technique would be to keep track of emerging internet meme's and jump on related domains ASAP?
I have first hand experience of this at my last company (as an employee). Several big name companies were sniffing around and the CEO took the initiative to actually explain in detail what we were doing and how we did it.
Not one of the companies actually became a competitor even though they had the financial resources to crush us. In fact, one ended up purchasing us!
>wrote his own programming language when he was 16...
Do you mean he executed "man yacc"? ;)
Thats quite a stream of serendipitous events (referring the the above blog). How does one just have "intense sessions" with people like Max Levchin, Evan Williams and Naval Ravikant??
So I met Ev in Oxford in Nov 04 (I was president of Oxford Entrepreneurs, and my reward was to be able to go to the dinner that the Business School held as part of the Silicon Valley event), and had stayed in touch with him since then. In March 05 I met Max and visited the now defunct midtown doornail incubator (which spurned, Yelp, Slide amongst others). This was a pre-finals trip where 7 weeks before my final exams at Oxford, a bunch of us decided to fly to SF for 10 days was a good idea. Pics are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kulveer/sets/72057594075696873/
Then, in May 06, we were filming a documentary for Channel 4, and that's when I had my 'intense session' with Max, Naval and Evan. I was introduced to Max by my friend Bob, who was one of the early people at Yelp, and now co-founder of YouNoodle. Then it so turns out we lived one block from Naval and would bump into him every day at Crossroads Cafe.
> Thats quite a stream of serendipitous events (referring the the above blog). How does one just have "intense sessions" with people like Max Levchin, Evan Williams and Naval Ravikant??
I think I read in that blog that they first met at some Oxford business event. I'm thinking that YC brought in some remarkable people from across the 'pond (going global)
True however then users have to think followed by get frustrated dreaming up a name. They already know their email address. And unless they already signed up its probably not taken.
I think the frustration of entering your email, checking you inbox and following a confirmation link is a lot more than the frustration of dreaming up a name - which you have to do anyway unless you use your email as a login.
I think that the metrics support this view as well.
Are the images coming from flickr? Because I am getting pictures of a baseball and the word is "playing". Since the images are crowdsourced then maybe there should be an array of them to convey the idea.
In my opinion there are too many words off the bat to remember if you are new to the language. How about doing a delay of one where you define a Spanish word and its image(s) and then the question after next is the image to assign the Spanish or English word to it, then a few questions later its the Spanish word to assign the English word to it? That way you get a 1-2 punch to help memorize it.
