Inspiring, but it looks like the business failed sometime around 2013 for violating health code / zoning laws. Disappointing, as someone who likes the idea of leaving tech to run an ice cream shop.

I think this would be more work than it's worth. Legal overhead + the likelihood of the stock being worth anything for a low possibility of future revenue seems like a losing proposition.

They'd be better off focusing resources on their core competency and giving the cloud services away for free (up to a point). See the Microsoft BizSpark program for an example of this.

I'm starting s podcast to help with this problem. The idea is I pick 1 small business / industry a week, and do 5 interviews with different business owners from that industry, asking about their business, the problems they face, etc.

Do you think you'd listen to something like this?

That sounds like something I'd listen to and would be super useful, sign me up.

Sounds great! Shoot me an email if you launch it.

hn at strapr dot com

Let's say, for the sake of argument, this is just a placebo effect. Does it really matter? If it provides a noticeable, reproducible result that improves someones life, who cares? Is it guaranteed to work for you? No, but there's no guarantee with a double blind tested, well researched method either.

It's giving up sugar, not ingesting plutonium. Worst case scenario you don't get the 'infomercial results', but it most likely will still improve your overall health

Simplicity. It's become such a behemoth that it can be a bit unwieldy for new users.

I understand this train of thought. But, when it comes down to write this algorithm on the whiteboard or build something small but non-trivial, I'd much rather do the latter.

I have a hard time with whiteboards too. What works well for me but is uncommon, is to be left alone with a pencil and paper.

As far as I know, Automattic (the company behind WordPress) doesn't have offices. At the very least, almost all of their workforce are remote workers.

Branding != logo.

The logo seemed like a good place to start. Look up "hipster ribbons" and "hipster arrows" and "hipster fonts" and you can find the rest of the pieces that make up their style. They've got a complete implementation of a popular formula; it's nicely done but it's far from unique.

A better place to look is their video ads, which have gotten quite a bit of viral traction: https://www.youtube.com/user/DollarShaveClub

The DSC business model is really simple: take a no-name commodity product (Dorco razor blades: see http://lifehacker.com/5903771/forget-dollar-shave-clubbuy-th...), wrap it in very-social-sharing-friendly marketing, charge three times as much. Boom, you make enough money to cover the costs of the marketing and then some.

Not that I'm defending BBT, but they're taped in front of a live audience, so it's not technically a laugh track.

Plenty of shows taped in front of a live studio audience still sweeten it with a laugh track. But I have no idea if BBT does.

edit: wikipedia says yes. "Sweetening has been used in a number of television series, from older shows like Happy Days, Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, to newer sitcoms Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetening

There must be a 'LAUGH' sign - because they are on cue even when the joke isn't remotely funny.

This is great!

One note about your site's landing page: for the sections about each "engine" try leading with the engine's benefit to the user, and go into the highly technical jargon in the small print. I have a feeling your customers don't know what, "adaptive learning algorithm to locate and bridge cognitive gaps" means.