Even during Viaweb I still slept 8 hours a night (roughly 3-11). The most productive people rarely have more than 6 hours or so of really concentrated work per day, except in emergencies. If you can ensure you get that every day, you don't need to economize on sleep.

My way of getting those 6 solid hours was a common hacker solution to the problem: I used the hours between 9 pm and 3 am, when no one could interrupt me.

If you have no design skills, just try to make things as minimal as possible. Google's UI was designed by engineers with no design skills, and it still works for them.

If you can't design the (original) Porsche 911,

http://www.idee.demon.nl/911_22/b911-117.jpg

just design a Land Rover

http://www.roverclub.org/crmpuf.gif

The thing to avoid is getting halfway to cool design and ending up with a Pontiac Aztek

http://www.familycar.com/RoadTests/PontiacAztek/Images2/Righ...

or an Edsel

http://blog.ninjakiwi.com/images/edsel.jpg

You overestimate the skill required to create most of these sites. They're usually following some very simple rules. Most are inspired by the style of 37 Signals. Nice fonts, gradients, and pastel colors.

Most of what makes these sites seem so nice is that they're familiar and "modern web 2.0". Scribd is very Diggish for example.

Inkscape is like magic for creating nice logos, if you keep it simple. Truly anyone can do it. Use a color scheme tool like http://kuler.adobe.com/. Don't invent a totally unique design, imitate someone at first.

Anyone who can code well can easily reproduce nice simple site designs. Overcoming the "I can't design" mental block is the hardest part. Becoming a real design master takes a lot more effort obviously.

Doh, when I saw "hacker" in the title, I assumed "skilled programmer"...

I thought you were going to say: "Put https://hackertimes.com/ in your firewall's blacklist" ;)

But I agree with your going-to-bed-early idea.

And I'll add: spend the first 30 to 45 minutes after you get up doing some kind of cardio exercise (running, treadmill, cycling).

You'll be much more relaxed and have a ton of energy all morning.

A few that I know of:

#1 took the IP of his failed startup to China and tried starting another business in exactly the same area, but with Chinese programmers instead of American. Last I heard it hadn't gone anywhere (for exactly the same reasons that the first failed), but money lasts 5 times as long in China.

#2 - a cofounder in the same startup - went to China and opened a school, along with consulting for numerous businesses there. His new venture is doing great.

(#1 and #2 are both independently wealthy from previous startups, however.)

#3 ended up being hired by the business he tried to compete against.

#4 did some consulting work and then took a visiting professorship at a university.

#5 slunk back to the cube farm, then was laid off in the next recession and became a househusband.

#6 slunk back to the cube farm.

Something you should remember: many businesses (particularly ones that don't take outside funding) neither succeed nor fail, but limp along with enough revenues to pay a small staff but not enough to grow quickly. You should be prepared for this possibility and know whether you would want to abandon the startup and go back to the cube farm, or stick it out in hopes of one day making a breakthrough. For startups that are not in hot markets, you'll find that they're significantly more work than a regular job with not much more pay (though you do have more freedom). I know at least 2 other entrepreneurs in this category.

As for the best way to manage the possibility of failure: keep your skills sharp, and make sure that you fail because of things you can't prevent rather than things you can. Most big companies will eagerly hire a top-notch hacker who failed because there was no market for what he was building. Not many will hire someone who had a top-notch market and yet sat on his ass all day instead of building something.

It wouldn't hurt to explain which app it is, what you are doing, what kind of skills you are looking for, etc. If you have 1.5M users then you obviously aren't in stealth mode or anything.

I do. It hurts to see the meter keep increasing, especially at stop lights or a few feet from the destination.

The best way to make a metered scheme hurt less is to hide the current charge, like an electric meter does, and only expose the value once per month. (the best way to decrease power consumption would probably be to expose the current charge in very visible and realtime way)

As an engineer with no design skills, that's the hardest part in getting together a team...I can't find a good designer. I may be able to pump out an amazing site, but if it looks like crap no one is going to use it.

It sucks not being a jack of all trades (then again, I'd hate to be a master of none...)

Something that always worked for me: start watching a movie that you've already seen. After a lot of work if I try to go to bed I'll find myself thinking about work even more. I found out that watching a movie can easily distract me but it has to be a movie that I've already watch otherwise I'd end up watching the whole movie.

Hmm..so I have $4m and I take a huge risk by walking away from $200k ? Takes a man of true courage.

It is awesome. Who hasn't dreamed of being featured on the MarvQuin.com Blog? ;-)

The rich can afford to take risks.

$6T is roughly half of the total U.S. GDP. Assuming that U.S. GDP grows at typical 3% rates or so over the next 10 years, this is saying that FaceBook will account for ~40% of the U.S. economy by 2016.

Something about that seems a little wrong to me...