2 days ago I cancelled Basecamp. Why? Pricing.
Duet looks beautiful. I agree, hosting for less tech savvy users would be great. The pricing is great for self-hosted. Frankly, the SaaS adds up quickly, and my hurdle rate is 10x (I have to save 10x the comparable annual dollar cost for Saas it to be sustainable).
Indeed, I was not trying to evangelize SaaS/PaaS :) I'm quite bored of seeing clients wasting founding money on heroku stack, where they first pay incredible amount to have unix processes, then pay a service to have email sending, then one to host uploads, then one to have logging, then on to monitor their app, then they rent a dedicated server anyway because they have specific needs ...
My point is more that it's probably a good thing to provide both webservice and installable app (github, with its github enterprise is a very good example of that, even if way too expansive), to let user choose your product based on what it does instead of what are its requirements and implications.
My first reaction is to tell you to act on the shareholder agreement and change the equity. Buy her out if you can. You build a new team. You have already waited too long.Great friends do not make great partners. However, you may be better served by having a trusted advisor speak with both of you individually, then together, to mediate. There may be more going on here than you know, and if there is a chance to clear the air and start afresh, you should find that. Finding cofounders is hard. You must have a trusted advisor that can do this for you -- it's part of why we have advisors, no?
It's everywhere, and not getting better. Recently heard this advice when I went to pitch a company, "just do your best, it's uphill, because you're not (ethnicity) and you're a woman, so good luck." What Lennon said 40 years ago is still true. Lean in.
The site claims safer but it doesn't feel safer. The first click opens my files for me to select one to upload, yet why am I going to upload a file to a completely unknown entity? Who is/are Mega? What gives user confidence to entrust (confidential / personal / business) file uploads to Mega? There are a few steps missing here, I would work on building customer confidence. Unless you are aiming for uploads within a network of people who know and trust you for other reasons. Good luck.
There is a lot of fresh thinking shared at HN, and I check New Links and comments here more often than I check any aggregated news sites or NYTimes or Merc.
Neat demo last week on alternative to word captchas -- cartoon catcha, eg drag hat on top of head, put eyeglasses on face, from Mitsuo Okada of Osaka University, at Founders Institute, he's at mitsuookada@gmail.com
As a curly haired woman, who read the article, I'd add that there is a small cultural shift afoot. Curly means natural, not straightened, not brazilian'd, not a weave, wig or blowout. Curly power: claim it. Next up: naturally grey hair. Straight + dyed hair = how women subjugate ourselves. Read somewhere that Paul Mitchell Hair Products and Patron tequila are behind the Curly Hair Network, and if that's true, then this curly network is content marketing.
Your comment added so much to this discussion! Since you took the effort to type it, I thought I would recognize it, since the only reason to, erm, leave such a comment would be to snark unnecessarily in order to draw attention to how detail-oriented and sarcastic you are.
Or perhaps she read it elsewhere--there are lots of articles that talk about the Curly Hair Network. I saw an announcement about Paul Mitchell's investment on Twitter.
