I am working on a startup that will compete with many well-funded billion dollar startups and we need all the advice we can get.

You're probably not the only one.

Shoot me an email- I have some data for your space that might be tremendously useful.

Thanks Ilya, just sent you an email. We are entering the already crowded market of local deals. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Would you mind if I ask why? I'm honestly curious about whether you guys either (a) have a competitive advantage over the likes of Groupon (and Google too, apparently, after today), or (b) with the $6 billion offer, just want to get a slice of the pie. For the record, I don't think there's anything wrong with either one -- just curious.

Because there is one service I would use everyday nobody offers today, not even groupon, google, etc.

No matter where I am, I want to look at my iPhone and see what deals for lunch at the nearest Chili's, Cheesecake Factory, Houstons, etc. based on geolocation. If I am looking for the newest pair of Nikes, know who's got them around me for the best price.

Local deals, long tail, one to one, geolocation, all in one. That's a multi billion dollar business, untamed...

In case you haven't seen it, I'd look at http://milo.com . Not quite what you're describing, but based on similar premises. They were acquired by eBay not too long ago for $70 million. At least eBay sees value in local shopping as you described it.

Btw, google recently bought signpost (in the millions) our most direct competitor, and we believe we can do better than that.

This is a really interesting blog. I've e-mailed you, and from a dev who has never really made a site popular (other than getting some Chinese restaurant site to the top of google search by pure chance), it's given me some wicked ideas already.

I've e-mailed with a few specific questions, just my parents aren't doing too good right now, and while I can't help them financially, I can possibly use the skills to bring my stepdad more business.

I like the quote from Macchiavelli about entrepreneurship. Gives you a clear heads-up about the level of drivel to follow.

I highly doubt that this quote is really from Macchiavelli, as in his writings entrepreneurship is not touched in any way.

That's a clever tactics. I'll definitely laugh out loud if I find competitor's weakness and learn what works with their own money. However, competition is dynamic. Wining one battle is not wining a war. Would love to read your other creative tactics.

reading your post gave me a serious sense of synchronicity. I have been researching this same opportunity and have come up with a number of assumptions that I intend to validate. I would love to exchange some ideas with you on this topic offline. Send me an email at mwiseone@gmail.com. Thanks!

Step 1. Don't use Google Chrome because then you can't see my blog entry.

I only use Chrome, works fine for me.

Also, according to my analytics, 40% of my readers use Chrome, so unless they're all just constantly refreshing my blog like mindless zombies without seeing anything, the issue is probably on your end.

What issue are you experiencing?

I'm not the OP and I can see the text in Chrome on Linux but one issue it does have is if the browser window is small enough that the title wraps the subtitle goes behind the buttons.

BTW, I would have subscribed to your RSS feed (a few times before even) if it was full content.

Unfortunately, fulltext RSS feeds are easy prey for scraper/spam sites, which is why most blogs don't use them. Nowadays, it looks like most people use RSS as more of a notification when new content is posted.

I won't follow a blog that doesn't have a full RSS feed, it's just not worth it. I can't actually remember another blog I came across recently that didn't have full content, and the 100+ I follow include pretty mainstream stuff. So I'd be curious as to how you got to this conclusion. Also, why do you worry about spam sites?

Different industries have different rules I suppose. Allright, I've enabled fulltext feeds for the time being, we'll see how it goes.

Spam considerations aside, it's a tradeoff between subscriber counts and pageviews. I'm not entirely clear which metric's growth is more desirable.

Subscribed. I'd be curious to find out what you conclude about the experience. Thanks.

I second the full RSS feed request

Thanks for the feedback. I'm on Chrome 9 beta and it looks fine for me, it's probably an extension. Try incognito mode.

Edit: Now I'm wondering why this extension perceives my entire blog as one giant ad :)

Good point about the menu overlapping the tagline, I'll have to work on that. It's a fluid width layout I believe, so they overlap on smaller/netbook/low-res screens.

Actually, I'm on my mac and the menu is overlapping here too. Good post Ilya =)

I use Chrome and it worked fine for me.