[drlisp]

Obviously not. These are just a couple MIT/Ivy/Stanford kids who PG liked and decided to give 20k to spend time at summer camp. No one could bootstrap this. The technology inst hard to copy, so if it could be bootstrapped we see a lot of them. Also, it over relies peoples use of Facebook, Twitter.

[mahmud]

Can you not be dismissive of others' efforts and accomplishments in this manner?

They have just launched. They haven't had any news, good or bad yet. PR and 20k is nothing. You could get that streaking a football game on national TV and selling some of your stuff. If you think media attention is worth something, you don't know anybody who has been famous and broke.

Let these people perform on their own merit before you write them off so callously.

[drlisp]

Youre right. I wish them well. Hope they make millions. I just think these talented individuals would have done better for themselves had they not focused on a trendy/hipster social network site (do we need another?) and more on "bootstrappable" software businesses.

[shazow]

Is it really that trendy? We're trying to move online behaviour to real life. This is something that hasn't been done much, short of Groupon. But definitely hasn't been done much in the name of healthy actions.

Our next step is to build in sensors like Nike+ and do verified activities, which should be pretty cool but hardly trendy/hipster.

[drlisp]

You should have a points system, where people earn points when the partner verifies the activity was accomplished. Win prizes, etc.

[contagionhealth]

Interesting, and this is a suggestion we've heard before. Thanks drlisp.

We're working on a method to get rewards after a verified challenge has been completed - that will launch later this fall.

If you have a specific activity/prize you'd like to see, please let us know. I'll do my best to close a deal for you :).

[jfarmer]

Translation: I wish they would have built something I like.

[contagionhealth]

Hi drlisp-

Actually, neither Andrey (my cofounder) nor I (Jen) graduated from any of those schools.

I am an English major (with a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies of all things), and Andrey graduated with a CS degree from UToronto (he's Canadian, eh).

We started by bootstrapping the company for 6 months.

You bring up an interesting point about our current reliance on Facebook and Twitter.

We recently added email functionality to help with that, but if you've got ideas about how we might improve we'd love to hear them.