Tonight, TechStars is hosting a panel discussion on Ruby web startups. Panelists include senior representatives from:
See Boston.rb for more information on the panelists.
The event will take place from 7pm-10pm at 727 Mass Ave, Central Square, Cambridge.
Broad focus
The night will generally focus on:
- Tactical issues of running a startup on Rails
- Strategy issues of funding and growing a team
A sample of expected questions
Funding
- How would you like to see Boston’s Ruby community better interact with Boston’s investor community?
- How much do investors care about technology choices such as Rails?
- We’ve seen funds crop up around Facebook, Blackberry, and other platforms with the goal of furthering the cause of the platform. What about around web frameworks like Rails?
Team
The famous example of the Pin Factory in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations argues that division of labor is the strongest way for businesses to achieve productivity gains. Startups often consist of only a handful of people. How do your companies divide responsibilities? How many people are “jack-of-all-trades”?
Scale
- How did the hosting infrastructure need to change? Did you move to cloud services such as Amazon Web Services or Heroku?
- What limits of the relational database have you discovered? Do your applications use Postgres? MySQL? Tokyo Cabinet? CouchDB?
Bring your business cards
There are currently about 30 people expected to attend. There should be a mix of Ruby developers, Boston investors, and at least one known designer and one known PR agent!
Hope to see you there!
