http://www.stockrake.com

So I’ve been working on my startup, iCalledit.com, for roughly 10 months. We bootstrapped and hired different programmers at different times. One got poached from us and moved to California for Y-Combinator and got funded. Very cool.

Trying to convince and find a programmer to join your startup is extremely difficult. In south Florida, its even more difficult as the available/programmer pool here is pretty thin. Its a programmer’s market right now. Everyone is looking, and many jobs are paying well right now.

I just got back from New York, I wanted to attend the Skillshare, “How to get into TechStars,” class and I’m glad I made the trip. David Tisch is a unique speaker and definitely speaks my language so it resonated well with me. We (my co-founder and I) wanted to see what Techstars looks for in startups before we submitted our application. We had it filled out ready to go, but wanted to see if we could derive a few tidbits that might give us an edge. Putting a name to a face is always a good thing to do as well. While in NYC we met with our advisor who runs a successful startup himself, and got a little taste of the startup scene at Dogpatch Labs. We met with some Ruby programmers as well. The scene in New York is downright awesome compared to what’s down here. In fact just surviving in a startup in South Florida is a win. Although costs are cheaper in SoFla which allows startups to live longer, you also have limited access to everything that startups have at their fingertips in NYC. It probably evens out; startup survival time in SoFla vs Startup speed in NYC or San Francisco. However, speed kills and being in the game fast allows you to be in the right place to get lucky first.

From my first internet business when I used to visit Manhattan regularly for trade shows I always said, “I love visiting, but I’d never want to live here.” I think this trip changed that for me. The city feels different.

So we finally found a technical co founder, but we are still looking for more programmers. If you program in Ruby, or do Mobile apps, or are awesome at other languages contact me. We are considering rebuilding from the ground up and I’d love to talk to you. What you see there is our minimum viable product. stockrake at gmail.com

Now for my stock trades.
I closed my GOOG trade for 5.5%, that thing dropped like a stone over the last few days.

I also took a loss on my first GLD position, own a Feb put in GLD now I think the 156.

I bought AAPL put today FEB 1 strike OTM. AAPL is overbought pretty severely, but this should be a one day trade barring a huge negative news release such as Italy’s government commandeering all the olive groves. In the past AAPL can run through overbought. However, with 5 minutes to the close it had a super rare overbought signal – that faded away though, which tells me it should still be decent. I also bought SPY and IWM puts FEB 1 strike OTM.