Very bad idea. The whole idea behind the anti-SOPA movement is that DNS is NOT to be messed with for anybody's gain. No matter if you stand on the side to gain or to lose.

Totally off topic, but the markup for a down voted comment actually drew my attention to it. Kind of a "nothing to see here" sign.

I do agree that the rant is quite unnecessary.

namecheap, but .name and .ws can't goto namecheap. Decided to not renew those anyway. Only thing left is a ssl cert for a client. Will wait that one til expire.

NS's offer to build your site is just a gimmick. If you want a couple of html pages of about us, contact us, homepage, etc. it would be fine. But I can't see any startup that can use that type of service to build anything meaningful. I would definitely stop talking to NS immediately.

As for your programmers, NDA would have helped. But also don't lose sleep over it. I am a programmer and have worked with many other programmers. So far, I have not seen one person stealing an idea from a client due to the lack of a NDA. Maybe I just hang with those with moral integrity.

Hi Frank, That gives me more piece of mind. I've only given three programmers FTP access, though I've since restricted them. I've also explained to them that I'll be willing to rehire them once I can afford it, so that should give them more of an incentive to wait, rather than try to build their own versions. Also, I interviewed the programmers first and felt that they were trustworthy (though you never know for sure). I'm glad to hear that you've never encountered programmers stealing ideas.

Being of high moral integrity myself (in my opinion), I wouldn't expect someone even closely like-minded to steal my idea, but I feel like my site has such high potential that it may be one of those things that even someone with moral integrity can't resist stealing.

By the way, is there anywhere that I can find developers to build my site who would accept a stake in the company rather than cash?

In the case of Andrew Mason shutting out Google's 6 billion offer, is that what defines him as an entrepreneur or is that just blind vision?

It is a consensus. Very clear what I should do. Thank you all.

Thank you for your thoughts. Definitely holding back the secret sauce is a good idea. Also, I am fairly far along in the project development which I hope the momentum will create at least a small barrier.

Your secret sauce is probably less secret and less saucy than you think :)

Is the norm to build and test until you have a live system where users have been using it over many iterations of feedbacks and alterations before approaching investors? At earlier stages than that is generally a bad idea to approach them? Thanks.

Thanks for a WACK-IN-THE-HEAD response. Reading the original post got me into this "World Sucks" funk. But you are right, what is wrong should always be remedied first from within. A bit of self evaluation before blaming others is a good motto to live by.

Dude, I totally get your rant. Hey, we've all been there. Please don't take anything personally or you're in for a huge depression. Just take it as constructive criticism and keep plugging away. I've had some harshness come to me and at first it sucked and I dwelled on it. Then I realized that hey, maybe I'm applying to the wrong programs or maybe I'm not focused on core competencies. Just keep the feedback as such - its feedback. The world doesn't suck if you don't let it.