chris — facebook can go hire people to code if they want them to go through spec sheets and get it done — they don’t need your company. what they need is a set of creative people who know how to get stuff done.

they’re not going to give these grants to no name “kids”

the people getting these grants will have had some or all of the following
a) entrepreneurial success in the past
b) elite university backgrounds (Stanford, Ivy Schools, MIT, Cal Poly, etc.)
c) solid business skills and technology skills

if you’re looking for a client to hire you to code, you’re wasting your time.

i would put you at 1000:1 to get any “deal” done with facebook and that’s being generous.

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

So, you are offering to do the coding for FB, but you stated that you need a full set of specs first - well, hell - if FB is going to spend the time writing the specs, why should they hire your company?

So you write good code - big deal, lots of people do that.

I’m not seeing your competitive advantage here - and making a bunch of noise in the TechCrunch comments area probably isn’t going to help you out either.

Your missing the point of an API bonehead. FB wants to encourage develop and see what happens, and yes probably copy some goodness and probably acquire some to.

You think if you don’t submit to fbFund, and then somehow launch your gizmo and get some attention that now it won’t be copied ???

If you are worried about being copied, you are in the wrong business at the wrong time, this is the era of quick copying sites and ideas, get used to it for a while.

A. We’re not offshore. We’re on the very same shore as Facebook and the rest of Silicon Valley.

B. We create applications according to specifications, and we do it well.

C. Grants are wasted money. If we are given a spec sheet and we fail to meet that spec sheet according to a legal agreement, we are liable. The lack of that liability means that a kid can receive 50k and go out and buy a BMW, then finish their facebook widget in 2 hours, and do a horrible job, giving them what is essentially worthless html and javascript, and they have no recourse.

D. Have a look at our rates. Do those look like offshore rates? I am from New York thanks.

What are you going to do?

Chris R. — I hope you don’t expect FB to take your letter seriously…. they’re not going to hire some offshore company to make apps for them — that’s not the purpose here…. if you guys make such good apps, you’re welcome to release them and compete with everyone else. Do you understand how much power FB has right now? why on earth would they hire your company….

AKA–”We\’ve seen a tremendous response to fbFund, and look forward to stealing great proposals.”

“we can\’t promise that any materials or information you submit here will be kept confidential, or specifically that we or others might not develop similar or identical products or services.”

Please do yourself favor. Don’t write Facebook app & business plan and submit facebook. It’s going to kill you. It’s going to waste your time. There is no 100% guarantee you get FBfunds.

If you are smart enough to do research… Did you know Mark actually stole ConnectU business plan, source code, and created Facebook?

What does facebook want from you?
An idea to steal…

Not kiddies. Professionalism means a lot, it means that they’ll get value for the money. Kids are going to code widgets that harvest data for their own profits. Companies like ours make a living protecting our customers.

I like to know where FBfund writer get that letter from. Man, I would fired that writer. Seriously, I saw business letter. It’s so much alike. It was written 1960, 70, 88, 92, 21… Now and this.. It’s dishonest.

I think its good idea for facebook to rewrite the essay again.

We got a reply from Facebook around Sept 20th about a faxed submission. We did not ask them for money but rather offered to sell them contracted developers as we do with enterprise customers.

Facebook did not email or fax our office rejecting our submission, so unless we get anything it would be safe to assume they are still considering it. We threw some users and IP in the deal, but won’t say what. I hope Facebook contacts us favorably this week if they accept our proposal, which, for the public reading here, does not include grant money for widgets. Our company works fair and square for the money we earn.

First Paragraph… Thank you
Second paragraph…. We are unable accept this time…
Third Paragraph… We apologize for the inconvenience
Fourth Paragraph… We are exciting to offer … blah..blah…
Conclusion… Thank you for sign up…

I would never allow my startup to write that same format.