Just a thought, if you're planning on applying to the round coming up in a few days I would suggest holding off until next time. Your odds will be better because you will have A: a further developed product, B: A cofounder who you know very well and are comfortable with, and C: more time for PG and crew to look at your application.
Of course after you consider the upsides to this, there aren't really any downsides to applying now, even if you don't get accepted. But if you don't get accepted, I encourage you to apply again in the winter round. The problem you're addressing I believe is a good one to solve.
There's always a downside of waiting to do anything in a startup: you have competitors. You may not know who they are, but odds are there's someone else out there working on roughly the same thing.
If you're not committed to a particular idea, you can safely wait, yes. But if there is something specific you want to work on, you can't safely delay at any stage, whether it's getting funding, releasing, or adding new features.
Sure. I wasn't suggesting not doing anything until the next funding round. Ideally, mixmax would continue working on the idea, while hopefully getting to know potential cofounders and making other contacts. That way, when YC hosts its winter round, their team will have the benefits already mentioned in my above post.
I would rather not wait if I can get going now. Usually pushing yourself into something that you might not be quite ready for means that you have to take responsibility for it.
There are too many hopeful entrepreneurs that think "I'm not quite ready, so I'll do it in a month" - and have done so for years. In my experience it is better to push forward into the great unknown....
And there was another I can't seem to find now where a Google employee explicitly stated in response to people petitioning for one that a task manager was in the works .
Google does some nice stuff, and they have huge brand recognition, so I definitely worry about them. That said, I think that the whole productivity app business needs to be thought about in a different way, the way it works now you're always trying to shoehorn your project into something that almost but not quite fits. I hope to have an advantage in that department.
I'd say don't even worry about Google, because, frankly, Google could build a spaceship if it wanted to...who could stop it? Any company that can tell the U.S. government "no" has some power...so focus on what you can effect...your cutting-edge product
Of course after you consider the upsides to this, there aren't really any downsides to applying now, even if you don't get accepted. But if you don't get accepted, I encourage you to apply again in the winter round. The problem you're addressing I believe is a good one to solve.