The threat of someone rewriting your code might be a good way spawn a good engineering discussion. If the discussion is constructive you might even improve the team and the code. But if micro management and lack of delegation results in frequent rewrite discussions, that will kill motivation for sure.
If you go to Vancouver, I'd recommend staying downtown and experiencing that lifestyle. You might not need to use your car for weeks. Go to Cafe Artigiano or JJ Bean for great coffee. Too many great places to eat but I'll mention Guu (http://www.guu-izakaya.com/) and Hapa Izakaya (http://www.hapaizakaya.com/).
Agreed on downtown San Diego. But there are tons of other good areas in San Diego. Old Town has great places to eat like Casa de Pico and La Pinata. Hillcrest has lots of culture and I'd recommend the Park House Eatery. Pacific Beach has some great crusty hang outs and bars. La Jolla is beautiful. And you have to go to the big tourist attractions at least once like the San Diego Zoo and Sea World.
"Vanuatu is a tax haven that until 2008 did not release account information to other governments or law-enforcement agencies. International pressure, mainly from Australia, influenced the Vanuatu government to begin adhering to international norms to improve transparency. In Vanuatu, there are no income tax, no withholding tax, no capital gains tax, no inheritance taxes, or exchange controls. A disproportionately large number of ship-management companies choose to flag their ships under the Vanuatu flag, because of the tax benefits and favorable labor laws. Several file-sharing groups, such as the providers of the KaZaA network of Sharman Networks and the developers of WinMX, have chosen to incorporate in Vanuatu to avoid regulation and legal challenges."
Your color selection was painful to my eyes. I use firefox. But somehow you pallete of blue on black was really annoying. I am sorry but my reaction is so strong, I cannot imagine why you would do that.
Believe it or not it looks just how I like. But I plan to make the theme selectable on the site at some point and I could make the default theme more conservative. I use firefox too. I'm a programmer and look at screens late in to the night and bright sites are painful to my eyes after about 10pm. I love to read the feeds on a dark subdued screen rather than on a site crowded with distractions and colors. Sorry to annoy you, maybe it's like a song that annoys you the first time you hear it and then later you can't get enough it is so refreshing and different. :)
A startup will need to hire strong talent and retain them during critical periods to have a hope of success. The enticement needs to go beyond a simple deal of annual or hourly agreement. Bonuses based on completion of goals and other kinds of benefits are important. Shares in the company is even more important. If you don't have the enticement, you can just quit tomorrow and paid just as much somewhere else. The cost to the employee who quits is a tiny amount of risk in transitioning to a new job. The cost to the startup can be huge due to delays in hiring and ramping up new employees.
