We just released VLC 1.1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/1.1.0.html <comment><USER2> In very sad news they've removed the Shoutcast integration inside of VLC. This was one of the great 'hidden' features of VLC-you could view essentially any type of video or audio through a very slick integrated menu. Darn AOL for strong arming them into removing the feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> I promise that you will have a surprise quite soon :D

And the lua extension framework already let's you get it back.

<comment><USER3> hopefully soon! It's the main thing (shoutcast streaming music) I use VLC for.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the next days...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> VLC was my preferred player in Windows, and still remains my default in OS X. There is nary a format which the orange pylon cannot handle. Thanks to the VLC and FFMPEG guys for all the hard work!

<comment><USER5> Last I checked something with their .flv support was bad. It might have been the splitter or something. With a lot of .flv's you couldn't seek to anywhere in the file.

<comment><USER6> IIRC, .flv files have an index that is used for seeking (including seeking into a stream, in cooperation with the server).

Some encoders might not create the index properly, and some players might have tricks to seek (offline?) even without one.

To repair these files, see: [http://muzso.hu/2008/12/18/fixing-flash-videos- flv-for-use-w...](http://muzso.hu/2008/12/18/fixing-flash-videos-flv-for-use- with-adobe-flash-media-server-fms)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You could write to a text file, in broken English, a vague description of a song and I bet VLC could still play it. Great piece of software, thanks to the devs.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm seriously impressed with how far VLC has come in the span of a few years. Crud files go in, perfection comes out. I wish more software was this robust.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Mac OS X version is 64 bit, which means it'll work with 64-bit HandBrake. Previously you had to use an odd prerelease build. This is what I was waiting for!

<comment><USER10> cool! but still no hardware acceleration for OpenCL it looks like.

<comment><USER11> Video hardware acceleration has nothing to do with, and can't be helped by, OpenCL. I'm just warning you in case you try to write it and fail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No disrespect to VLC but I just did a side by side comparison with MPC HC and VLC player and the MPC HC player looked much more clear - <http://i.imgur.com/Mc2oS.jpg>. Any reason behind this?

<comment><USER13> I use both VLC and MPC-HC on my machines. On the lower end computers I've noticed a large performance difference between the two: MPC-HC can crank out 720P on my 5year old laptops without hiccup, but VLC stutters all over the place.

I've heard some recommendations on how to configure VLC to be more responsive, but the fact remains MPC-HC performs better "out-of-the-box" than VLC.

I still keep VLC around for anything MPC-HC has trouble playing, however, as VLC truly does play just about anything if it is playable at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, MPC-HC uses GPU while VLC didn't until this version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm still waiting for an "auto-search subtitle" feature like the one in Media Player Classic.

<comment><AUTHOR> The new extension framework was designed for such features.

Here you go: [http://ale5000.altervista.org/vlc/extensions/subtitles- mod.l...](http://ale5000.altervista.org/vlc/extensions/subtitles-mod.lua)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've used VLC player for a while, for playing both DVDs and downloaded videos. It's a very versatile package.

It does not have the sound bug that causes Windows Media Player(with codec) to make the background loud, and the main track soft.

</comment><comment><USER16> > so far, on Windows, VideoLAN is quite sad to be forced to recommend nVidia® > GPU, until ATI® fixes their drivers on Windows

I noticed that MPC-HC uses much less CPU (using the GPU I assume. Are there any tweaks to get VLC to do the same? Or is this quote above an indication that this just doesn't work well in ATI cards?

BTW, I'm using ATI hardware and I find CPU usage around 10-20% in MPC-HC vs ~50% in VLC. In spite all VLC's other awesome features, The CPU useage and resultant fan noise are a bummer.

I love the skins and plug in feature, btw.

Good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, until ATI fixes its driver, you cannot do much. Or until we found a work-around.

But we are not really Windows developers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You really should use Sparkle for the OS X release. VLC is one of the few apps that doesn't use it and the built in updating mechanism in VLC never works anyway.

<comment><USER18> Yes. I wonder why the built-in update never works. It gave me the message while updating 1.0.5 that it is the latest version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because we want our server to not die... So, first release, then, when calm is back, make the built-in update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't see added support for the Broadcom HD decoder that Asus is shipping in some of their newer model Eee PCs (1005PR). Anyone know if there plans to add this? It would really help out HD decoding on the low-end platforms (esp since the cards aren't integrated, so they can be bought as add-ons as long as your low-end machine has a slot).

<comment><USER20> Not precisely an answer to your question, but it looks like there's a third- party library working on support for the Broadcom Crystal HD, which currently builds as a xine plugin: [http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/archvdr/browser/branches/li...](http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/archvdr/browser/branches/libcrystalhd)

<comment><USER19> I know that the XBMC crew have already integrated support for it. There is a github repo for the drivers too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wondering what the technical problems with the ATI drivers were.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, those are pretty simple. For many reasons (that are debatable, but maybe this isn't the right place?), VLC can decode on the GPU and then gets the data back from the GPU to filter/restream/reencode to finally display it. Even if this isn't the fastest way, there are good reasons for it (I can explain if needed...)

On ATI drivers, the data back path is slow, and you need a special GUID that ATI doesn't want/cannot to communicate. Adobe uses it, we cannot yet. I believe this will be fixed in the future.

<comment><USER22> _(I can explain if needed...)_

I'd personally be very interested in hearing some details about this, if you have a few moments to write something up (or even paste a few links to some mailing list posts or the like, somewhere that I can do some reading).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, yes.

First, remember that VLC is not a media player. It is a framework, like GStreamer, QT or DS. It works in the same way, with modules/plug-ins/objects that are loaded when needed.

For the matter of GPU/DSP decoding, you have two choices: either you do a codec module abstracted and independent from the rest of the modules or you plug a special codec module to a special renderer module (and violates your clean separation, but well...) The second is faster, of course. But...

But, then you cannot control anything: depending on the GPU/DSP vendor, you will have different filters (deinterlacing, noise, gradient...) that you cannot control, you have different color tones, etc... So depending on the GPU/DSP, you will not have the same experience...

Also, you cannot use that method for restreaming and converting.

Then, you need some hardware specific code, which, of course we want to avoid...

And finally, for each 'API' we need a special renderer, and not use the normal ones. Which makes more code to maintain, and VLC's core team is hardly 5 persons.

<comment><USER22> Ouch, it sounds like GPUs are a royal pain to work with. (Also: this little bit of perspective makes what you guys do seem even more awesome). Thanks for the details!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> jbk - Thank you (and the rest of your team members!)

Does anyone have links to who I should talk to to volunteer as an Intel gfx hw tester? Netflix+Silverlight+Win7 is using GPU acceleration for video on my netbook, it would be great to have VLC take advantage of the same.

</comment><comment><USER24> big thank you to the VLC team for keeping this great free video player going!

</comment><comment><USER25> I've wanted this feature for a while: to be able to just drag a subtitles file while VLC is playing a video and have VLC immediately start displaying subtitles from the new file.

It's a great piece of software anyway! Congratulations on the latest release.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly how it works on Windows and Linux interface of VLC.

<comment><USER25> Heh, I suppose this tells you what OS I use. Any plans of bringing that feature over to OS X?

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you try Lunettes?

<comment><USER25> Hey, no I haven't tried Lunettes, but I will try it as soon as I get the opportunity.

Thanks for the tip though, it looks very interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Playbook - <AUTHOR> http://playbook.samaltman.com <comment><USER3> I feel like this needs a "when to give up" section. Like at some point it's obvious right. When is that point. Should you just destroy your entire life and never give up no matter how long since it's been since you've had steady growth? I've seen startups struggle for years with average growth or really slow linear growth where real profitability was years away. Do they just continue? Is that the advice? What about their employees who are being paid less than market value?

</comment><comment><USER4> > _an even bigger problem is that once you have a startup you have to hurry to > come up with an idea, and because it's already an official company the idea > can't be too crazy. You end up with plausible sounding but derivative ideas. > This is the danger of pivots._

A great point, that I haven't seen in too many places. I sometimes feel like we're seeing too many people who "want to have a startup" for the supposed fame and fortune, and not enough who are truly passionate about an idea. Believing in an idea will get you through, not dreams of gold coins.

Sam, I noticed you didn't mention watching cash burn or unit economics. Is that a later section you might add? Too many founders don't realize the importance of that until it's too late (speaking from personal experience)

<comment><USER5> As a counterpoint, the founders of Thumbtack started a startup before they had an idea, picked a very "derivative idea" and still did (and are doing) pretty well. If I had to quantify the motivation of the early team, it was much more about the company being successful than everybody being super passionate about the idea. As long as you can out-execute your competitors and people want your product, it doesn't really matter what your motivation is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Startups are the point in your life when tricks stop working.

Awesome thesis, hidden in the middle of the text. In some ways, this is a great single sentence answer to the question, "What is a startup, really?"

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.amazon.com/Persecution-Art-Writing-Leo- Strauss/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Persecution-Art-Writing-Leo- Strauss/dp/0226777111)

<comment><USER7> Ha, it's amazing to see a Leo Strauss reference in a HN thread! I majored in Political Theory at Michigan State, and the department was full of Straussians. Worlds colliding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > On the other hand, starting a startup is not in fact very risky to your > career—if you're really good at technology, there will be job opportunities > if you fail. Most people are very bad at evaluating risk.

It's true that career risk is low, but opportunity cost could be high. If you're well into your career, taking a few years off to work at a startup that might fail could really be a million dollar tradeoff.

So you really gotta believe in your startup.

(Note: I left my comfortable high paying job earlier this year to start a startup)

<comment><USER9> That is the calculation I used over the course of a few months to switch from being a teacher to going all-in on my office design website.

At the time I was pretty burnt out from teaching, ended up moving to a new city and was doing a few temp jobs to make some extra cash. The risk was low enough at that point that the website was almost a no brainer. I'm pretty confident that had I been in a good spot career-wise at the time, I would likely have either never kept my side project going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish there was a similar level and quality of resources for what I think are called lifestyle businesses. By that, I mean product-based businesses with at most a few million in revenue, a 5ish person team, a solid sustainable market position, and no desire to revolutionize any unicorns.

I know a lot of people attempting this and they mostly seem to be flying under the radar, or at least have nowhere near the cachet of a startup. They are often bootstrapped, frequently for lack of other options.

For those of us who don't want to be in the pressure cooker or are turned off by the hype machine, these businesses are a viable alternative route toward independence and possibly achieving a significant impact. The fact that they have become as attainable as they are is I think also something quite remarkable.

<comment><USER11> The Basecamp (née 37Signals) folks have been beating this drum for quite some time. DHH posted "Reconsider" to their blog today, actually; it's an entertaining read, if nothing else: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3972-reconsider)

Here in Seattle, there's a great community of small software businesses with meaningful profits and impact. We have ties to the broader Seattle startup and technology community, without being a proper subset.

I don't see it as an either-or proposition. Right funding for the right business, as it were.

<comment><USER12> How can I find jobs for small software business like that (especially in Seattle!)? I want to work in a smaller environment that's not necessarily trying to be a "unicorn", but those seem to be the only jobs posted here on HN for "Who's hiring?". On other job boards, I mostly just see larger corporations hiring worker drones. I just want to write good software that solves interesting problems and make enough money to get by!

<comment><USER13> It's really up to you to go out and find them. I suggest looking for local meetups and talking to engineers who are working in those small businesses. Get to know the people in your community running these small businesses.

Most of our hires were introduced through people I know. In a small business this is often the only logical way to hire because you already have some level of trust with the referrer and thus they've acted as the first gateway for a candidate to get through (and they usually can vouch for the candidate's work).

Also, many small businesses are concerned largely with staying alive and making a profit, so that may mean they will be focused on "non-interesting" problems of making the business operate well. Factor this into your decision as to who you want to work for as well.

<comment><USER12> I guess that's the issue- where I'm living right now, there is absolutely _no_ "tech scene". There are no local meetups that don't require me driving 1.5+ hours one way to get to, which I can't manage to do on a regular basis. I'd love to move somewhere where there's more people who are like-minded, but I can't just up and move without a job waiting for me.

The general consensus I'm hearing is that the way you get hired at a smaller company is just through networking, but if there's no network near me to speak of am I just simply out of luck?

And yes, I'm aware that I will have to work on some "non-interesting" problems, but I'm okay with that as long as I feel like my work is being valued by my coworkers and that I'm not just another drone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a really hard time buying a lot of this about how novelty and monopoly are keys to a successful company. If you look at the really successful startups, especially unicorns, almost none of them are actually monopolies or new ideas. The vast, vast majority are old products done right, and almost all of them have very substantial competition. This attitude is, in fact, encompassed in the near footnote-like section entitled "Competition." That section sums it all up: success is determined with obsessively improving the company. Competition isn't what kills, it is failure to keep on improving.

[https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn- companies](https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies)

There is the list of current Unicorns. I can't think of one of them that doesn't have very, very substantial competition or is a genuinely novel product. All of them ventured into highly competitive, well-worn fields and what set them apart was quality of service, ease of use, and responsivity. Very few of them made conceptual leaps in the underlying product - they mostly made leaps in lowering activity energy to use products or solving associated logistical problems.

Sorry Sam, I have to politely disagree with you on this one. Lord knows you are the one with the resume and authority on this, but I am a startup lawyer and work with clients on this stuff all day, so I am not totally unqualified. I do defer to your judgment, obviously, on companies that you want to fund, and your track record more than speaks for itself. However, what I want to know is if there isn't some disconnect between the companies you do fund and the attitude that is expressed in this post. I would love to hear your insights or opinions on whether you feel that I have this wrong, and if you think that the next generation of unicorns are going to be novel monopolies, or that maybe I am misreading the characteristics of current successful startups.

<comment><USER15> Novel does not mean no competition--there's always competition, even for breakthrough technologies. Even the telephone had to compete with telegraphs or snail mail. The novelty comes in the way an existing need is met. From your list, Uber competes against taxis to transport people short distances. Airbnb competes against hotels to provide short term housing to travelers. Dropbox competed against flash drive to transfer data between machines. These companies have a novel approach to enter and thrive in a competitive market.

A monopoly simply has to have significant influence on supply of a good. In the UK that can be as low as a 30% market share. Qualify a market enough and any company can be a monopoly (I'm sure there's some geography where Lyft or good ol taxis represent a monopoly), so it's important to determine the size and importance of a market (a monopoly over food in a small town is still problematic). So while I cannot say these companies are monopolies--we have the Department of Justice for that--many companies on your list would make a compelling case, were they to abuse their market power.

<comment><USER16> You make a fair point, and I also do appreciate the definition used by Sam in his post, which was (the site is now down) about network effects compounding the bigger you get, and creative a positive feedback loop. I buy that definition, sure, and I get your comment. However, what I take issue with is funneling tons of smart minds into a quest for green-field or blue-ocean opportunities. There are tons of huge opportunities in existing businesses. I guess I don't understand how we got from "disruption" to "find a business with no competition."

<comment><USER15> My thoughts on why is pure conjecture but I'll add that there are many such common misunderstandings. Chasing growth is another, which is why I'm very happy for this Startup Playbook. So many people do do not realize growth is STEP TWO AND YOU CANNOT SKIP STEP ONE:

"Your goal as a startup is to make something users love. If you do that, then you have to figure out how to get a lot more users. But this first part is critical—think about the really successful companies of today. They all started with a product that their early users loved so much they told other people about it. If you fail to do this, you will fail. If you deceive yourself and think your users love your product when they don't, you will still fail.

The startup graveyard is littered with people who thought they could skip this step."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (This got published a little early because it got indexed. I'm still going through and fixing some typos and will maybe add a few other things.)

<comment><USER17> Can you please get the designer of this playbook and ycombinator.com to redesign HN too?

<comment><USER18> And Craigslist. And ReadMe.io.

<comment><USER19> facebook just redeisgned craigslist for them...lol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A resource like this is terrific. Would be great to see it in github so you can solicit the occasional outside contribution.

I've always found that even the best teams still need to constantly explore and add new tools in the toolbox in order to execute effectively and achieve success.

(In fact, it's not that even the best teams need to still do this, the best teams actively go out and do this, which likely contributes to them being a high-performing team.)

</comment><comment><USER21> > _Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Erica Carpenter, Brian Chesky, Adam D'Angelo, Drew > Houston, Justin Kan, Matt Krisiloff, Aaron Levie, Gabriel Leydon, Jessica > Livingston, Dustin Moskovitz, David Rusenko and Colleen Taylor for > contributing thoughts to this._

^ this group + @sama... wow. Terrific advice from an amazing list of credible people.

<comment><USER6> To be honest, I don't think I know a single one of them. Who are they and how can I learn more about what they do and how they formulate such great content?

<comment><USER22>
      * Sam Altman – Y Combinator President
      * Paul Buchheit - YC Partner, Gmail founder
      * Erica Carpenter - Y Combinator
      * Brian Chesky - <USER2>
      * Adam D'Angelo – Quora, ex-CTO of FB
      * Drew Houston – Dropbox founder
      * Justin Kan – YC Partner, Twitch, Justin.tv, Socialcam
      * Matt Krisiloff – Y Combinator
      * Aaron Levie – Box founder
      * Gabriel Leydon – Machine Zone founder
      * Jessica Livingston – YC Founder
      * Dustin Moskovitz – Facebook cofounder
      * David Rusenko – Weebly founder
      * Colleen Taylor – Y Combinator

<comment><USER23> "Gmail founder" sounds a little funny to me.

If I am employed as a developer in a company on a new product, am I then a founder of that product? It just seems like the word founder just keeps being used more liberally as time goes on.

<comment><USER24> I think it's appropriate in this case. Paul started Gmail inside of Google as a side project. At first most people were not a supporter, including Marissa Mayer and other peers. He was scratching an itch though and eventually got Larry and Sergey on board which helped the cause and eventually grew into what it is today.

So with that, there are a lot of similarities into what we'd call a founder today. While financially there wasn't a big risk, it was still a product he was passionate about and created from nothing.

<comment><USER25> Not really, he did it inside a big company with a nice cushy salary and lots of hardware supporting him. Absolutely ZERO risk.

That's not a founder.

It's a great product, he did a brilliant thing, but he's not the gmail 'founder'.

<comment><USER23> Exactly. 'Creator' or 'original developer' would be far more accurate language and prestigious enough on it's own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a welcome synthesis of a lot of great info.

It's also a more attractive and credible way to introduce fast-growing technology startups* to the uninitiated than just saying, "oh, just read this bunch of blog posts by this guy called 'pg' who you've never heard of, no, no, trust me, it's reaaally good, he founded YC, which you've also never heard of, but trust me, they're like, the real deal".

*YC-style/SV-type, even if some of the advice is more general, and the definition of 'YC-style' is quickly expanding and loosing meaning.

</comment><comment><USER27> "We once tried an experiment where we funded a bunch of promising founding teams with no ideas in the hopes they would land on a promising idea after we funded them.

All of them failed."

I was under the impression Reddit fell within this category. I recall a PG quote that went something like "we [Y combinator] hate your idea, but we like you [Alexis and Steve]" in reference to reddit's initial YC funding.

I know Reddit isn't considered a smashing success by VC standards (originally sold for roughly 15-20 MM), but I certainly wouldn't call it a failure.

<comment><USER28> He's referring to a YC batch in which founders were specifically offered the option of applying with no idea (that's not what Reddit's founders did).

<comment><USER29> I had assumed they'd all failed, but don't remember seeing any discussion of it from sama. Was there ever a public post (other than this playbook) that announced the failure of that experiment, and any take-aways beyond the obvious?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >It's important that you distort reality for others but not yourself.

I would love to see more content and discussion around this. I understand clearly why it is important to pitch who you will be not who you are when recruiting and raising money but when it comes to day to day, doesn't this contradict what you had said earlier about sharing all of the good and bad with your employees? Replacing your water jugs with Kool-Aid at the office just seems evil to me. I'm not sure if that is really what you are saying or not but it seems synonymous with unicorn culture. I see a lot of positives to creating a culture masked with illusion, but in my head, all of the value seems short-term.

<comment><USER31> _Replacing your water jugs with Kool-Aid at the office just seems evil to me._

Founder/VC/moneyhat friendly isn't always employee friendly. Employees exist to be exploited so the founders and VCs become extremely wealthy.

The best way to drive productivity is to convince your employees there's a vague "external enemy" they've gotta beat. Turn it into mental cult gymnastics. Bind their self worth to the success of the company. Grow at all costs.

There are circles of belief though. You should always know the truth yourself (founder), then you decide which lies to tell the board, then which lies to tell your management, then which lies to tell your employees, then which lies to tell the media/public/world. (where "lies" also equals "putting a spin on the truth" or selectively withholding information (hiding faults in the hopes of improving them before failing completely, etc).)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am very much liking the CSS animations.

</comment><comment><USER33> """ Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. """

Any mirrors?

<comment><USER34> here is a link to the google cache.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:d0Df- gF...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:d0Df- gFG1KoJ:playbook.samaltman.com/+&cd=17&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Okay, I've been researching and reaching out to various entities for, well, going on a couple years now regarding my "start-up" concept of a company that creates some inventions, brings to market, and licenses technology as another revenue stream. Yes, it's not a software-oriented business, but it's a viable entity with multiple prospects. Thus, the following line doesn't really ring true to me:

> _One important counterintuitive reason for this is that it's easier to do > something new and hard than something derivative and easy. People will want > to help you and join you if it's the former; they will not if it's the > latter._

In every single instance where I actually get a response, there's a consistent chorus of "this doesn't fit the model of what we support" and, basically, I chalk it up to an investment environment that actually, truly targets the derivative and easy moreso than the unique and difficult.

That's why I'm still slogging along in the self-directed patent process. Nobody is interested in helping (beyond some constructive comments I've received here from community members - thank you!), and certainly not in contributing financial backing. It is what it is...but that claim? I don't really buy it.

<comment><USER36> I think the point is that if the problem is interesting you can get people onboard helping you as ex. tech founders.

But if your problem is trivial (build a en ecommerce website) then they want you to pay them hard cash.

I agree though that some problems might be hard to articulate and so you end up with having a problem getting people to believe in your project.

I personally was trying to convince developers to join me on a venture I wanted to do and had no luck. Then I decided to just pay someone to do a small fraction of what I wanted to do and which I knew I could pay for and now that developer I paid to do my first project is now partnering with me in my next project.

Sometimes you have to look at your idea and see if you can create a much smaller product from what you want so you can get started on someting at least. Then if it's successful you will have people wanting to join you.

<comment><USER35> Thanks for your response and reasoning as to the circumstance, I follow what you're pointing out. Your last line, about getting started, is the reality I've decided to deal with - enough with dreaming of getting a jump start from anybody else. A co-worker of mine obtained a device patent and has been very encouraging that I pursue the same route - if the idea is to be as successful as intuition and market review indicate, then might as well reap all the rewards first and foremost.

I guess I'm just rather frustrated at the "start up culture" of claiming to invest in new things, in risk-to-reward principles, while in practice it's a lot more akin to the RIAA big-label approach of "we'll give you money only because we know you'll make us more money in this proven areana of pop/country/rap/etc" in a lot of respects.

<comment><USER36> You are welcome.

I have written a little about it here [https://medium.com/black-n-white/the- problem-with-problems-4...](https://medium.com/black-n-white/the-problem-with- problems-47ee63bb3511)

Perhaps that can provide you with a perspective to think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> @sama have you thought about running a kickstarter to publish a hard copy version?

</comment><comment><USER38> Seems like a lot of the pushback on this is about whether in releasing this playbook @sama and YC are (i) making a value judgment on unicorn startups vs other businesses, and (ii) serving their own agenda. Personally I don't understand either of these positions.

On (i) it's like attacking someone for releasing a book of muffin recipes by saying "you think muffins are the best food in the world! I only bake cookies -- do you think you're better than me?!". In fact they just like muffins, they have a lot of experience in baking muffins, and instead of keeping their recipes secret they want to help other people bake the best muffins in the world.

On (ii), again my personal reaction, I don't care if it's self-serving. It also happens to be very helpful to me.

Small businesses, large businesses, "lifestyle" businesses, unicorns -- they all take a lot of effort, not to speak of other life commitments. In fact there is a maximum amount of time they can take (24 hours minus a few hours for sleep per day) and depending on your personality you will likely dedicate more or less of this time regardless of the scale of the venture.

I don't think whether it's a $10m business or $100m business or more is a choice based on personal preference, it's based on the nature of the idea you find yourself compelled to pursue.

For example, I used to be an antitrust lawyer. I was often in the office until 5am, and that was as an employee. I worked HARD. I thought I wanted to work less so I quit my job to start a small business. But it turns out that the idea that I have been excited about for the last few years is not a small business, it could never be one even if I wanted it to be. It's the kind of idea that will either be huge or it will be nothing. When you are standing on the brink of that kind of endeavour a few helpful words, a playbook if you will, from someone who knows how it's done can be very helpful indeed.

</comment><comment><USER39> Entrepreneurs need to be very careful when developing self-belief in their idea. As Sam points out, the people telling you that you are crazy "may be right." I've started angel investing, and it really pains me to see people who have quit their job and devoted years of their life to a business that (in my opinion) has no chance of succeeding. Yes, I may well be wrong about some of them, but the entrepreneur needs to be able to articulate why they think everyone else is wrong.

Self-belief in a crazy idea is not enough. Obviously Sam wouldn't disagree with this sentiment, but many entrepreneurs seem to omit the step of proving to themselves that their idea is not crazy, or they suffer from confirmation bias.

</comment><comment><USER40> "One important counterintuitive reason for this is that it's easier to do something new and hard than something derivative and easy. People will want to help you and join you if it's the former; they will not if it's the latter." So Google didn't invent the Internet Search it was a derivative but not easy. Facebook didn't invent the SocialNetwork and actually made it easier than e.g. MySpace. Amazon was not the first online retailer but made it better, more reliable. WhatsApp? we knew how to send textmessages for a while but well they made it more convient. So a good idea must not be something unique new but something which makes the product better than the rest.

</comment><comment><USER41> Basically they're saying: "To succeed you need to have an awesome idea that hasn't been done before. You need a great team and build a great product your users will love".

Wow, thanks for the advice, why didn't I think of that.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really like the illustrations. Any idea what tools were used for the animations?

Thanks!

<comment><USER22> I did them by hand with CSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wow, this is fantastic! The little animations give it a playful vibe too.

</comment><comment><USER44> From the section on competition: "But 99% of startups die from suicide, not murder."

and more precisely, from David Packard: "More organizations die of indigestion than starvation."

<comment><USER45> Like Packard's own company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _You want to start with something very simple—as little surface area as > possible—and launch it sooner than you'd think_

Honest question: does this model apply when your product can't at any point be, for lack of a better word, half-baked?

Say you're making a security product or working on control code for rocket thrusters.

<comment><USER47> Sure!

Small and simple doesn't have to mean janky and shitty. You reduce scope, not reduce quality.

To carry on with your two examples, I'll make up a security product and a product related to control code for rocket thrusters.

For the security product, let's do a "secure storage on Dropbox" product. Version 1, you do as much as you can with with existing libraries and pieces. Use OpenSSL to handle the crypto bits. The UI has two options: the passphrase for the encrypted storage, and the path to the encrypted directory (and a system tray icon).

Right away, I can think of all kinds of features that would be cool to add to this product, but DON'T build them out for V1. Eventually, you can add PKI so that you can have different keys on different devices and selectively revoke them. And build out the mobile app so that you can access your encrypted stuff on the go. And bake in crypto libraries so that you're not just calling out to openssl.exe. Etc etc. That's V2, V3, V4...

For rocket thruster control code... You're going to need a way to test it. Start with a thruster simulator. You're going to probably need a FEA model and a numeric solver. It's not going to be "simple" as in "I banged it out in a week", but it's way less scope than building and testing thruster control code. Once you've got the simulator built out and working reliably, start selling the simulator while you build out your own control code.

Hell, if you want to keep it super simple, start out by only simulating solid fuel model rocket engines. You can use that to bootstrap the verification process (compare simulation results against measured results for a couple bucks/launch)

<comment><USER46> Thanks, good thoughts!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "If the idea does not really excite at least some people the first time they hear it, that's bad."

Reconsider([https://medium.com/@dhh/reconsider-41adf356857f](https://medium.com/@dhh/reconsider-41adf356857f))

</comment><comment><USER49> This has been the single most useful article Ive read all year. There is much to be said about setting up an unknowing amount of companies with the lessons needed to essentially, NOT MESS THIS UP. Thanks for this

StepUp, Stand Out _E L E V /A\ T E D_

</comment><comment><USER50> "There may be a part II on how to scale a startup later" \- I would love a part II

</comment><comment><USER51> Has anyone been able to get a letter of intent with just an idea? Is that even possible?

<comment><USER52> Yes.

<comment><USER51> would you like to share your story of how you did it?

<comment><USER52> There's no real "how you do it" other than having friends with money. I've seen LOIs with an idea range anywhere from $10k to $1M.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Word Occurrences Frequency Rank

you 196 4.2% 1

your 74 1.6% 2

company 60 1.3% 3

it's 59 1.3% 3

great 56 1.2% 4

product 52 1.1% 5

people 51 1.1% 5

get 44 0.9% 6

founders 42 0.9% 6

good 40 0.9% 6

</comment><comment><USER54> My impression is that anything related to YCombinator gets huge upvote bias.

</comment><comment><USER55> @Greg I can see the Rick and Morty influence on some of the art ;) ;)

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't suppose I could make a small request - could we have a print stylesheet that does page breaks on the headers? I'd love to be able to print it out and go through it :)

</comment><comment><USER57> Well this looks quite nice. Bookmarked for later. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER58> Very detailed and good information to have. Thank you Sama.

</comment><comment><USER59> "Most really big companies start with something fundamentally new" urr that's not even remotely true. Stopped reading at this point.

</comment><comment><USER60> Anyone knows what software Sam is using for his blog?

<comment><USER22> For the startup playbook, I just built it with static HTML (glued together with gulp).

(For his actual blog, he uses Posthaven: [https://posthaven.com/](https://posthaven.com/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Great stuff. Also love the UI. Thank you, Sama!

</comment><comment><USER62> Not sure if it's right to post this. Small typo in Making Money section:

... if your product if your product is easy to sell.

Should be

... if your product is easy to sell.

</comment><comment><USER63> Peter Thiel's 'Zero to One' should be what anyone looking for more of this kind of reading should look into.

</comment><comment><USER64> Wow. Sounds grandiose but this is an epic piece of writing by one of the smartest guys in the field.

Required reading.

</comment><comment><USER65> So is this like an online "textbook" for how to do startups or something?

</comment><comment><USER66> If this is something that is expected to be around for awhile I recommend talking to an editor. Friends are good to check for overall content and typos, but they are too familiar with the subject to check how well you convey something and too nice to really tear through the text objectively.

<comment><USER19> he commented that it was released early.

<comment><USER66> He said that he would fix typos and add some stuff, not anything that will make the text itself necessarily better. His writing just isn't that good for something that will be handed out to a lot of people and were there a very real purpose of them understanding it. But as most thing coming out of YC I guess it's more marketing material for the people who buy into a lot of the SV stuff. Maybe he should talk less about "things" and more about ethics, seems like that is something YC companies have become known to fail at recently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Nice essay. IMHO the contents are (1) Common, good advice. (2) Good data from Sam's excellent experience. (3) Some not so good advice and attitudes.

Scope:

The essay seems aimed mostly at current Silicon Valley (SV) _style_ , mostly consumer, information technology startups. Okay, but that's not all of business or even all of startups. Yes, YC is pursuing much more, e.g., some shoe company in Pakistan, still, the essay is _SV style_ and there, mostly Web and mobile. Fine with me, because that's what I'm doing, be we should understand this point about _scope_. And, as below, we should understand this scope and style because IMHO it's time for SV style of consumer Internet to borrow from some of the rest of technology and business.

Broad Point:

As we all can see, all heard from Mark Andreessen, etc., and see from Sam,

" ... investors' returns are dominated by the big successes, ... "

The Exceptional:

So, from this Broad Point, the goal is something _exceptional_. From that, we have to suspect that we won't always be following the common and ordinary, some extensive experience and observations from the past, or even "big successes" from the past, and, instead, should be willing to consider some _exceptions_ in order to be _exceptional_.

Users' Love:

> "Your goal as a startup is to make something users love."

Yup.

Now, can we, please, have some more guidance on just how the heck to do that? And, please, don't ask me to draw from Snapchat or Homejoy. And I'm concerned about

[http://koltai.co/notebook/the-risky-business-of- entrepreneur...](http://koltai.co/notebook/the-risky-business-of- entrepreneurship-y-combinators-stellar-success-rate-shows-1-in-200-win)

with:

"However, these statistics also reveal a grimmer reality: 93 percent of the 511 companies accepted by Y-Combinator have failed. Even more alarming, only 3 to 5 percent of the companies that apply to Y-Combinator are even accepted, meaning that only one in every 200 companies that applies to Y.C. eventually succeeds."

And, I'm concerned about the low ROI of venture capital as in

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital- returns.html#disqus_thread)

and

[http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional- limit...](http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional-limited- partners-must-accept-blame-for-poor-longterm-returns-from-venture-capital- says-new-kauffman-report)

Instead, for history with some good examples, there have been many amazing projects, some astoundingly innovative, that worked the first time with high probability, e.g., for a picture:

[http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...](http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_blackbird_leaking_fuel_cell19.jpg)

IMHO, here is a better approach:

(1) Find a problem that huge number of potential users/customers believe or can come to believe is really important to have solved. E.g., want, say, 1+ billion people with Internet access, if only from a smartphone.

(2) Find a solution that is much better than anything else and difficult to duplicate or equal.

(3) Make sure that for the target customers right away or soon the solution will be seen as a _must have_ and not just a _nice to have_. Want no doubts here; do not want to have to depend on gossip and fads from notoriously flighty teenage girls. One of the best examples would be a single pill, safe, effective, cheap, to cure any cancer.

(4) Deliver the product, easy to use at a very attractive price.

(5) Make sure the revenue covers all expenses and yields a fantastic margin, e.g., pre-tax margin 90%.

(6) For that solution, do some good original research with powerful, valuable results in the STEM fields.

(7) Offer the solution as a Web site, i.e., exploit software, Moore's law, and the Internet.

(8) Be a solo founder until at least $10 million a year in after tax earnings.

Difficulty:

> "A word of warning about choosing to start a startup: It sucks! One of the > most consistent pieces of feedback we get from YC founders is it's harder > than they could have ever imagined, because they didn't have a framework for > the sort of work and intensity a startup entails."

There's something wrong here: All across the US, east to west, north to south, cross roads to the largest cities, millions of sole proprietors do startups and are successful enough to buy houses, support families, and get the children through college.

All the larger bodies of water in and around the US have boats and yachts, and nearly all the owners are just such entrepreneurs. Maybe they own 10 fast food restaurants, are big in asphalt paving, are a manufacturer's representative for some great lines, run five new car dealerships, own and manage 2000 units of rental property, have a private label line of industrial floor cleaning supplies in a mid-size Midwestern state, did a rollup of dry cleaning stores, are the main beer distributor for half of a state, are a leader in design and construction of custom tanks on truck frames for hauling liquids, etc.

But, a startup that exploits information technology, software, Moore's law, and the Internet should have some advantages and generally be less difficult.

Idea:

> "Remember that at least a thousand people have every great idea."

Maybe true with SV style, but more generally, no, and a thousand times no.

Instead, since so many startups fail, we want some advantages and definitely can get a lot of advantage from having a genuinely new idea. People who wrote a Ph.D. dissertation that was supposed to be "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" and "new, correct, and significant" will quickly appreciate the importance of a unique idea and a lot about how to construct such. Here SV style is seriously lacking and, as above, needs to borrow from outside.

As in Sam's

> "Remember that at least a thousand people have every great idea."

I believe that SV style nearly trivializes the _idea_ and, to raise the success rate, very much needs to go much deeper into the idea and associated considerations of user need, market size, meeting the user need, and new, proprietary technology to meet the user need especially well with a product difficult to duplicate or equal, and protected intellectual property that supplies a barrier to entry. In some places such unique intellectual property is taken very seriously, with laws, contracts, national security classification, etc. For higher success rates, SV style needs to do better with such intellectual property.

Several good examples of a such intellectual property and its power are in the picture

[http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...](http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_blackbird_leaking_fuel_cell19.jpg)

This is another case of where SV style needs to borrow from outside.

Team:

Once again, over again, one more time, yet again, we come to the issue of _team_. Again we learn that it's tough to get a good co-founder; co-founder disputes are a major cause of startup failure; it's tough to hire good staff; it's difficult to keep the staff well involved; being a good leader and manager and learning to do so is a lot of work, and BoD members rarely know much about the details of the business, likely much less if some new, unique, powerful, valuable crucial, core technology is key to the business.

So, with all those clear dangers to the startup, we begin to conclude: Be a solo founder, get to earnings ASAP, grow organically, well into very good profitability hire no one, and from the start carefully plan never but never to accept equity funding or report to a BoD. Or, follow the example of Markus Frind and his romantic match making Web site Plenty of Fish, initially, just one guy, two old Dell servers, ads just from Google, $10 million a year in revenue, and recently sold for $575 million in cash.

Understand the Users:

> "... it's critical you understand your users ..."

Right. And for making, say, really nice seat cushions for the driver's seats of Rolls Dropheads with owners in the Chablis and Brie set in the Hamptons, sure.

But in consumer Internet, for a big success, there will millions, maybe billions of users, and about all that can be said about those users is that they are a not very special cross section of humanity. So, really just have to understand the pair of the product and the _ordinary man on the street_.

</comment><comment><USER68> The website is looking cool. Anyone know which CMS Sam used? Guess?

</comment><comment><USER69> Awesome article. Great clear and concise points!!!

</comment><comment><USER70> Love it. What is missing is some information about technicalities e.g. Want to rise money in US? You probably need a Delaware S-corp (Github repo maybe better for it)

<comment><USER71> (C-corp, not S-corp! [https://www.quora.com/Should-a-tech-startup-incorporate- as-a...](https://www.quora.com/Should-a-tech-startup-incorporate-as-an-LLC-a- C-Corp-or-an-S-Corp-If-so-why))

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> This is great! Why no anchor tags? :(

<comment><USER22> There are; they just aren't linked.

[http://playbook.samaltman.com/#money](http://playbook.samaltman.com/#money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Invaluable advise..

</comment><comment><USER74> Great stuff, thanks

</comment><comment><USER75> That's not a startup playbook. That's an app playbook.

</comment><comment><USER76> A lot of nonsense fluff in this article.

</comment><comment><USER77> Oh darn... Bandwidth exceeded.

</comment><comment><USER78> what about YC Research?

</comment><comment><USER79> Why is the title in orange? Color does not convey logical information when used in text.

</comment><comment><USER80> Maybe you all can help me, but I've just agreed to do a Startup Weekend. I did an "Ask HN" ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10515984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10515984)).

Any ideas, including what I've asked?</comment>


Where can I buy a giant white board in the South Bay? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know where I can purchase some giant whiteboards that are used in startup offices/schools?  I've been to a few stores but no one seems to carry them in stock (only online). <comment><USER2> I'm not sure about a _real_ whiteboard, but if you can settle for something that suffices as a cheap alternative, go to like Lowes or Home Depot and pick up a 4x8 sheet of the white shower-wall stuff. Dry erase marker ink comes off of that pretty easy, as long as you don't let it dry in place for an eternity. And even then, some Windex will clean it up OK.

You could also look into a bucket of the "Whiteboard Paint"[1] that lets you turn any wall (that you can paint) into a Whiteboard. (Or, I suppose you could slap a coat of this stuff onto a sheet of plywood or something, if you can't paint an entire wall).

[1]: <http://www.rustoleum.com/cbgproduct.asp?pid=128>

<comment><USER3> Most whiteboards are just the stuff you get from Home Depot (called melanine) with a frame, unless you get the super expensive ones that are made of metal or glass. I've used a 4'x8' one from Home Depot for years and it only cost me $12. Works awesome, haven't had any issues or ghosting

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Craigslist! I got a huge 10x4 ft one for $80 for our office. Probably would have costed over 300 new. The struggle was bringing it back.

Buying a new one is extremely expensive!

Here is a good one: <http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/for/3073429940.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> I visited an office today where they had a continuous strip of whiteboard on all walls. It was actually painted on the wall.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have a couple Whiteyboards in my apartment:

<http://whiteyboard.com>

Removable sticker whiteboards that come rolled like a poster. They work well, and I think that they look natural because they take the texture of the wall. Fairly priced relative to whiteboards.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used idea paint to create whiteboard walls:

www.ideapaint.com

<comment><USER8> This is so awesome

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We just bought some stick-on-the-wall whiteboard stuff from www.whiteyboard.com and it is great. Also cheap.</comment>


Belgian child prodigy drops out of university aged 9 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50734000 <comment><USER2> That doesn't sound like he dropped out. This sounds like his parents pulled him out once they discovered that would not get a Guinness record by proxy. What utter pillocks.

</comment><comment><USER3> If there was no foul play - good. Who cares about breaking a stupid record? That kid won't be able to break records all his life, so good on him dealing with a "failed" milestone now. We have way too many prodigies milked for their parents' ego.

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess if you can't get a degree before rhe age of 10, it's better to have no degree at all?

</comment><comment><USER5> The amount of pressure that kid would have been subjected to finish university in 10 months would have been crazy. I don't understand what these loony parents want to accomplish by doing all this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wonder how this kid will feel about his parents in 20-30 years?</comment>


Technical details of a Pixel remote exploit chain - <AUTHOR> https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01/android-security-ecosystem-investments.html <comment><AUTHOR> the details of the exploit are 5 paragraphs down from the beginning of the article...</comment>