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5,700 | story | bhb | 2007-03-22T15:50:03 | What's the lowest offer you'd take? | null | 21 | null | 5,700 | 52 | [
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5,701 | comment | bhb | 2007-03-22T15:51:22 | null | We're working hard on finishing up our YC application, and we're having a lot of problems with this one:<p>"If one wanted to buy you three months in (August 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take?"<p>First of all, what if we're not particularly interested in selling the company that fast? Should we just put some ridiculously high number that no one would actually pay?<p>Also, the numbers would seem to vary significantly depending on the details of the acquisition. Are we getting jobs at the purchasing company with good salaries, stock, and creative freedom? Or are we getting some lump sum? Should we put different numbers for different situations?<p>But assuming we knew we wanted to sell and knew some specifics of the deal, it's still hard for me to come up with hard numbers. Should I base it on how much money we think the product will make? Or perhaps how much money we want to have in the bank to fund future startups? Or on the estimated value of our assets after three months?<p>How are you approaching this question? What factors are you considering? Any help is appreciated. | null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,702 | story | mattculbreth | 2007-03-22T15:56:31 | Best Buy scores exclusive deal for Apple TV | null | http://news.com.com/2061-10793_3-6169447.html | 2 | null | 5,702 | 0 | null | null | null |
5,703 | comment | notabel | 2007-03-22T16:02:39 | null | I think that question, like the question about stock, is largely to make you think about the problem, and see how you react to it. Obviously, it's not possible to produce a number with any real meaning; just discuss potentialities, grand strategy, basically the conceptual framework you'd use for producing that number.<p>NB: As usual, this is me, guessing. Only pg knows for sure. :) | null | null | 5,701 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,704 | comment | bhb | 2007-03-22T16:03:52 | null | Some of these have been mentioned, but these stand out for me<p><i>Programming:</i><p>Getting Real<p>The Pragmatic Programmer<p>Hackers and Painters<p><i>Business:</i><p>Good to Great<p>Start Your Own Business (I knew basically nothing about
small business before I started, and it's a good intro)<p>Crossing the Chasm (good so far, haven't finished)<p><i>Technology/Culture:</i><p>The Long Tail<p>The World is Flat<p><i>Productivity/People:</i><p>Getting Things Done<p>Getting to Yes<p>How to Win Friends and Influence People | null | null | 5,572 | 5,572 | null | null | null | null |
5,705 | comment | notabel | 2007-03-22T16:07:40 | null | I agree with you; Tumblr seems to fill a niche somewhere between a public del.icio.us feed and a blog. It lets you show people things in a genuinely unified manner (unlike del.icio.us, which is links, only links, nothing but links), without obligating you to go into commentary. It's kind of like a multicast, pull version of emailing something nifty to a friend. I think there's definitely a market for that. | null | null | 5,601 | 5,487 | null | null | null | null |
5,706 | comment | bhb | 2007-03-22T16:11:09 | null | "The Long Tail" is definitely worth reading, although I sort of felt it was a topic that only deserved a long essay expanded into an entire book. Then again, I felt the same way about "The Tipping Point" - interesting idea and points, but it probably could have made just as big an impact in a book half the size. | null | null | 5,574 | 5,572 | null | null | null | null |
5,707 | story | techcore | 2007-03-22T16:16:27 | Big guide to getting your questions answered online | null | http://franticindustries.com/blog/2007/03/21/big-guide-to-getting-your-questions-answered-online/ | 1 | null | 5,707 | 0 | null | null | null |
5,708 | comment | sethjohn | 2007-03-22T16:19:10 | null | A good way to start might be the rule of thumb that startup investors typically want a 10x return on their money (for companies that succeed). If YC invests $20K in your company in return for 6% of the company, and the company sells for 3.3 million, they get 200K.<p>Our three founders came up with a number in our own heads, then we agreed on something in the middle...which turned out to be pretty close to 3 million.<p>As to the question of whether to sell so soon, my personal feeling is that selling soon in a case like this would be a fantastic deal. Each founder would walk away with $1M, and the experience of being a successful entrepeneur. Next, take 100K and throw a tremendous party, take another 100K on go on a ridiculous vacation...then get back to work with the $800K you have left over and start up your next company! | null | null | 5,701 | 5,700 | null | [
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] | null | null |
5,709 | story | jadams | 2007-03-22T16:24:44 | The Business of Software: Real Advice From Real Business Owners | null | http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz | 1 | null | 5,709 | 0 | null | null | null |
5,710 | comment | jadams | 2007-03-22T16:29:28 | null | You're using the word "incorporate" incorrectly, which was my original point. To incorporate means to start a corporation. Therefore, registering a sole-proprietorship is, by definition, not incorporation. <p>The more general term is "register", which applies to the three forms of business: sole-proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations.<p>What you're thinking of is a business name registration. If you do business as your exact name, you don't need to register a name. If you make more than, $30k (I think), then you <i>do</i> need to register for a GST number. | null | null | 4,737 | 4,304 | null | null | null | null |
5,711 | comment | Alex3917 | 2007-03-22T16:37:47 | null | A good product != a good company.<p>All the rest are about good companies, whereas 17 is about good products. That's why it doesn't fit the pattern.<p>We could make a whole separate list of schemas for creating good products too. But, as the grandparent observed, what's important isn't just knowing what the schema is but also knowing when it does and does not apply. | null | null | 5,619 | 5,529 | null | null | null | null |
5,712 | comment | jadams | 2007-03-22T16:38:24 | null | Er. I recommend not immediately pissing away $200K, but that's just me. If you're in your early 20's, a $200K investment could easily be $1M by your thirties.<p>Taking a $1M lump-sum means never having to work again. That's not to say you won't work again, or won't be productive again. But I'd feel really stupid if at some later date I <i>had</i> to take a job, just because I pissed away my capital. | null | null | 5,708 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,713 | comment | jamongkad | 2007-03-22T16:42:57 | null | I think you're onto something here. What I truly believe is to make something customers want. A sin that I fall in at times is making something customers don't want and by and large letting supply get ahead of demand. Another thing I believe is that if your product is going to do something then it might as well make life easier for the regular Joe instead of the computer nerd. Why? well in my opinion the regular Joe is more likely to belong to a larger market segment. | null | null | 5,624 | 5,529 | null | null | null | null |
5,714 | comment | zkinion | 2007-03-22T16:46:02 | null | Looks great. I can't wait.
| null | null | 5,683 | 5,683 | null | null | null | null |
5,715 | comment | nostrademons | 2007-03-22T16:47:00 | null | Cal addresses that by arranging his book in roughly the order that you should think about things. He recommends that you think about:<p>1. Version control<p>2. Issue tracking<p>3. One-click deploy<p>4. Internationalization<p>5. Security<p>before you start building your application, then you build and release it, then (and only then) start thinking about:<p>6. Email<p>7. Web services<p>8. Scalability<p>9. Statistics & monitoring<p>10. APIs<p>This mostly squares with my experiences (both with my own startup - currently on step 3, with 4, 5 and a launch-ready app already done - and working for others). The only changes I'd make are:<p>1. Move statistics and monitoring up the priority list, before launch. You want that data available to drive feature implementation.<p>2. I'm of two minds on internationalization. I think that most apps can wait until they're popular before they need to internationalize. However, i18n is really difficult to do later, after you've already built an app. I watched LiveJournal go through the process, and it wasn't pretty. So even though you don't need it, you may want to do it upfront because it'll be much harder later. | null | null | 5,590 | 5,572 | null | [
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] | null | null |
5,716 | story | mattculbreth | 2007-03-22T16:47:08 | Microsoft VC Summit | null | http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/03/microsoft_vc_su.html | 2 | null | 5,716 | 2 | [
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5,717 | comment | zkinion | 2007-03-22T16:51:33 | null | Why do you have to take an offer at all? It normally takes anywhere from 1-2 years to make a site successful enough to justify selling for a gargantuan amount. In 3 months, how much growth can you get to show enough promise of future growth/monetization? | null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,718 | comment | Alex3917 | 2007-03-22T16:51:55 | null | To valuate your company after three months you have to take two things into account:<p>A) How much value will you have created be the end of three months?<p>B) How much value will you still be able to create?<p>If you only have enough talent and ideas to last you for three months, you don't get funded. And if you think you'll have nothing done by the end of three months (but will still have talent and ideas), you also don't get funded.<p>And if you're able to create something of great value after three months but you'll still have lots of value left to add, then just unask the question because the answer is irrelevant. | null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,719 | comment | brett | 2007-03-22T16:54:20 | null | revealed or just compiled from existing sources? | null | null | 5,670 | 5,670 | null | null | null | null |
5,720 | comment | wensing | 2007-03-22T16:55:24 | null | I see the biggest risks for our little startup are "Marginal Niche" and "Too Little Funding". I don't know that I'm really convinced that we suffer from the first--in fact, I consider being vertical as a virtue and don't believe we've crossed the line (although we could), and re: not enough money--well, we're working on it. :-)<p>I'm not convinced that living in the Bay Area (or a similar hotbed) is essential. However, I do agree with what I believe is the underlying premise--that living in an area of concentrated geekdom will expose you to other geeks in a good way. But that can occur in college, or at a great company, and many of those exist outside of the Bay Area, albeit with much less frequency . . . but to say that you couldn't find a great hacker in Chicago or New York or Houston if you hung out at the right schools and businesses is a little strong. Then again, if it's a numbers game, then by all means go to San Fran. But in some sense it reminds me of how many people hang out in Palm Beach hoping to fall in love with someone that just happens to be a millionaire. My suspicion is that geek cliques do form, and they often form in college. That to me is the bigger point than saying 'if you want to start a startup, you should put a flower in your hair and . . .'.
| null | null | 5,529 | 5,529 | null | [
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5,721 | story | brett | 2007-03-22T17:00:50 | Overtime and Startups | null | http://jroller.com/page/cardsharp?entry=overtime_and_startups | 5 | null | 5,721 | 2 | [
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5,722 | comment | far33d | 2007-03-22T17:04:28 | null | myname: You are correct. To get a "studio-quality" recording, you'll need lots of expensive equipment. <p>But you've obviously missed the idea: the gap between what you can make with mediocre equipment and top-notch equipment is closing fast. In the old days, you needed good mics because analog equipment needed high quality input. With digital processing and recording, you can get close with a mic that costs $200 (which, if you had a good marketplace for borrowing/sharing equipment, you might only pay $5 for the weekend).
| null | null | 5,686 | 5,486 | null | [
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5,723 | comment | Harj | 2007-03-22T17:07:03 | null | just my opinion but i'd approach this question more from the angle, what is the $X I need to have financial freedom. do the math based on the % of the company you own to work out how much you'd need to sell the company for to make that amount. $X is going to vary for everyone. | null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,724 | comment | zach | 2007-03-22T17:07:27 | null | Wow, awesome. Great lineup. | null | null | 5,683 | 5,683 | null | null | null | null |
5,725 | comment | nostrademons | 2007-03-22T17:07:32 | null | My list, categorized:<p><i>Business & Management</i><p>1. Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution by Clayton Christensen<p>2. Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins. Built to Last is more applicable for startups.<p>3. Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Anyone who has to manage a team of programmers and hasn't read this will <i>fail</i> utterly, unless they've already failed before (or been on a failing team). There's a lot that's counterintuitive about software project management.<p>4. Peter Drucker's work. Kinda long and repetitive, but some good insights.<p><i>Marketing</i><p>1. All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. I like this better than Purple Cow, Guerilla Marketer's Handbook, and The Big Red Fez. Most of those have fairly obvious stuff.<p>2. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell<p>3. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore<p><i>Technical</i><p>1. Building Scalable Websites by Cal Henderson<p>2. High Performance MySQL by Jeremy Zawodny<p>3. Pragmatic Programmer by...well, it's mentioned elsewhere here.<p>There are lots of other technical books I like, but most of them aren't directly relevant to the startup I'm building | null | null | 5,572 | 5,572 | null | null | null | null |
5,726 | comment | domp | 2007-03-22T17:11:33 | null | Yeah I'm with far33d. To make a "great album" doesn't take that much money. I bet only a small percentage of people could tell the difference between a good basement recording and a real nice studio. | null | null | 5,722 | 5,486 | null | null | null | null |
5,727 | comment | sethjohn | 2007-03-22T17:13:16 | null | That comment was intended to be read somewhat tongue in cheek, but for the sake of argument:<p>1) What's the point of having money if you aren't going to spend it and have fun? I suppose you could throw a smaller party and write a big check to the Google Philanthropy...but either way money is meant to be used.<p>2) If you actually had the skills and personality to turn $20K from YC into $3M in three months...you've clearly got entrepeneurism in the blood and shouldn't ever have trouble finding a lucrative job that you enjoy. | null | null | 5,712 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,728 | comment | domp | 2007-03-22T17:13:43 | null | Thanks JMiao. Yeah I was thrown off with his comment too. I guess he was on my side by trying to prove that things cost a lot of money? Although that wasn't my side because if I had a home studio I would never spend 3 grand on a microphone. | null | null | 5,637 | 5,486 | null | null | null | null |
5,729 | comment | far33d | 2007-03-22T17:21:04 | null | All the hackers I went to college with moved to san francisco. .. | null | null | 5,720 | 5,529 | null | [
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5,730 | comment | zkinion | 2007-03-22T17:24:50 | null | Just like huge mainframes are dwindling, the same trend can follow across other types of hardware. | null | null | 5,684 | 5,684 | null | null | null | null |
5,731 | comment | null | 2007-03-22T17:30:15 | null | null | null | null | 5,421 | 5,356 | null | null | true | null |
5,732 | comment | sethjohn | 2007-03-22T17:31:15 | null | Perhaps the question is meant to be read as sort of a Zen Koan.<p>You are asked to present a rational analysis of a situation that, if you think rationally about it, cannot occur! | null | null | 5,718 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,733 | comment | prakster | 2007-03-22T17:34:14 | null | In Nov 2006, Seth Godin addressed the concept behind this issue quite elegantly (I am paraphrasing the relevant points below; the direct link is at the end of this post):<p> --Don't do a deal where each side gets a fixed percentage. A 50/50 split of a company invented in a bar is always a bad idea. Even paying someone 5% for some sort of contribution can come back to haunt you. INSTEAD, BUILD THE DEAL AROUND A SHIFTING PERCENTAGE BASED ON CONTRIBUTIONS OVER TIME.<p> --Don't assume that the money you start with is going to be enough. Let's say you and a buddy each put in $5k and each take half the business. Then what? What happens when the money runs out and only one of you is willing to put in the next block of capital?<p> --Do a deal with someone you trust, but don't do a deal with a friend. You'll likely end up with neither a partner nor a friend in the end.<p><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/11/dont_make_a_bad.html">http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/11/dont_make_a_bad.html</a>
| null | null | 5,666 | 5,666 | null | null | null | null |
5,734 | comment | Alex3917 | 2007-03-22T17:42:27 | null | Alex3917 threw his shoe at sethjohn, and sethjohn was then enlightened. | null | null | 5,732 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,735 | comment | far33d | 2007-03-22T17:43:10 | null | Those poor veterans. They're going to have to open 1239812398 credit card and home loan applications.
| null | null | 5,652 | 5,652 | null | null | null | null |
5,736 | comment | danw | 2007-03-22T17:43:14 | null | Now I think I need this book. Your right about stats, I would move them to number 6 or perhaps even to prelaunch. | null | null | 5,715 | 5,572 | null | null | null | null |
5,737 | comment | prakster | 2007-03-22T17:50:38 | null | For PG: Paul, if you absolutely have to have this question in the application, it might help to add the word "cash", e.g. "What's the lowest cash offer you'd take". | null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,738 | story | brett | 2007-03-22T17:56:23 | YouTube Case Study: Widget marketing comes of age - Startup Review Blog | null | http://www.startup-review.com/blog/youtube-case-study-widget-marketing-comes-of-age.php | 1 | null | 5,738 | 1 | [
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5,739 | comment | patryn20 | 2007-03-22T17:58:56 | null | See, I wish there was a service like Y Combinator just for meeting co-founders. It is hard for people who are in non-tech areas (or at least, non-startup-friendly areas) or middle-tier public universities to meet people to start companies with.<p>Personally, I have been trying to get picked up by a startup so I have an excuse and a means to move to a better area. How would others here recommend meeting people? | null | null | 5,494 | 5,482 | null | [
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5,740 | comment | domp | 2007-03-22T18:01:54 | null | This is a horrible website. | null | null | 5,699 | 5,699 | null | null | null | null |
5,741 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-22T18:15:47 | null | Five pounds of AJAX! | null | null | 5,734 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,742 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T18:32:16 | null | Ever wonder why a big co like Microsoft would have a "VC summit?" Traditionally the point was to explain where Microsoft planned to expand, in order to frighten VCs out of investing in companies in that area. VCs being what they are, that kind of thing works surprisingly well. | null | null | 5,716 | 5,716 | null | [
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5,743 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-22T18:33:05 | null | Anyone have any idea what the author's agenda is here? Why am I reading a hit piece on Shockley written 17 years after his death? | null | null | 5,688 | 5,688 | null | null | null | null |
5,744 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T18:35:12 | null | Bummer; I thought this was going to be an announcement about a new program where they closed deals quickly. The startup funding business needs something like that. Current funding procedures are a huge time suck for founders, who need to be working on their software, not spending weeks negotiating with investors. Most founders would trade valuation to get deals to close faster. At least, I'd advise them to. | null | null | 5,677 | 5,677 | null | null | null | null |
5,745 | comment | mattculbreth | 2007-03-22T18:37:14 | null | That's funny. Steve's probably a good guy to do it, too. I met with him at a small roundtable when I was leading a consulting firm (Microsoft gold partner). He was great--spoke 200 words/minute about all of the products they had right around the corner. I wrote them all down and then checked about six months later. They delivered on the Office Live stuff (about 50% of what he'd said), but then everything else was pretty flat.<p>He was fun to be around though. :)
| null | null | 5,742 | 5,716 | null | null | null | null |
5,746 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T18:38:13 | null | Enough, obviously, because we've had several startups that got acquisition offers after three months. | null | null | 5,717 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,747 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T18:44:27 | null | "Approaching the question?" How about just answering truthfully? What would someone have to offer, assuming nothing else about the deal?<p>If you put some high number no one would offer, you're not really answering the question, are you? If you say you'd need 20 million, I'm going to ask: so if someone offered 19, you'd say no? | null | null | 5,701 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,748 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T18:47:44 | null | Honestly, this is not a hard question. We're not asking you what you think we want as a return. We're asking what you'd take. <p>So if you think 3 million is a fantastic deal, then you haven't answered the question correctly. We're not asking what you think would be a fantastic deal, but what would be the <i>worst</i> deal you'd still accept. Would you really turn down 2 million for three months' work?<p>Incidentally, we don't even think about what we want as a return. Some VCs may, but we don't. We just fund anyone who seems good, and assume the returns will take care of themselves. | null | null | 5,708 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,749 | comment | imperator | 2007-03-22T18:47:59 | null | The figure you give depends on your feelings which are created from your internal and external circumstances. I immidiately asked myself the question, "What do I want?"<p>This was my answer:
$2,000,000 for property,
$1,000,000 for the house (I live in Silicon Valley),
$2,000,000 for traditional reinvestment,
$1,000,000 to start the next company,
$6,000,000 total for each partner,<p>After three months, it depends on where the software is. However, the purchasing company will be the one evaluating that aspect. For me, it is a question of what I want versus what they are willing to give in return.
| null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,750 | story | far33d | 2007-03-22T18:50:49 | Netflix: Take as much vacation as you want. | null | http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_5493698 | 14 | null | 5,750 | 7 | [
5752,
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5,751 | comment | herdrick | 2007-03-22T18:51:10 | null | Ignorable. | null | null | 5,507 | 5,507 | null | null | null | null |
5,752 | comment | far33d | 2007-03-22T18:51:54 | null | take home point, for startups and big slow companies: "The worst thing is for a manager to come in and tell me: `Let's give Susie a huge raise because she's always in the office.' What do I care? I want managers to come to me and say: `Let's give a really big raise to Sally because she's getting a lot done' - not because she's chained to her desk." | null | null | 5,750 | 5,750 | null | null | null | null |
5,753 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T18:53:20 | null | You can't count Netscape; most of their traffic comes from people clicking on the wrong thing by mistake. | null | null | 5,670 | 5,670 | null | null | null | null |
5,754 | comment | extantproject | 2007-03-22T18:53:21 | null | YC physically creates that sort of group of peers. For those of us that choose not to make it out, YC News is fostering something similar on the web. It's not a replacement, but it's a good conversation starter. We might even see some startups from founders meeting online through YC News. Have there been any examples of this so far?<p>Speaking of which: extantproject at gmail dot com if anyone out there would like to throw some ideas around. | null | null | 5,494 | 5,482 | null | null | null | null |
5,755 | comment | herdrick | 2007-03-22T18:54:22 | null | "Taking a $1M lump-sum means never having to work again."<p>Sorry, no. | null | null | 5,712 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,756 | comment | extantproject | 2007-03-22T18:58:36 | null | I think talking to people in YC News comments works:<p>extantproject at gmail dot com if you want to throw some ideas around | null | null | 5,739 | 5,482 | null | [
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5,757 | comment | domp | 2007-03-22T18:58:58 | null | Definitely. It was great to read this when I had the beginning stages of a company idea in my head. Made me think of it in a completely different way. | null | null | 5,628 | 5,572 | null | null | null | null |
5,758 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T18:59:07 | null | This will be an interesting data point about whether two giant companies (and not even technology companies) can produce something to compete with a startup. I think the odds are heavily against them. In fact, it might be worth starting the startup they'll have to buy when their own in-house development efforts fail. | null | null | 5,694 | 5,694 | null | [
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5,759 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T19:06:06 | null | More Javascript. CSS for a lot of things we did with images. Pages could <i>look</i> a lot better. Otherwise it would probably be pretty similar. <p>I think Weebly may be planning to add shopping stuff, in which case they'll become it. | null | null | 5,642 | 5,642 | null | [
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5,760 | story | joshwa | 2007-03-22T19:06:26 | Is Good Design a liability when you're trying to appeal to the Masses? (MySpace vs. Virb) | null | http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2007/03/virb-vs-myspace | 10 | null | 5,760 | 12 | [
5787,
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] | null | null |
5,761 | comment | motoko | 2007-03-22T19:08:04 | null | The _real_ rules are:<p>1) Don't fail<p>2) Win<p>3) Don't not win<p>Also, see: <a href="http://thetravisty.com/Saturday_Night_Live/mov/Sexual_Harassment_and_You.htm">http://thetravisty.com/Saturday_Night_Live/mov/Sexual_Harassment_and_You.htm</a> | null | null | 5,624 | 5,529 | null | null | null | null |
5,762 | comment | JMiao | 2007-03-22T19:09:01 | null | A senior VP at NBC recently asked me for my advice regarding digital media strategy, and YouTube obviously came up in the course of our conversation.<p>I'm still waiting to actually see what the service delivers, but I'm a bit worried for YouTube concerning how News Corp/NBC will use exclusive content to grab eyeballs.<p>On the other hand, especially execution-wise, those old media guys at NBC have absolutely no idea what they're doing. | null | null | 5,694 | 5,694 | null | [
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5,763 | comment | pistoriusp | 2007-03-22T19:09:05 | null | The lowest, R4,000,000 (ZAR), it's about $540,000.<p>Invested month-to-month at a fixed interest rate of 8% gives you more than R26,000 ($3,500). After taxes it's roughly R19,000.<p>
I don't know about the USA but in South Africa this is a fairly decent amount of money to receive each month.<p>I would use the money to purchase a home and a car (required in RSA) and focus on my next startup.<p>Aaagh. No stress. Just fun. | null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,764 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T19:12:34 | null | Hmm, I don't know. How could they get into funding and have any pretense of journalistic objectivity? And if they stopped being a good source of startup info, readers would go elsewhere, and they'd lose the original source of their power.<p>O'Reilly can go into venture funding without compromsing the original source of their cred, which is technical books. It would be much harder for a journalist covering startups. | null | null | 5,653 | 5,653 | null | [
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5,765 | comment | python_kiss | 2007-03-22T19:13:21 | null | What a relief! Thank you for sharing that. After watching everyone talk in millions here, I was concerned my "absolute worst" deal that stretched below $100k might hurt our chances of being accepted to YC. I am going to go ahead and put in an honest estimate :) thanks, | null | null | 5,748 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,766 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T19:16:37 | null | If an organization even uses the word "overtime," they're not a startup. In a startup you just take it for granted you're working all the time. You don't have a special word for it. | null | null | 5,721 | 5,721 | null | [
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5,767 | comment | domp | 2007-03-22T19:17:13 | null | Virb does look real good. My only worry is that it doesn't offer many features that matter to normal people. The best addition is the button to stop customization. For the majority of myspace users they're not going to care for most of the techie features. They could have some tricks up their sleeves though.<p>When Purevolume updated their site a while back I was real dissapointed at the lack of additional functions. They just added the social network part into the site. I'd hope that they are taking a more innovative approach to this project and not just trying to compete directly with everything Myspace offers.<p> | null | null | 5,760 | 5,760 | null | null | null | null |
5,768 | comment | mattculbreth | 2007-03-22T19:17:50 | null | I've personally used virtualization to reduce costs in a datacenter. We had two physical servers running VMWare with three virtual servers each. Worked great. | null | null | 5,684 | 5,684 | null | null | null | null |
5,769 | comment | motoko | 2007-03-22T19:18:24 | null | Is this article saying that if you think that biological inheritable traits exist, then you will be a sociopath and a failure like Shockley ---despite the best science? | null | null | 5,688 | 5,688 | null | [
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5,770 | comment | python_kiss | 2007-03-22T19:32:00 | null | From the link: "What's in store for TechCrunch? Perhaps a new branch - TechCrunch Ventures?"<p>This is just speculative news. Though, it isn't inconceivable for Mike to take this path. He has, in the past, funded several startups (often unsuccessfully). Moreover, he is a well connected and recognizable individual in this industry; so his background in technology as well as law will certaninly assist him in this respective.<p>Michael's strength in the online world, however, is also his weakness; TC might risk losing credibility as an unbiased startup blog. It will be like expecting Fox television to provide "fair and unbiased" news :D | null | null | 5,764 | 5,653 | null | null | null | null |
5,771 | comment | davidw | 2007-03-22T19:32:37 | null | [dr evil]One miiiiiiiiiiiiiiillion dollars[/dr evil]
| null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,772 | comment | mynameishere | 2007-03-22T19:35:38 | null | Well, he was an advocate of eugenics. He looked at the data available to him and came to a reasonable conclusion. But "reason", you may have noticed, can really, really piss people off when it goes up against conclusions they've drawn from other sources. As an experiment, write down the 10-15 best arguments you have against the practice of tattooing. Then, go up to someone who has tattoos and say, "Here are the reasons why tattoos are bad." Prepare for some incredible, but mute, rage staring you down after that.<p>Now, try the same thing with human biology: "Here are the top 10 reasons why low-IQ people should undergo voluntary sterilization". The reaction is quite a bit worse. | null | null | 5,769 | 5,688 | null | [
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5,773 | comment | python_kiss | 2007-03-22T19:36:47 | null | I am not sure what it would look like, but I am guessing it would be Google that buys it out this time :D | null | null | 5,642 | 5,642 | null | [
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5,774 | story | mario76 | 2007-03-22T19:45:01 | Is 'script' licensing (a la vBulletin) still an option for a web application? | null | 1 | null | 5,774 | 1 | [
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5,775 | comment | jadams | 2007-03-22T20:04:48 | null | Okay, I missed the humour.<p>Regarding (2), though. I think making $3M in 3 months has a lot more to do with luck and hype than any inherent skill. So, obviously those numbers were pulled out of thin air. The likelihood of that happening is extremely low.<p>Also, having a job you enjoy is no panacea. Whenever you're working for someone else (even the customer), there are things you won't enjoy. The discipline that allows you to do these things is the same discipline that makes it possible to work at a job you don't really enjoy.<p>Having said that, I agree with the approach of sacrificing quality-of-life for, say 5 years in order to never have to work again. Doing this for something you mostly enjoy will allow you to put in the effort without killing yourself. Unfortunately, this can become self-perpetuating. There's no inherent good in working. | null | null | 5,727 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,776 | story | paul | 2007-03-22T20:16:20 | Paul Buchheit: How to be right 90% of the time, and why I'd rather be wrong. | null | http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-of-time-and-why-id.html | 24 | null | 5,776 | 7 | [
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5,777 | comment | bhb | 2007-03-22T20:20:57 | null | I think I've stated our question poorly. It's not that we don't want to answer truthfully, it's that we're having a hard time converting what we want into a dollar figure.<p>Here's what we want: We want to work on cool problems. We want to make software that solves problems. We want to make enough money to live comfortably. We want to love our work.<p>Hopefully, in three months, we'll have some of what we want, and be on track to get the others. Someone buying the company from us may change those things in lots of different ways, depending on the situation.<p>Our question is, how do we quantify those wants? It's not clear to me how to do so. One approach may be to quantify other factors that would lead to us getting what we want - such as the amount of money we'd want to start another startup.<p>I could just give something in the ballpark, but it wouldn't be particularly accurate. For instance, I could say that giving away the site we love to work on is worth x, but if someone asks me why not x-1 or x+1, I won't have a good answer. | null | null | 5,747 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,778 | comment | jadams | 2007-03-22T20:21:43 | null | Well, obviously, this is for some reasonable definition of <i>have</i>.<p>The numbers work for me. I'm married, and have a mortgage.<p>I guess I was blurring the line between being retired and semi-retired. Were I to earn such a lump sum, my daily activities would probably look the same. I just wouldn't be working for anyone else, and wouldn't have that mental burn-rate / countdown timer going.<p>Controlling expenses is a very powerful tool. For every after-tax dollar you save, you're saving like 2 pre-tax dollars. So, it's much more effective to save $1 than to earn an extra $1.<p>Here's my mental hierarchy of wealth. Each one represents a drastic change in quality of life, and options. It's somewhat logarithmic.<p>1) Stop living month-to-month. I.e. at the end of the month, you have enough to pay another month's expenses in the bank.<p>2) Pay of all debt, except mortgage.<p>3) Stop living year-to-year. I.e. at the end of the year, you have enough money to not work next year, possibly having to reduce your quality of life, but not to poverty.<p>4) Semi-retirement. If you didn't work for the next five years, you'd still have enough money to start a business at the end of the period.<p>5) Retirement. You can maintain your current lifestyle, or a slightly scaled-back one indefinitely. Mortgage is paid off.<p>6) Rich. Your kids could do (5), if you decided to fund the lazy brats.<p>7) FU money. | null | null | 5,755 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,779 | story | wysiwyg | 2007-03-22T20:24:35 | Justin.TV Co-Founder Talks Up Live, Mobile Internet Video | null | http://interviews.direcpod.com/2007/03/22/justin-tv-mobile-video-justin-kan/ | 2 | null | 5,779 | 0 | null | null | null |
5,780 | comment | jadams | 2007-03-22T20:30:25 | null | Interesting policy. It sounds great, in theory, but would be hard to implement.<p>A recent employer gave me 3 weeks of vacation. Great! Never mind that they kept asking me to delay it, for a year because each artificial deadline they created ended up slipping. There's never a good time to take vacation.<p>EDIT Therefore, it's always a good time to take vacation (given sufficient notice).
| null | null | 5,750 | 5,750 | null | [
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5,781 | comment | JMiao | 2007-03-22T20:47:46 | null | I recently started thinking similarly about the "right 90% of the time" logic, so I'm glad I read this.<p>Thanks for another interesting entry, Paul. | null | null | 5,776 | 5,776 | null | null | null | null |
5,782 | comment | stevendavis0830 | 2007-03-22T20:49:21 | null | Where do I sign-up? | null | null | 5,750 | 5,750 | null | [
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5,783 | comment | sethjohn | 2007-03-22T20:52:04 | null | Again, it depends on how exactly you imagine the situation. If the choice was acquisition by Google for $2 million, or probable destruction by Google in a year...certainly I would take the former.<p>On the other hand, if I was passionate about the product and thought there was great potential for growth over the next few months and years, I wouldn't want to walk away for anything less than a fantastic deal.<p>I appreciate your focus on excellent people rather than returns and dealmaking. The profitability of YC strikes me as an interesting question simply because it's an important aspect of a model that is unique and interesting in many ways. | null | null | 5,748 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,784 | comment | RyanGWU82 | 2007-03-22T20:55:42 | null | A whole bunch of them have moved to San Francisco in the last 6 months. | null | null | 5,659 | 5,659 | null | null | null | null |
5,785 | story | Elfan | 2007-03-22T20:59:58 | Exciting Times To Be An Entrepreneur In America | null | http://www.scribd.com/doc/88/Exciting-Times-To-Be-An-Entrepreneur-In-America | 7 | null | 5,785 | 0 | null | null | null |
5,786 | comment | aristus | 2007-03-22T21:01:29 | null | Heh. I would like to see the author's home page circa 1998. I will bet cash it had a textured background, MIDI file, cat picture, stock art animation, link to Lycos, etc.<p><i>Everyone's</i> first web page looks ugly. Most will stay ugly.<p>But there's something to the idea that ugly works, that worse is better. Direct Marketers have known for decades that a 'downmarket' look improves response, at least in the US. Junk mail looks trashy because that's what thousands of generations in a viciously competitive ecosystem has produced. Ugly works. | null | null | 5,760 | 5,760 | null | [
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5,787 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T21:03:44 | null | In a sense, by definition not, since good design is design that achieves its purpose.<p>Sometimes ultraclean design can send a message of fanciness or snobbishness that turns off "ordinary" people. But I think a good designer can temper that fairly easily. | null | null | 5,760 | 5,760 | null | [
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5,788 | comment | pg | 2007-03-22T21:08:32 | null | It probably means never having to work again on something you don't like. Esp. if you're young when you get it. | null | null | 5,755 | 5,700 | null | [
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5,789 | comment | herdrick | 2007-03-22T21:09:01 | null | "Direct Marketers have known for decades that a 'downmarket' look improves response"<p>Interesting. Source? | null | null | 5,786 | 5,760 | null | [
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5,790 | comment | aristus | 2007-03-22T21:16:05 | null | 3 years doing ads for the Yellow Pages and DM. This guy has the same conclusion with good examples:<p><a href="http://alistapart.com/articles/whitespace">http://alistapart.com/articles/whitespace</a> | null | null | 5,789 | 5,760 | null | [
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] | null | null |
5,791 | comment | Andys | 2007-03-22T21:16:54 | null | What struck me was how slick the platform was. I don't particularly care to watch Justin for more than just a few minutes, but if it was someone I did want to watch I'd probably load it up every night. | null | null | 5,314 | 5,314 | null | null | null | null |
5,792 | comment | horar | 2007-03-22T21:21:20 | null | I tend to think of the people who were made uncomfortable by my antics instead, but I feel a similar sense of relief to be free of them. I've often found comfort in the H.G.Wells short story "The Country of the Blind". | null | null | 5,493 | 5,482 | null | null | null | null |
5,793 | comment | capoeirista | 2007-03-22T21:21:30 | null | This is an interesting question, and as a girl geek who is applying to y combinator and has worked for many startups, I can mention a few things. <p>1) Startup culture appears to be a boys' club. <p>a) Have you ever noticed that when you hire the first woman in any company, the dynamic changes? There's resistance to that change, whether it's for better or worse. (pun intended) There's a big sign on your clubhouse that says [GIRLZ KEEP OUT!] Sometimes it's very subtle. Sometimes overt. How many of you actually had women on the short list of people you were choosing to partner with? Some geeky guys still have a hard time talking with girls. It may be an issue with whom you're comfortable sharing your great idea. From what I've read in these posts, you have some assumptions that you're making about girls. Truth is, when you get to a certain level of skill or creativity, assumptions need to fly out the window - for both men and women. <p> b) With that being said, I love it when work consumes me with a passion and takes all of my time to the exclusion of all else. I have mad skills in a bunch of different areas and startups seem to want me. . . but they don't think of me as a co-founder. I code, design, do market research, marketing strategy, media buys, infrastructure, pitches. . . basically I've worked for many startups doing everything necessary to get started. Still thought of as an accessory - never fully included. My solution to this has been to position myself differently - and I can do that now. I need to market my skills differently from the way guys do. This has been successful. <p>2) We're not as sensitive to hierarchies and heirarchies' flip side, competition, as guys are. <p>a) We often just want to get it done. We don't care as much if it strokes our ego or your ego. It needs to be done. If, every time we have a conversation, it becomes a zero sum game of who wins the dominance, it's stupid. <p>If there's a list of things that need to get done on the table, and some tasks are seen as too onerous for guys' job descriptions (egos), we wind up doing it because it needs to get done. Because we did it, somehow our status falls. We wind up getting stuck with _all_ the crappy jobs, and it winds up sucking for us as our status continually sinks. <p>b) We assess ourselves and our skills differently. Here's an illustrative example. A female engineer once told me why she gave up working in industry. She was the only woman working with a team of guys. The team lead would throw out a task for discussion on the table. Everyone but she would say they could do it easily. She would say that no, this has these challenges and would take much longer. One of the guys who said that it was easy would get the project and then go to her for help doing the problematic tasks. Who got promoted? The guy. Who was doing all the hard work? She was. Female examiners at the patent office tell the same story. There are a lot of women engineers who leave industry because they can assess themselves and the problems accurately and this isn't valued. Managers want their problems solved. They value gung-ho over truth.<p>c) This is often linguistic. Men and women use different syntax to express the same thoughts. I need to remap what makes sense to me onto another linguistic pattern and that seems to be a waste of energy. In fact, this has a lot of benefit because it makes us better communicators all around. It's a learning curve - and it's often hard to recognize that it's there or needed. (I was a linguistics geek in college, where I found out that 85% of all conversational interruptions occur men on women, so it's a challenge for us to get a complete paragraph size thought into a conversation - much less complete a sentence without being completely stepped on.) <p>But even in the more egalitarian parts of the States, there are different linguistic patterns for men and women. If you go to the South, it's much more amplified. If a woman makes a statement with the same intonation and wording as a guy, the conversation just stops for a hot minute while everyone in the room processes it. In places like Alabama, I need to preprocess so that the communication is seamless and the conversational stoppages don't occur - and this often means using what would be considered subservient speech, like ending a statement with a questionmark. Up north, if I'm in a roomful of guys, or even just talking with one, the preprocessing still needs to happen. <p> d) It may be that because we're not as sensitive to hierarchies and have different sensibilities about status, money means something fundamentally different to us. <p> e) When I was in college, I really wanted to go into physics, and I was good at it. I spent a summer working for NASA and saw how cutthroat the competition was among the physics geeks and didn't like it. Several years later, I was the webmaster for a hearing research center at a big university. It was a collection of twenty or so labs. I noticed that there were a lot of female scientists, that there was a lot of collaboration between scientists in this particular center and also around the world. I decided to find out what was so different and spent about a year asking people how it came about. <p>The story is interesting. It wasn't by accident. It turns out that at MIT thirty years ago, there was a hearing research professor who got all of his grad students together and told them that their careers didn't have to be all sniping and competitive - that they could do something different and agree to cooperate. These grad students are now the heads of their own departments. They teach their undergrad and grad students what behavior is acceptable and are growing a culture of deep respect and cooperation. It has a lot of benefits for hearing research as a whole. Work isn't hidden from each other and duplicated - meaning money and time isn't wasted - so it's much better for the hearing research discipline. There isn't the attitude of hoarding ideas for credit. Everyone's resumé has long lists of collaborations. Mostly, everyone's really happy and nice. Apparently, vision research is the exact polar opposite. <p>I know that in a free market society, competition is seen as creating efficiency, but in a lot of ways, it's very wasteful because of hoarding of ideas and duplication of effort. For people who don't have access to resources, cooperation results in significantly greater value. There isn't nearly as much money available for hearing research, but these researchers are incredibly efficient because they eliminated the competition from the discipline. They're still evaluated. They still have to do their work and be very good at it. It's just that the element of fear is gone. <p>Alpha males and alpha females see competition differently. How many alpha males can be in a company at any one time? Those who aren't the tiny percent of you who are alpha males feel fear when there's excessive competition. Do you want to work in a fearful environment?<p> 3) If we're single and cute, the dominant chimp will hit on us unless he has a well developed sense of morals. I've been around and around with this one with other women about what to do in response to this and have seen a lot of different strategies to handle it. Some women just shut down their levels of expression and passion for their work. (sucky solution) I know one woman who pretended she was a lesbian. (sucky solution, but one of the most successful - she still retained respect) This comes up a lot at female executive dinners. It's tiresome because when the dominant chimp's ego's bruised there's _always_ retaliation of some form. <p>4) It may be that y combinator and the VC game doesn't get us where we want to be. <p>a) If the majority of all small businesses in the States are being started by women, and if we're especially good at communication and customer service, which you'd think would be great for Web 2.0, then what is it about the whole VC game that doesn't get us there? How are we starting our businesses without you? When we're starting businesses, what's the structure like? What kinds of businesses are they? <p>b) I know that usually VCs or angels don't even look at people until they've spent $50k of their own money. Women have a harder time coming up with funds like that. We still don't have wage parity. We're taking care of our parents or our sister's kids. It's harder for us to get out of family obligations. In the family, daughters are still thought of differently. While I was still an undergrad, I was a founder in a startup. I had to leave to take care of my sick mother. When I asked her if I were a guy, would she have asked me to give up my business, she replied, "no." without any hesitation. We're still expected to do the bulk of non-market labor in this culture. If we say no, there are repercussions. Being a good girl is always for someone else's convenience. <p>c) It may be a timing thing. Women may have different goals immediately after college. It would be interesting to check to see how old the women are who are starting businesses in this country. I'd want to check the distribution graph - don't just look at the mean or median ages of when they're starting businesses - I bet there are several humps on it - each would tell a different story about that group's lives. By excluding women who are above a certain age, you're cutting out a lot of experience and wisdom. One of the coolest businesses was started by Mary Kay. However cheezy her pink Caddies are, she had a lot of insight into how women ran their lives and built her cosmetics distribution model on those insights.<p>d) I'm willing to bet that women are starting businesses with less, are entering businesses with lower barriers to entry in general, and that the geeky women aren't starting businesses or aren't going your route to do it. If you look at the percentage of female college grads in engineering and the sciences, it's a much higher percentage than who are applying to y combinator. How are their opportunities and thoughts different? Perhaps you should ask them. You're missing a lot of talent by not addressing it. Are there qualities that you are rewarding that talented women find reprehensible or icky?<p>By definition, you're looking for special people. The next Teslas are going to be odd no matter where they're from or what their gender is. What would have happened to Tesla if there had been no viciousness of Edison's smear campaigns? Clearly the world lost out. (I have a thing for Tesla, and in an ideal world, Firefly would still be on the air.) <p>If the next Tesla is currently wearing a burka in Afghanistan, she, and the world, are out of luck. If she's in school just down the river, or has just sent her kids off to college, you may be able to do something about it if you want to. | null | null | 3,574 | 3,574 | null | null | null | null |
5,794 | comment | amichail | 2007-03-22T21:21:57 | null | I don't believe that most users will put up with poor design. <p>It's just that some sites like myspace have so much momentum that users will go to them despite their poor design because all their friends are there already.<p>The problem in terms of design is just the opposite. I would say that users' high expectations with respect to presentation have hurt web startups in a big way since many founders can't afford a professional web designer. Flash over substance is always a bad thing.
| null | null | 5,787 | 5,760 | null | [
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5,795 | comment | joshwa | 2007-03-22T21:27:42 | null | eh, wayback machine only goes back to 2004 for mikeindustries:<p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040617123234/http://www.mikeindustries.com/">http://web.archive.org/web/20040617123234/http://www.mikeindustries.com/</a> | null | null | 5,786 | 5,760 | null | null | null | null |
5,796 | comment | bootload | 2007-03-22T21:32:34 | null | a starter list can be found at yrumours ~ <a href="http://yrumors.blogspot.com/">http://yrumors.blogspot.com/</a> | null | null | 5,659 | 5,659 | null | null | null | null |
5,797 | comment | jward | 2007-03-22T21:46:40 | null | I'd want to walk away and be able to look someone in the eye and say "I'm a dot com millionaire." So with the share structure, capital gains tax (guessing), and exchange rate the number I'd pull out of my ass would be four million for the whole shot assuming no dilution.<p>Three months is long enough to know if I really believe in something or not. I wouldn't sell out on anything I believe in for less than this. If that money isn't on the table after three months, I can wait and put in the sweat and time to make it worth that much. | null | null | 5,700 | 5,700 | null | null | null | null |
5,798 | comment | motoko | 2007-03-22T21:51:46 | null | Quick quiz: To make the most profit, sell by:<p>- reason, to solve needs<p>- fashion, because they can be made to want it | null | null | 5,794 | 5,760 | null | null | null | null |
5,799 | comment | far33d | 2007-03-22T21:56:47 | null | <a href="http://jobs.netflix.com/cojobsFlix.asp">http://jobs.netflix.com/cojobsFlix.asp</a> | null | null | 5,782 | 5,750 | null | null | null | null |
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