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6,700 | comment | Readmore | 2007-03-27T21:43:00 | null | I think a sat program would be great. You could have local incubators that take proposals, pick the teams, and fund them but that also 'plug into' yCombinator for connections and such. That would allow the system to scale and allow people who can't move right away the chance to get started and make the right connections. | null | null | 6,687 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,701 | comment | BitGeek | 2007-03-27T21:46:37 | null |
Right, all the areas where you previously had to build infrastructure are now free or you can rent them ... and they have become commidtized.<p>Thus a team of a few can focus just on adding value, making the bootstrapping runway dramatically shorter.<p>I'm not sure what the benefit of physical networking is (and thus being in the bay area) other than being closer to VCs, and if you don't need VC funding, there's no point. | null | null | 6,534 | 6,302 | null | null | null | null |
6,702 | comment | BitGeek | 2007-03-27T21:48:51 | null |
That's not a reason, that's an assertion of your opinion. You're not alone in that opinion.<p>The real question is why? This has never been answered, other than "closeness to VCs".<p>There's no fundamental advantage to the Bay Area over, say Seattle, or other places that has been mentioned here.<p>All of the resources you could want are either a lot cheaper elsewhere, or the same price (because they are delivered over the net.)<p>With the exception of venture capital... <p>So, fundamental ot this idea of relocating to the bay area is the assumption that you must take venture capital. (And I think this assumption no longer holds.) | null | null | 6,566 | 6,302 | null | [
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6,703 | comment | BrandonM | 2007-03-27T21:56:53 | null | I have always wondered why it's necessary to <i>beat</i> Big Company X. I recall reading some writings by Eric Raymond when he remarked that competition is good for the consumer, and thus anyone who is trying to quell competition (Mic<i>cough</i>sof<i>cough</i>) is intrinsically hurting the general populace.<p>That said, the article, in my mind, is actually presenting ways to compete with Google, which is definitely A Good Thing. The title, however, could use a little work. I think it's important for us to avoid the mindset of, "This company is highly profitable, so I want to figure how to beat them and steal their revenue," and instead shift to, "This company is doing a great job, but I can provide a valuable service by improving upon such and such feature." In a market where there are hundreds of options and new ones appearing every day, the most important thing is to provide a new, valuable service. If you can do that, the users will come. | null | null | 6,593 | 6,593 | null | null | null | null |
6,704 | comment | BitGeek | 2007-03-27T21:57:43 | null | You're arguing that reducing your chances for success is the only way to succeed. You presume that if you aren't about to die, then you must be lazy. You presume that the only model is unprofitability until someone either buys you or you get shut down. <p>You presume that reducing the number of scenarios by which a founder will become wealthy somehow motivates the founders more. <p>You say business should be shut down if they don't fit in the model you describe.<p>This is a very narrow view. Its also a very polarized view-- it seems to be the perspective that either you're trying to be the next youtube or you're opening a farm. <p>There really is quite a spectrum between them... and far more high tech successes are not youtube type situations. That's an extreme rarity.<p>You're locked into a mentality that causes you to repeat this perspective, and you don't seem to be responding to what I'm saying, and I just don't see things that way.<p>So, I don't see much point in continuing this thread.<p>Good luck if you decide to start a company!<p> | null | null | 6,487 | 6,228 | null | null | null | null |
6,705 | story | far33d | 2007-03-27T21:58:49 | John McCain learns a lesson. | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/ | 3 | null | 6,705 | 0 | null | null | null |
6,706 | comment | akkartik | 2007-03-27T22:05:41 | null | One thing we can't tell since the original websites are down: Were these attacks made in the comments or were they first-class posts?<p>Bloggers aren't responsible for things said in their comments. | null | null | 6,697 | 6,689 | null | [
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6,707 | story | mountaineer | 2007-03-27T22:09:09 | Using twitter to chronicle the experiences of building a web business (both technology and business side to be examined). | null | http://twitter.com/networthiq | 2 | null | 6,707 | 3 | [
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6,708 | comment | herdrick | 2007-03-27T22:12:41 | null | Excellent. The essay and talk together produced several surprises. The essay cleared up things things that the video obscured (couldn't see the visuals), like the "not-so-smart" / "enterprise software" connection (I was thinking he just meant the competition was dumb so you'd have the one-eyed man / land of the blind advantage). <p>The big surprise is that YC hasn't seen an order of magnitude increase in applicants from their first round. You'd think this impossible: Paul announced the first YC program only about a week before its deadline and they got something like 250 applications. Now they are all over the tech news and they still haven't cracked 1000? Maybe PG's new speaking approach (memorize, practice, use visuals) is an effort to get more people fired up? <p>Paul, regarding this new speaking style: you <i>could</i> make yourself into a Steve Jobs dynamo of a speaker, but I think you shouldn't. Your usual wordsmith style is probably better for attracting nerds. <p>Question: Paul, it sounds like you've mostly swung in the direction of encouraging people to look at their own lives for problems to solve. Whereas in "Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas" you were saying the opposite, like in the two paragraphs starting with "Reading the Wall Street Journal for a week should give anyone ideas... " Trevor says something similar in the footnotes. But it looks like YC has been placing all its bets on the first sort of ideas. There's a good reason: all the huge software successes come from the "build it for you and your friends" model because those are the problems you fully understand. But it's more common to find software companies making solid profits on products they built for others' problems. Am I overlooking YC companies building products designed for other people? Is the problem that there just aren't enough potential founders like the Octopart guys: people deeply involved in some non-computing world who also happen to be good programmers? If so, maybe the richest source of ideas and cofounders would be cruising web forums for the near-programmers (people who build things like MS Access half-solutions to their companies' problems) to listen to what they would like to build if only they knew how. Maybe YC should be recruiting there, too. Thoughts?
| null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,709 | comment | pg | 2007-03-27T22:12:52 | null | We often think about that. We could hire assistants, so we didn't have to do everything ourselves. Or we could make YC work more peer-to-peer. Or we could build a robot that would walk around telling everyone "don't make users register," "delete half the text on your frontpage," "face the audience when you're presenting," etc, and I could just hang out in the next room with a book and a cup of tea. | null | null | 6,687 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,710 | story | Pinny | 2007-03-27T22:18:30 | Case Study: Why CompUSA Is Losing The Battle For Computer And Electronics Sales | null | http://www.pinnycohen.com/2007/03/27/marketing-wisdom/case-study-why-compusa-is-losing-the-battle-for-computer-and-electronics-sales/ | 1 | null | 6,710 | 0 | null | null | null |
6,711 | comment | BrandonM | 2007-03-27T22:23:03 | null | At first I was thinking, <i>Wikipedia is great as is. Besides, why compete with a free product?</i> Once I actually visited the site and read the philosophy, however, I have to concede that it's at least worth a shot. This idea is clearly the result of someone saying, "What is wrong with Wikipedia, and how can we fix it?" The main problems, as I see it, are:<p>1. Defacing of high-profile articles.
- This is potentially solved by requiring the use of real names, and also by the oversight.<p>2. Perceived inaccuracy.
- While Wikipedia does at times have inaccuracies, the reality is that the media and others who do not often use it have an exaggerated view of the extent of the inaccuracy. By adding expert oversight, this should quell some of the cries regarding lack of reliability.<p>The only potential problems I see is that Wikipedia already has a lot of inertia, which includes a much better name. Citizendium is just too hard to say to become a buzzword. It will also see much slower growth, and I posit that it will never be able to reach the size of Wikipedia, because its growth function is inherently less steep.<p>That said, one could contend that the majority of quality articles on Wikipedia are submitted by a very small minority of the users. If even some of these authors move to Citizendium due to frustration with the constant maintenance of their articles or the incorrect perception of inaccuracy, then Citizendium truly has a chance. But someone still needs to change the name. | null | null | 6,681 | 6,681 | null | null | null | null |
6,712 | story | amichail | 2007-03-27T22:26:13 | Anyone interested in trying out my book understanding prototype? We could focus on Founders at Work say. | null | 1 | null | 6,712 | 1 | [
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6,713 | comment | amichail | 2007-03-27T22:26:48 | null | If you are interested in trying it out, please send an email to [email protected].<p>This is sort of like a closed beta but the prototype is pretty preliminary. Nonetheless, it is already quite functional. | null | null | 6,712 | 6,712 | null | null | null | null |
6,714 | comment | sethjohn | 2007-03-27T22:51:20 | null | I've often wondered whether you could make a lot of progress by bringing together hackers with, for example, doctors or lawyers. These are people who use computers every day but probably don't spend much time thinking about how to hack a solution to their computing problems. <p>As a scientist I've had a lot of success looking for the simple yet groundbreaking problems that occur at the boundaries between very different disciplines. It can be difficult not to make 'stupid' mistakes in a discipline with which you are unfamiliar...but it's a lot easier than trying to work faster and smarter on the exact same problem as everyone else!<p>Surely interdisciplinary collaboration could be just as valuable in startups. | null | null | 6,708 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,715 | comment | mountaineer | 2007-03-27T22:53:59 | null | Great essay, I sure wish my reason was because of #10 (wealthy) and not #9 (family to support), so true, so true.<p>An alternative to starting a consulting business is to build your stuff on the side. Possibly draining? Yes, but if you're determined, I believe this is better than getting distracted by a consulting business. Time will tell if this is wise though. | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,716 | story | dfranke | 2007-03-27T22:55:20 | Scaling YC: What's the limiting factor? | null | 12 | null | 6,716 | 14 | [
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6,717 | comment | BrandonM | 2007-03-27T22:55:26 | null | Minor edits: under #4, the second paragraph, "Any in any case..." should be "And...". Also, I personally think that the previous sentence could use a little work, because "you probably are" could mean "you probably are not smart enough".<p>Feel free to delete this comment after changes are made. | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,718 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-27T22:55:43 | null | Paul's recent mentions about scaling Y Combinator have prompted me to give some thought to the matter myself, but the first thing I realized is that I don't really know what's preventing it from scaling. What's the current limiting factor?<p>Amount of money available to invest?<p>How much attention you can pay to the people you fund?<p>The number of applications that don't suck?<p>And given an unlimited supply of the current limiting factor, how much bigger could you get before running up against one of the other two? | null | null | 6,716 | 6,716 | null | [
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6,719 | comment | fireandfury | 2007-03-27T22:55:48 | null | Great interview. 10/10<p>I love how Woz described his relationship with Steve Jobs. What a great story of how Apple got started.
| null | null | 6,236 | 6,236 | null | null | null | null |
6,720 | comment | hundreddollar | 2007-03-27T23:02:36 | null | My favorite part is this: "To almost everyone except criminals, it seems an axiom that if you need money, you should get a job." As an entrepreneur, I'm happy to almost be in the same category as a criminal. ;) <p>I also love the 0% dissatisfaction idea, whether or not the result is a success. The experience of launching your own project just can't be replicated. Any of the points you mentioned, even if the result is complete failure, is well worth the expense of time & risk. | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,721 | comment | herdrick | 2007-03-27T23:05:11 | null | Agreed. And yet the founders need to have worked together already, at least a bit. The big problem is that non-programmers can't help out with the programming in the early stages of a startups when that's about all that's happening. | null | null | 6,714 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,722 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-27T23:15:32 | null | See <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=6716">http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=6716</a> | null | null | 6,709 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,723 | comment | BrandonM | 2007-03-27T23:20:14 | null | I don't think he's asking how long until people stop caring about viral marketing, but how long until people stop caring in general, i.e. about humanity. I think the problem lies not in viral marketing itself, but in Nissan's implementation of viral marketing. I think that the methods of these different types of viral marketing are analogous to the goals of white hat and black hat hackers. A practice that may be generally good and clever can be thoroughly spoiled by those who take advantage of it for the wrong reasons. | null | null | 6,688 | 6,658 | null | null | null | null |
6,724 | comment | pg | 2007-03-27T23:20:25 | null | Right now it's the number of good applications. That number appears to be increasing fairly rapidly, though. Then it will be our attention. | null | null | 6,718 | 6,716 | null | [
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6,725 | comment | BrandonM | 2007-03-27T23:24:39 | null | I have to agree with the writer of this article, except I think it would be better to remove the "Viral" tag altogether. I think that marketing in general has gone too far. Certainly appealing to the generosity of people and then throwing it back in our faces is beginning to go too far, and I think the author of the article does a good job of thoroughly describing where Nissan went wrong, so I'll just shut up now. | null | null | 6,658 | 6,658 | null | null | null | null |
6,726 | comment | bootload | 2007-03-27T23:26:05 | null | Valid Identity:<p> <i>'... Were these attacks made in the comments or were they first-class posts? ...'</i><p>Good point. Would a solution be only having comments if you supply an openId? [0] The idea being you have to ID yourself to comment. Would validation of identity be one way to help solve this?<p> <i>'... Bloggers aren't responsible for things said in their comments. ...'</i><p>I wonder how the legals would view that? How much due care do you have to take? The thing with comments is, if you allow anyone to comment without limits, it's your reputation that will be smeared. If you have control or ownership of a system you are responsible. So it pays to control, restrict who and what comments are made. This is one of the key points <i>allegedly</i> made ... why do reputable sites allow such posts to persist?<p>Post Restriction:<p>I've seen a variety of techniques from timed or posts delayed until authorised to the extreme of no comments. They work to some degree but do not scale well. My personal idea is to have a blog that has no comments that points to a system requiring login (overhead, time and effort & identity) to comment.<p><p>
<i>'... Bloggers aren't responsible for things said in their comments. ...'</i><p>I wonder how the legals would view that? Was enough due care taken? The thing with comments is if you allow anyone to comment without limits it's your reputation that will be smeared. So it pays to control, restrict who and what comments are made.<p>I've seen a variety of techniques from timed or posts delayed until authorised to the extreme of <i>no comments</i>.<p>
Reference<p>[0] No because OpenID is not a trust system. Maybe I should have read more about it before I posted ~ <a href="http://openid.net/about.bml">http://openid.net/about.bml</a> | null | null | 6,706 | 6,689 | null | [
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6,727 | comment | motoko | 2007-03-27T23:28:29 | null | yawn.
| null | null | 6,593 | 6,593 | null | null | null | null |
6,728 | comment | immad | 2007-03-27T23:30:52 | null | apologies, I tried looking but couldn't find anything in the newest and figured this story was new enough. Is there a better way of checking for duplicates where url is unlikely to hit? | null | null | 6,685 | 6,681 | null | [
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6,729 | comment | kingkongrevenge | 2007-03-27T23:37:01 | null | I'm still doubtful about the "Revenue is not important" thing. Maybe right now you can get acquired with no revenues, but that probably won't last. People said revenue didn't matter during the Web 1.0 IPO bubble, and that turned out wrong. To be convinced otherwise I'd have to see the accounting for these web deals showing a return on investment. And if the profits are predicated on web advertising call me skeptical about the sustainability.<p>To my knowledge the "revenue-less liquidity event" route to riches is new circa 1998, e.g. The Globe and other such IPOs. This route is probably a symptom of the global liquidity bubble rather than a lasting development. We are still in a global liquidity explosion that measurably started around 1995. It has fueled all kinds of bubbles and weird business practices and now it's fueling acquisitions, just like it's fueling Private Equity deals and stock buybacks. We are in financially anomalous times. | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,730 | comment | sethjohn | 2007-03-27T23:39:24 | null | With all the coverage of Justin.tv, it's surprising that this is the first time I've seen anyone raise the issue of Justin (et al)'s personality. Of course, valleywag (being valleywag) brought it up in a gossipy obnoxious way, but still, shouldn't that have been one of the first and most obvious questions to ask? | null | null | 6,671 | 6,671 | null | null | null | null |
6,731 | comment | immad | 2007-03-27T23:40:02 | null | Sounds like what Yahoo and other portals tried to do and didn't really succeed. Facebook is like the same play coming from a different angle, except this time they own all your friends :-). | null | null | 6,680 | 6,676 | null | null | null | null |
6,732 | comment | awt | 2007-03-27T23:42:24 | null | Your best bet is to make something that is useful enough that you won't have to rely on tricks to get people to use it. | null | null | 6,658 | 6,658 | null | null | null | null |
6,733 | comment | bootload | 2007-03-27T23:46:32 | null | Just another live node on the network?<p>meaningful conversation in twitter is like explaining debugging code to <i>some </i> interested people, in a noisy pub. lots of talking going on, but not much listening. If you are capturing all this on a blog with the snippets or highlights pulled back via RSS, then maybe yes.<p><i>'... the way I currently use computer technology improves my life? ... technology sets me free? technology enslaves me? ...'</i> [0]<p>As you have an insight it gets posted to twitter, then you pull it on your blog and you can read stuff in context. But twitter is suffering from 'continuous partial attention' [1]. everyone will listen one second and switch to Winer or Scoble the next.<p>
Reference<p>[0] ITConversations, Linda Stone, "Continuous Partial Attention"<p><a href="http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail739.html">http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail739.html</a><p>[1] ITConversations, Linda Stone, "Continuous Partial Attention", Ibid.
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6,734 | comment | whacked_new | 2007-03-28T00:01:33 | null | To sound more positive, it shows that there is no age limit. Craig Newmark for inspiration! | null | null | 6,635 | 6,612 | null | null | null | null |
6,735 | comment | kingkongrevenge | 2007-03-28T00:07:17 | null | "produce something specific for yourself."<p>This excludes any sort of capital good like an accounting package, or his own example of groupware. <p>You'd never get most of the good product ideas targeted at businesses without industry experience, which sort of contradicts his advice not to work before starting a company. | null | null | 6,693 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,736 | comment | amichail | 2007-03-28T00:09:20 | null | Out of curiosity, what do you think of the work done at the MIT Media Lab? Would you fund those sorts of things?<p><a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/research">http://www.media.mit.edu/research</a>
| null | null | 6,724 | 6,716 | null | null | null | null |
6,737 | comment | herdrick | 2007-03-28T00:15:36 | null | Seattle, at the UW. I already have a great cofounder, but I'd like to meet up for coffee. | null | null | 6,259 | 6,259 | null | null | null | null |
6,738 | comment | herdrick | 2007-03-28T00:16:32 | null | "Always willing to meet for coffee, though." <p>Me too. What are you doing after work today? I'm on the Ave right now. See my profile for contact info. | null | null | 6,290 | 6,259 | null | null | null | null |
6,739 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-28T00:18:15 | null | That sounds like it puts you in approximately the same boat as traditional VCs. | null | null | 6,724 | 6,716 | null | null | null | null |
6,740 | comment | pg | 2007-03-28T00:21:15 | null | Part of the reason the number of applications isn't that much higher than it was the first time is that we've changed our approach to founders. Initially we pitched YC as a substitute for a summer job for students. Then we realized that we wanted people more committed than that-- that it was actually bad to fund people still in school, in fact, because it's so easy for them to give up. <p>We will fund people still in school. (The founders of Weebly were.) But they have to be serious about starting a company. | null | null | 6,708 | 6,668 | null | [
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6,741 | comment | abossy | 2007-03-28T00:22:07 | null | I don't understand -- how are accounting packages or groupware examples of goods that don't solve a problem for oneself? <p>If I need to manage my money and taxes, I can build software for that. <p>If I need to develop some kind of collaboration tool to help me work better with teams at school, or on an open-source project (both not inherently business domains), I can build software for that. <p>Business tools are merely extensions of these. Unless I missed it, PG never mentions good product ideas targeted at businesses, so I am unclear as to where there is a contradicition. His mantra is to go for a wide user base, which typically requires mainstream business ideas, i.e., business-to-consumer, not business-to-business. | null | null | 6,735 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,742 | comment | domp | 2007-03-28T00:22:33 | null | Paul, I really liked your point about the change in the business world. I also feel that the current model is shifting into a more favorable situation for individuals.<p>I think it might be the change in perception. My parents, and people around their age, seem to have a different perspective on what a job means. They see work as a smaller role in their life. "Work just pays the bills". But most younger generations seem to put more of an emphasis on their careers. They see work as the main part of their life. It could be due to the amount of money that we pay for college tuition. I know I don't want to waste my degree and years of my life doing someone else's work. I'd rather have the comfort and responsibility to be left alone to do my own work. Maybe I'm just speaking about my own situation.<p>
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6,743 | comment | mountaineer | 2007-03-28T00:24:50 | null | null | null | 6,707 | 6,707 | null | null | null | true |
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6,744 | comment | mountaineer | 2007-03-28T00:25:20 | null | Great point.. since I'm just getting started with it, I'll see how it goes this week then look at pulling it back to the blog. It'll be a fun experiment anyway. | null | null | 6,733 | 6,707 | null | [
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6,745 | comment | zach | 2007-03-28T00:31:35 | null | I guess. Not something I relish being on the far side of 30, but freedom of association being what it is, it seems so. | null | null | 6,526 | 6,456 | null | null | null | null |
6,746 | story | jl | 2007-03-28T00:32:19 | From Oxford to Silicon Valley, part two | null | http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6495929.stm | 8 | null | 6,746 | 0 | null | null | null |
6,747 | story | staunch | 2007-03-28T00:33:21 | ATTN: The user "msgbeepa" Is a Spammer Submitting Paid Posts Do Not Upvote | null | 5 | null | 6,747 | 4 | [
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6,748 | comment | staunch | 2007-03-28T00:34:36 | null | I hope I'm a target for kidnapping and billion-dollar lawsuits someday.
| null | null | 6,651 | 6,600 | null | null | null | null |
6,749 | comment | domp | 2007-03-28T00:38:01 | null | No biggie. I've done it too. Someone created a search tool for the YComb news. Check it out.<p><a href="http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com/">http://nycs.bigheadlabs.com/</a> | null | null | 6,728 | 6,681 | null | null | null | null |
6,750 | comment | staunch | 2007-03-28T00:44:22 | null | I think PG's essays and YCN can be a huge boost to scaling YC itself. He wrote of attempting of Huffman coding in the "hardest lessons" essay, perhaps he could also reference comment IDs as well. Maybe something more forum-like is necessary though, where topics can be marked "sticky" forever.<p>If each group of founders leaves behind their answers in a permanent form it seems like that would help with most of the common questions, leaving only the tricky new questions to be answered. | null | null | 6,716 | 6,716 | null | null | null | null |
6,751 | comment | jonmc12 | 2007-03-28T00:47:14 | null | I'm from Austin as well. Plenty of entrepreneurs, plenty of engineers, and enough funding sources. All the pieces are there - I think what we're missing is a real tech startup community. | null | null | 6,358 | 6,302 | null | null | null | null |
6,752 | comment | brezina | 2007-03-28T00:51:53 | null | In my mind there is no question that the limiting factor is Paul's time. The amount of time Paul spends with his portfolio of companies is the integral of the number of companies he funds with 50% decay to account for companies that quit. There is obviously a physical limit at 24 hrs/day. | null | null | 6,718 | 6,716 | null | null | null | null |
6,753 | comment | danw | 2007-03-28T00:56:07 | null | This is the paper where the "43% of facebook messages are spam" claim originates, something which I am inclined to dispute. Other than that its a great look at user habits. The graphs speak for themselves. | null | null | 6,692 | 6,692 | null | [
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] | null | null |
6,754 | story | staunch | 2007-03-28T00:59:17 | Joe Kraus Interview Nov 2005 -- "I love the relationships that you build with people when you're in the trenches trying to make something from nothing." | null | http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2005/11/01/8362816/index.htm | 2 | null | 6,754 | 0 | null | null | null |
6,755 | comment | dougw | 2007-03-28T01:04:48 | null | Paul, there is nothing to the amount of attention given to applicants after acceptance? | null | null | 6,724 | 6,716 | null | null | null | null |
6,756 | comment | notabel | 2007-03-28T01:06:51 | null | I don't find it entirely impossible. After Startup School I talked to Adam D'Angelo about spam on facebook (largely because I'd never seen any); he said that there is a lot of spam activity, but that internal safeguards prevent most of it from ever being visible. If the researchers were using internal, pre-filter datasets, their claim is reasonable. | null | null | 6,753 | 6,692 | null | [
6767
] | null | null |
6,757 | comment | STOpandthink | 2007-03-28T01:16:40 | null | There will be more startups over time, but eventually this growth will hit a limit. There are only so many people who can participate in a startup. Eventually the startups grow and merge with big companies and that's where <i>most</i> of the people will spend their life working. Startup will always remain an adventure fit only for the elite.
| null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,758 | comment | rms | 2007-03-28T01:17:15 | null | I don't get it. | null | null | 6,660 | 6,660 | null | null | null | null |
6,759 | story | rms | 2007-03-28T01:24:08 | Judgment in U.S. v. Robert Tappan Morris | null | http://www.rbs2.com/morris.htm | 4 | null | 6,759 | 5 | [
6802,
6792
] | null | null |
6,760 | comment | Sam_Odio | 2007-03-28T01:26:24 | null | Saw them @ startup school as well, and I could see it being useful. I'm not sure what the business model is, I wouldn't have called it "stupid"<p>I imagine they put the IP warning up in response to the techcrunch press. The real solution would be a message when someone picks up telling them to "Press 1 to stop this service from calling you in the next hour. Press 2 disable it permanently" | null | null | 6,640 | 6,562 | null | null | null | null |
6,761 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-28T01:28:29 | null | Tricks like Nissan's are better-described as just "left-field", not "viral". I don't see how leaving phony keyrings lying around encourages people to pass on a message. | null | null | 6,658 | 6,658 | null | null | null | null |
6,762 | comment | mallipeddi | 2007-03-28T01:36:39 | null | Question to Paul: First of all I've to tell you I'm a big fan of all your essays. But a lot of things which you say in your essays seem to work really well only if you're developing Web 2.0 sites. Version 1 of any Web 2.0 app can be built with 3 people in 3 months with very less capital needs (especially if the founders are fresh grads, all you need to do is to feed them for the three months). So as an investor, I would assume that you don't have to care much about revenue models, business experience & age of the founders, etc because in the event the startup tumbles, you don't stand to lose a lot?<p>But what about bigger projects? Projects which need maybe 10 people working for an year? Hardware? Would your views change when you are asked to invest in projects of these kind? The reason I ask is because I'm a final year CS student in Singapore and I've developed a 360 degree video camera along with a couple of my friends and we've been talking to a lot of angel investors here. They all love the idea and are amazed by the demo but most of the time their major cause of concern is that we don't have business experience and we're very young (21). How would you evaluate an idea like this one (hardware+software)? Would you be interested in seeing something like this sent to YC? Or do you prefer sticking to web 2.0 sites? | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | [
6831
] | null | null |
6,763 | story | Sam_Odio | 2007-03-28T01:37:35 | A student's guide to startups | null | http://paulgraham.com/mit.html | 2 | null | 6,763 | 0 | null | null | null |
6,764 | story | danielha | 2007-03-28T01:39:57 | Yahoo Mail Announces Unlimited Storage | null | http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/yahoo-mail-announces-unlimited-storage/ | 5 | null | 6,764 | 7 | [
6847,
6770,
6771,
6900,
6820,
6774
] | null | null |
6,765 | comment | ecuzzillo | 2007-03-28T01:42:31 | null | I'm only partly covered by this list. It's true that I don't really have an immediately viable potential cofounder, but it's also true that if I had one, I still don't think I would start a startup in the near future. My main problem is that I'm most interested in machine learning and robotics, and neither of those seem particularly friendly to starting a startup. (Alexa doesn't run on robots, so I can't bypass the need for revenue, and selling robots to people other than the government has so far been a fairly limited market.) Grad school is much more friendly that way, and that's what I'm planning to do at the moment. <p>This may change in the next few years, but it doesn't seem like robotics will ever be as low-capital an operation as the Web. | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | [
6796
] | null | null |
6,766 | story | Sam_Odio | 2007-03-28T01:43:16 | Need a startup idea? | null | http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html | 4 | null | 6,766 | 0 | null | null | null |
6,767 | comment | danw | 2007-03-28T01:45:55 | null | Good point. I was concerned that the researches might be counting messages to groups as spam. | null | null | 6,756 | 6,692 | null | null | null | null |
6,768 | comment | chandrab | 2007-03-28T01:56:25 | null | The problem scaling YC is definately time, it sometime sucks that we only have 24hrs/day!...I had a few friends that were VCs and they worked like dogs. A few VCs shuffle you off to a Jr. Associate, which has some negatives, the biggest being that if you had any experience at all, you knew more about running a business than they did. <p>If I was in PG shoes and I had to scale the business, I'd definately recommend getting some Sr. Operational folks with a like-mind to work very closely with the portfolio companies.
| null | null | 6,716 | 6,716 | null | null | null | null |
6,769 | comment | eli | 2007-03-28T02:06:21 | null | Adobe just announced the new version of Flash Lite which includes support for streaming video -- no coincidence | null | null | 6,663 | 6,663 | null | null | null | null |
6,770 | comment | Elfan | 2007-03-28T02:15:52 | null | Google already has them beat:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/strategicpause/434015378/in/set-72157600026714867/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/strategicpause/434015378/in/set-72157600026714867/</a> | null | null | 6,764 | 6,764 | null | null | null | null |
6,771 | comment | hwork | 2007-03-28T02:17:00 | null | Is this really 'leapfrogging' reliable services that offer 2+gigs for space? I don't know about other people's email usages, but gmail has a ceiling I will not be sneaking up on anytime soon. I guess it is nice to know that you do have unlimited space, but I don't think this announcement is nearly as cool as gmail's 1 gig. | null | null | 6,764 | 6,764 | null | null | null | null |
6,772 | comment | pg | 2007-03-28T02:18:04 | null | It's not like anyone upvotes her now. | null | null | 6,747 | 6,747 | null | [
6782
] | null | null |
6,773 | comment | jsjenkins168 | 2007-03-28T02:19:00 | null | I was particularly interested in the reversal Paul made with his opinion on working for a company right after school (before founding a startup).<p>This was something I've always debated myself. I can see how the companies he's funded have shown that working first is probably not necessary. I also understand his argument that trying and failing can teach you more than working for a company would anyway. But I think it really depends on the company. Not all larger tech companies suck. And I'd still argue that working in the corporate environment (even for just a short while) teaches you a lot of valuable lessons. <p>I guess my view is weigh the options. Some larger companies (mainly the people you work with there) can teach you new and diversive things you simply cant learn on your own. Looking back 10 months to when I just graduated, I definitely feel I've learned a lot about accountability and being responsible from the corporate work environment. It also modivates the hell out of you to break free of the mandatory work hours and start something on your own.. | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,774 | comment | amichail | 2007-03-28T02:20:12 | null | How can they detect abuse without violating your privacy? | null | null | 6,764 | 6,764 | null | [
6819
] | null | null |
6,775 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-28T02:20:59 | null | Just looks like a lame self-promoter, not a spammer per se. I echo pg's comment but if something comes along that's actually worth reading, I don't think anything sinister will happen if you upmod it. | null | null | 6,747 | 6,747 | null | null | null | null |
6,776 | comment | Elfan | 2007-03-28T02:22:25 | null | There is a distinction between "revenue is not important" and "if lots of users love you, you can probably figure out how to make money out of it (if you arn't acquired first)". | null | null | 6,729 | 6,668 | null | [
6988
] | null | null |
6,777 | story | amichail | 2007-03-28T02:36:56 | Y Combinator application deadline ambiguity: is it end of day April 1 or end of day April 2? | null | 1 | null | 6,777 | 7 | [
6804,
6784,
6817
] | null | null |
|
6,778 | comment | akkartik | 2007-03-28T02:41:19 | null | Hey, I said something before PG did! Compare footnote 2 with <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=635">http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=635</a><p>I'm sure I wasn't first, but it's cool nonetheless.<p>Startup idea: supporting geographically collocated open source projects to help potential partners get to know each other. It might start out similar to <a href="http://prehacked.com">http://prehacked.com</a> -- allow people to enter projects they're interested in and their geographic location, and cluster similar interests together to show them potential partners. Allow people to say x is similar to y when the system can't figure it out (I always thought reddit should accept hints like x is related to y or not related to y). | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,779 | story | zaidf | 2007-03-28T02:50:54 | News Corp. Exec: "You know, it may turn out that social networks have been, not overhyped, but underhyped." | null | http://valleywag.com/tech/advertising/myspace-underhyped-247601.php | 2 | null | 6,779 | 2 | [
6843,
6821
] | null | null |
6,780 | comment | ladyada | 2007-03-28T02:51:37 | null | "Bloggers aren't responsible for things said in their comments."<p>Sure they are! It's their site, & they have moderation control. Bloggers always delete comments, either spam, off-topic or otherwise. | null | null | 6,706 | 6,689 | null | null | null | null |
6,781 | story | juwo | 2007-03-28T02:54:45 | Is it an abuse or unfair advantage for established companies to apply to YC? | null | 2 | null | 6,781 | 9 | [
6806
] | null | null |
|
6,782 | comment | staunch | 2007-03-28T03:02:24 | null | It does generate <i>some</i> amount of ad revenue from the clicks. Just bothers me, perhaps it shouldn't. I don't mean to blow it out of proportion.
| null | null | 6,772 | 6,747 | null | null | null | null |
6,783 | story | amichail | 2007-03-28T03:08:59 | Forget IQ and EQ, Best Entrepreneurs Have High BQ | null | http://www.larta.org/lavox/articlelinks/2004/041122_bq.asp | 2 | null | 6,783 | 0 | null | null | null |
6,784 | comment | danielha | 2007-03-28T03:09:00 | null | End of April 2nd: <i></i><i>"... by midnight PST on Monday, April 2, 2007"</i><i></i> | null | null | 6,777 | 6,777 | null | [
6788
] | null | null |
6,785 | comment | e1ven | 2007-03-28T03:09:40 | null | I'll admit my mistake. <p>This isn't really a case of viral marketing as much as Compassion marketing, which is targeting a new market. <p>This would have been viral if instead of simply leaving keys on the ground, it encouraged you to "see if you can trick your friends" with the same set of keys, or a similar action element for you to push.<p>Mea culpa, but the point of the article still stands. I apologize for sidelining the conversation with a poor title. <p><p>
To ask a (hopefully) better question, although I fear it may be too late for conversation in this thread- Is there a point where people start becoming less engaged in the world, because they're afraid that every action has a marketing angle behind it..<p>To quote Futurama- <p>
LEELA: Didn't you have ads in the twentieth century?
FRY: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio... and in magazines... and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky. But not in dreams, no sirree.<p>
I worry that as people get more and more used to seeing an ad behind every action, they'll stop caring about the actions, and stop investigating.. <p>Look at the ATHF scare.. Imagine if that were more common, but if it were actually a fake bomb, as the Boston Police had suggested..<p>As you go to open it, it screams "BOO! Too bad you didn't have life insurance. Go to Omahalife.com to get some"<p>
| null | null | 6,658 | 6,658 | null | null | null | null |
6,786 | comment | bootload | 2007-03-28T03:13:54 | null | It's just an observation. Enter the entries into twitter, then use the RSS feed back into your blog as a list. <p>That way not only do you get your own content back to your site (remember it's your data) but readers get a good sense of what the chatter for today is related to the rest of your site.<p> | null | null | 6,744 | 6,707 | null | null | null | null |
6,787 | comment | lupin_sansei | 2007-03-28T03:17:19 | null | Another alternative is to work 4 days a week, and use the extra day for your startup. | null | null | 6,715 | 6,668 | null | [
6801
] | null | null |
6,788 | comment | amichail | 2007-03-28T03:18:17 | null | It's ambiguous:<p><a href="http://tf.nist.gov/general/misc.htm">http://tf.nist.gov/general/misc.htm</a> | null | null | 6,784 | 6,777 | null | [
6790
] | null | null |
6,789 | comment | jmcantrell | 2007-03-28T03:19:48 | null | Fantastic essay. Now I'm all pumped up. As soon as I find a colleague that I want to share an office with, I'll be submitting an application :)
| null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,790 | comment | danielha | 2007-03-28T03:26:11 | null | I think it's safe to assume that YC is not trying to trick applicants by playing with abbreviation semantics. <p>By midnight means before midnight on April 2nd. If this is really turning your world upside down, make your personal deadline April 1st. | null | null | 6,788 | 6,777 | null | [
6858
] | null | null |
6,791 | comment | Alex3917 | 2007-03-28T03:27:21 | null | "It's exciting to think we may be on the cusp of another shift like the one from farming to manufacturing."<p>The biggest reason why startups are so much more feasible now than ever before is because of the plummeting costs of production. Whereas twenty years ago it would have taken millions of dollars to do a startup, today a college kid with a powerbook can do one in his dorm room. Every year the tools of production get exponentially more powerful and less expensive.<p>To play devil's advocate, these same factors that are currently driving startups may ultimately be their demise as well. Almost every tool can be used for both good and evil. A hammer can be used to drive a nail, or also to harm someone. Governments have taken it on themselves to try to allow the good uses of any given technology while regulating the evil purposes. The problem is that every time they try to regulate away an evil, there is inevitably a little spill over that prevents us from using the technology for good. Every time a powerful new technology is invented, we end up losing little bits of our rights and civil liberties. <p>As technologies exponentiate in both their power and interconnectedness, it seems as if society (at least ours) will go down the road of increasingly restricting freedoms in order to prevent terrorism and other evils.<p>It isn't hard to imagine that as the costs of production approach zero, so will the freedoms that enable us to start startups. In many countries, such as Japan and Germany, it is so hard to do anything other than the status quo that it is effectively illegal. In Germany the government subsidizes the wages of students finishing school, which makes it effectively impossible to get a job without graduating. And in Japan it's even worse.<p>If the past is any indicator, the same forces driving the boom in startups are ultimately going to be drivers in forcing people into more restrictive social structures. <p>N.B. I don't necessarily believe this, but I think it is a serious argument that has never really been rebutted. Perhaps because the guy who proposed the idea was driven insane by it is currently doing life in prison for killing a bunch of people (Kaczynksi). | null | null | 6,668 | 6,668 | null | [
6941
] | null | null |
6,792 | comment | dfranke | 2007-03-28T03:28:51 | null | Do we <i>really</i> need to keep rubbing this in? | null | null | 6,759 | 6,759 | null | [
6823
] | null | null |
6,793 | comment | lkozma | 2007-03-28T03:30:02 | null | It's exactly the "connections" part that doesn't scale. Paul can mention 4 startups on his page, and hint two other apps he uses, but if he would list 20, probably no-one would check them. | null | null | 6,700 | 6,668 | null | null | null | null |
6,794 | story | danielha | 2007-03-28T03:30:56 | Tech's Next Gen: The Best and Brightest | null | http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/03/0326_tech_entrepreneurs/index_01.htm?chan=home+page+slideshows | 1 | null | 6,794 | 1 | [
6795
] | null | null |
6,795 | comment | danielha | 2007-03-28T03:32:17 | null | Check out who made #9.<p>Here's the full article: <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070326_934874.htm">http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070326_934874.htm</a> | null | null | 6,794 | 6,794 | null | null | null | null |
6,796 | comment | lkozma | 2007-03-28T03:35:05 | null | Grad school is more friendly only in the sense that you are not constrained to make things that people want. | null | null | 6,765 | 6,668 | null | [
6800,
6989
] | null | null |
6,797 | comment | whacked_new | 2007-03-28T03:41:41 | null | From my severely uneducated impression of TV shows, I find it very interesting I haven't seen any popular reality TV show in Asia. In USA and every other channel seemed to be a reality TV show of some sort. Even if it's not 24/7 reality, it's always about being off the set and appearing unscripted. I wonder if audiences in Asia simply don't find reality TV interesting; in connection I am interested in the expandability of this market beyond what we currently see, plus perhaps a few more well-executed internet personalities, following Justin (also recall lonelygirl15). They sure seem like an impressive team, but I sure don't seem like the target audience. | null | null | 6,662 | 6,656 | null | null | null | null |
6,798 | comment | Alex3917 | 2007-03-28T03:41:45 | null | So there are basically two factors then:<p>1) Smart people within YC<p>2) Smart people applying to YC<p>So basically you have to find the optimal ratio and then grow both in proportion. :-) | null | null | 6,724 | 6,716 | null | null | null | null |
6,799 | story | danielha | 2007-03-28T03:42:17 | MySpace Generating Over $30 Million a Month | null | http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2007/03/27/news-corp-myspace-generating-over-30-million-a-month-in-revs-pali-research-says/ | 1 | null | 6,799 | 0 | null | null | null |
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