skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In response to your point: …getting a startup to ANY traction is hard enough…you think you're that much more effective than other founders that you can pull it off part-time?

I agree that getting any traction is difficult, which is the primary reason I am trying to spread the risk through multiple projects. Entrepreneurs usually put all their eggs in one basket, to the extent that the average return on entrepreneurship ends up being less than the opportunity cost of getting a standard job. I simply don’t think this is necessary, especially in the realm of Internet startups.

Of course I am also interested in other alternatives to spreading the risk, e.g. entrepreneur collectives, equity swaps and the like. But I have yet to see anything where the numbers work out well. So I ended up with this approach (for now).

Anyway, having had some success and actively reflecting on it and others, I have come to believe that usually success can be traced to a making a few good decisions or coming up with a few good ideas and then executing those decisions and ideas exceptionally well. Coming up with those good few is the hard part, in my opinion.

In my experience, however, this risk distribution approach has yielded me those good decisions and ideas faster. Maybe it is letting things ruminate more instead of moving at 100mph all the time. Maybe it is just me. I don’t know. But the less time has not been an impediment to date, and I think it has actually helped move in the right direction more of the time. Like I said in the post, “Needless to say, I have to work smart and efficiently for this principle to even be executable.” I guess it wasn’t “needless to say.”

As for executing exceptionally well, that is where the other principles come in (see my other response).
I do not mean how to do it from the inside, I mean how do you change big organizations as software/service provider. On one side, the guys who cut big checks want to control the feature set.

And on the flip side, the big companies are not allowed or are unwilling to pay for web 2.0 server based services such as Basecamp (there are stories of companies forcing employees to shut down basecamp accounts).

In many ways, it seems hopeless. We have to wait for a new generation of employees and IT people who grew up with facebook to take over these organizations.
There is also incredible bureaucracy, such that attempting iterative agile development is almost certainly doomed.

One reason many Web apps are so sleek and fit is that the developers could code, release, judge, and repeat daily.

This is much harder to do with large entities, who a) will need to present Accounting with the One True Final Cost for pre-approval and budgeting, and b) will need to have Official Sign-Off on the Absolute Final Specs from some dozen department heads.
What kind of products? I am looking for developers. Do you have a url?
Get admitted into YC. Then you'll be on TC.
There is a lot of knowledge that can be shared within a company, and even more within a given industry or line of work. Tons of networking opportunities - I think.
I remember downloading lfe when it first came out, and being stumped at the first step. I've run some simple erlang examples in the past, that's the level of my experience. Is there an article out there to take an erlang newbie by the hand through and provide the compile/load incantations to get to a simple running lfe program?

Without making any sort of general claim, I notice that what I learn in one session of erlang is very easily lost/forgotten. It's like perl in this respect.

And don't tell me the people who object to erlang syntax haven't tried it :) (I say that about people who object to python's indentation) I've tried it. It's extremely hard to keep in one's head, and takes simply too long to become part of 'muscle memory'.

Anyway, pointers to get started would be most appreciated. It's probably counterproductive to my interests to criticize while I ask for help :)
"Earlier this afternoon, during alterations to our administrator code, "

The thought of them just doing live deploy freaks me out.. not the best practice.. ever.. ever .. for a major site like theirs
The Apple "i" [video]
Why is Loopt the cheapest? PG says they are going to take over the world. They have a deal with Boost Mobile.
i think "exit strategy" when coming out of the mouth of a founder usually means exit from illiquidity rather than exit from the business completely. exit from illiquidity just makes sense (as paul graham and legions of corporate finance professors have pointed out) because it means liquidity which gives the opportunity of diversification, which is important to everyone.
:)

Semantic web jokes are the best..
Given the audience here on HN, it would make sense to include the link in your question. This would be the community in which to gain awareness.
Try delivering this "information" in text:

http://www.lecoqsportif.com/#/us/all/
I was working at Intel in Santa Clara. As for skepticism, I'm always skeptical, but I liked the people and product, so...
Would of created the Semantic Web initially.. would of solved data integration problems on the way too!
this is awsomely amusing
Web dizajn
Marc Andreessen says, to "[raise] as much as you can. Without giving away control of your company, and without being insane." (http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/the-pmarca-guid.html)

I don't have the experience to say whether or not I agree, but it's another viewpoint worth considering.
If you choose George Orwell's 1984, the #1 match is the USA Patriot Act.

It would be an impressive demonstration of the algorithm, except that it appears to be an easter-egg.
One of the comments on that page ("Jeremy") kept going off on how terrible YouTube is:
'Obviously it was forced on them by the giant failure "YouTube".'
What is he talking about? I thought YouTube was extremely successful, so much so that Google bought them out?
You need to have an excelent software development cycle. I am in the US, my partner and clients are in Zurich, and my development team is in Cali, Colombia, South America! and it works perfectly!
That's true, plus you have to be pretty smart to graduate medical school.
I agree. I recently presented at a local angel and VC conference. Many people believed in our idea, but we were asking for $500K. I already had a high profile company who had already signed an agreement to conduct a trial with us. The $500K was to be used for the trial as well as marketing. I got the same comments about traction, looking for later stage companies. At this point, I would rather take a loan out from a bank or arrange some creative funding than go to a VC again.

I think sometimes it really comes down to guts. We can all site and do the risk analysis on a good or bad investment, but a gut call has to be made in the end. I think for one reason or another most VC's have lost the mindset. It may also be the change in the environment. The dot bomb may have left serious psychological impediments that most VCs do not want to relive so they shy away from these investments even though it can provide sensational returns.
He's a computer freedom activist. Worked for the EFF, anti-DRM campaigner, etc. Not that anyone should need special qualifications before they stand up for their rights.
Sometimes you cash in, sometimes you cash it in
A tale of two companies both with promising software. One cashes out to AOL for $25 million and the other is forced to shut down. A very realistic tale of the startup life.
Yeah, but they're arguing a level higher than that. They're saying the security measures Apple is using are illegal. In that case, the DMCA is rendered irrelevant, right? You can't protect illegal protection schemes.
You need to see different parts of the country. Where I live, programming jobs are $30-40k or a 2+ hour commute. People with 6+ years of experience are taking these jobs and the entry-level guys are relocating or selling fast food.
In response to your point: What happens when one starts to take off? You'll either leave opportunity on the table or you'll ditch your other ones (screwing all of your other "partners").

This has been something I have been thinking about a lot lately, and is certainly a potential issue, but also certainly not as dramatic or black and white as you have stated.

Here is some background. Previously, I had two businesses, one with myself and one with a partner. My partner also had another business. When our joint business “took off” (two years in) I had just signed up for a two year graduate school program to take on the side (though for the other students it was their full time gig).

We talked about me not going to the program, but I ultimately did. And when that happened, nothing got dropped and I don’t think any opportunity was left on the table either. In fact, I believe my program helped contribute greatly to our success as I was able to bring in various ideas from the program. Again, I think this is a benefit of spreading risk and having multiple things floating around in your head all the time.

Yes, there were crazy hours for a while, but I was able to meet all my obligations quite well. And nothing really changed fundamentally when we “took off” except we were making a lot more money and having a lot more fun!

This time around, I expect to be in even a better position to manage a “take off,” which I hope happens, but I am not expecting such. After all, like you say, any traction is difficult.
7 Principles of Effective Icon Design
Amazon is promising low latency to the new storage system... the question is, how low is low, and what issues will surface when mounting such this storage on multiple EC2 instances (perhaps even on non-EC2 machines?).
It kind of depends on what your strategy is. Netscape had to staff up quick so they raised as much as they could. In their case, they needed as much as they could get, I suppose.
Also, my biggest hangup is not a lack of creativity but the courage to see my creative ideas through, despite others not getting it. I know there are people like mixmax who can just throw together a bar in Ibiza and be wildly successful, but I don't know why I can't do stuff like that.
Yeah, I've noticed something similar in myself. Once I've actually seen a difficult problem through on my own initiative, I can see my crazy ideas are actually insightful. I just need to develop that confidence, which is hard.
That's an interesting point. Now's a good time to say IANAL and I'm just speculating, but as I understand it they're not really arguing that Apple's security measures are illegal, but that their business practices are illegal; Apple is entitled to have whatever security they'd like. If that's true, then the DMCA violation would still stand.
Programmer pops question on girlfriend's video game
I know that this isn't traditional news.yc fair, but nearly every application created these days needs a full compliment of graphical elements.

We're having some custom created for us, and some, we're making ourselves (Eugh).
The programmer's blog:
http://www.xanga.com/p3ng/635897016/a-nerdy-proposal-story-i...
It is my understanding that VCs will never hunt you down and beg you to take their money. Even if everything goes perfect as far as they're concerned, it will be a while before you would get a check. The VCs want to meet with you for two reasons:

1. They are interested or invested in what you are doing. They may be planning on investing in that market, or they may have even already invested in a startup and want to scout out their competition. They may also be invested in a complimentary area and are thinking about how what you're doing could add value to what they already have.

2. They are curious and think that what you're doing has potential (read: They think you can make them money). They may or may not try to invest, but the possibility of investing is used as "bait" to get you to meet with them... except in this case you don't want the bait.

In either case, I suggest meeting with them. Let them take you along for the ride, but always be cautious. There is a possibility that you could benefit from their contacts, and starting the money talks now will help if/when you need it in the future. Just be aware of the fact that they might be meeting with you to gather information that can be used against you.

Good luck! You've obviously started something that has at least got their attention - for better or worse!
New battery prototype may mean the end of exploding laptops
Mike K makes a great point. As hardware becomes inconsequential, we identify less with what we have and more with what we can do.

No one cares what model of harpsichord Bach played (maybe harpsichord players do).
That wouldn't solve their problems in long run. Only just enough until grub runs out again. Then you're back to square one.
do you want the organic-style "cream of the crop rises to the top"-style ranking that the digg and reddit front pages use?

what have you tried so far?
Excellent examples.

One lesson I would draw from this: Stop pretending that computers can think -- which they can't -- and start thinking of ways that a computer can help a human do everything but the thinking. Think cyborg, not robot.
Ah. So you retain all editorial control. We are your bitches.
$50,000. It was met very early, but the price went from $70k to $250k in the last 2 hours.
i think you're the one kidding yourself. by "most of the country" do you mean seattle, NYC, and california? i work in a middle-america capital city and i make half what you're quoting as a software engineer with 3-4 years experience and i'm in a leadership position. in addition, i'm working at the best paying employer in the city in which i work.

also, working full time on a startup means that you're going to not be making top dollar for your local market. if my time is devoted to being a full time hacker, i'm not going to have the stability of a regular paycheck or benefits. money will be an issue.

sure, there are tons of startups that are gearing themselves to flip. but you're seeing a lot of them because the ones trying to be flipped are all in-your-face. they have to be extremely well-known in order to be flippable. there are tons of sustainable stealth startups that are just not that well-known because their business model is different.
The Death of the Mobile Web has been Greatly Exaggerated
DIY: The Wifi Predator
There are about 30 editors, actually.
The best ideas come to me when I am stoned. I have a set of huge white boards, I smoke a little then doodle. 95% is not worth much the next day, but some of the ways my mind drifts and connects is awesome.
You might find this book useful: "A Technique for Producing Ideas", by James Young. Exceedingly short, simple, meant for advertising, but helpful for any industry.

http://www.amazon.com/Technique-Producing-Advertising-Classi...
NVIDIA 8800GT for Older Mac Pros Now Available
Ask HN: American web working abroad
i did some cursory searching on the topic and it was brought up in spots in other threads, but i was looking for input specifically on this topic.

i'm giving some consideration to living in another country while doing some freelance stuff and working on startups based in the US. and maintaining my US citizenship.

anyone have any thoughts/experience/etc. on this? any input on the legality and/or visa requirements of doing it? any countries specifically friendly to this type of work? etc..
Super Mario Bros theme performed by an RC car on a row of liquid-filled bottles
Yeah, facebook + loopt = killer app
Why mod_rails is great for light-duty Rails apps
101 Great Computer Programming Quotes
"I think Microsoft named .Net so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory listing."
Notes from the Jeff Bezos Talk
Note: see followup here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164849
Subsistence farmers grow crops using traditional methods mostly. They're insulated from the fuel costs etc. that generally drive up the cost of production for the big producers.

Subsistence farmers also tend to bring to market a small portion of their crop. The hope is that as food prices rise, the amount each farmer receives for the crop sold will go up to the point where he can start to invest in his equipment to improve the efficiency of his methods, grow more and sell it, and integrate himself into the global economy.

Eventually, this turns poor subsistence farmers into wealthier cash crop farmers.
> Suppose instead you split that investment between 10 companies at a tenth the valuation. How confident do you have to be that any given one will become a billion dollar company?

You'd have to be more confident in aggregate.

Let's say in the former case you have a 50% certainty with one company; and in the latter case you have 5% confidence with each of 10 companies.

The chance that NONE of them succeed to that degree is 0.95^10, or about 60%. So only a 40% chance someone will make it, vs. 50% for the former.

With smaller probabilities the difference is less, but guesstimating at billions is such a crapshoot. How about something more realistic?

How about doubling your money: Let's say you put $1 mil into the former company. If it doubles its worth, you've doubled your money. But in the $100k for each of 10 companies case, they all have to double their worth, or one has to grow 20x.

Let's say you think it's a 50% safe bet in the former case, but a whopping 90% chance in the smaller cases. The chance they ALL double up is 0.90^10, or about 35%. So you're probably losing money.

Sure, some might do 3x or 4x to make up for a couple of the flops, but you probably aren't going to let a 100k investment just die; you'll be sinking more into the money losers, so the successes have to do even better to make up for the bailouts.
There's a difference between "fancy boxes" and a reputable website design.

You think the current website is sufficient for the company to gain significant online purchases? It's not.

They don't have to overdo it, just make it usable.
VideoIQ High Performance IPCamera
SiSTeR Technologies, best known for our videocarlot product.

Link: http://videocarlot.tv
Presumably the two YC companies there have the smallest valuations of the companies on the board, but are representative YC companies that raised Series A's. Loopt should be more expensive than Scribd though, they've raised four times as much funding.

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/scribd
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/loopt
Kaltura - Open Source Video Platform Directly Challenges Videoegg
I see uncle john's bathroom reader is still going strong. As a joke in college I submitted a paper whose 6 or 7 citations were all from the "bathroom reader".
Bitching is the killer app for Twitter
You don't. Lower the price and focus on top priority features. Also, focus on small-medium business.

Microsoft does this against IBM. Most Enterprise Business Units at Microsoft starts at the small-medium size business and work their way up toward IBM's level.
Also, and this is absolutely important, keep a small notepad and pen(cil) nearby, and write down your ideas the instant they come. You'd be surprised how many great ideas we have and forget. Remember to note the date, and how you came up with the idea. If you're without writing tools, set a reminder in your phone to a time when you know you'll be home, but it is imperative you record it.

Don't be afraid if ideas come out of sequence. I'm getting into freelance graphic design, and one evening I just started writing the word 'concept' in all sorts of ways, using 'k' instead of 'c', and then drew a capital 'T' with the letters 'concep' under it. Then I thought: let's try another letter. So I drew a capital 'S', but with a straight vertical line and 2 horizontal lines instead of curves, and had 'con' down the left side and 'ept' down the right. It looked good, but I wanted to explore some more. So I tried the letter 'C', and wrote 'oncept' inside it following the shape of the 'C'. That was the first breakthrough: it looked like half of a clock. So I draw a full clock, and what do you know, the letters in 'concept correspond perfectly to the number positions on a clock face! So 12 o'clock is a 'C', 11 and 1 o'clock are 'O' etc. So I found myself with a clock with the word 'concept' on it twice... two concepts. A little more brainstorming gave me the final name "Twin-Concept." This is what I meant by ideas out of sequence: normally, you'd come up with the company name and then design the logo, but I was determined to use that logo, and so I named the company after the logo! The hour marks are set in green, to give it that 'glow in the dark look.' Against a black background, it's sexy.

Oh, and did I mention that you should write down ideas as soon as they come?
"Creating a sustainable business has been my lifetime dream,"

GoDaddy.com is an example of a company that has been a success and generates a large positive cash flow for it's single founder.
Talk to your friends in other industries about what problems they have around the office.

Chances are that more companies are facing similar problems, and marketing a solution to a known problem is more effective than showing up on their doorstep and telling them their software sucks.

This thread made me realize that a problem my boss has been complaining is a good opportunity for a startup.
TOTALLY TIMELY. thank you for this.

it's like rock bands that sell out to major labels for big advances and then sell like 10,000 records and wind up owing the label. and you know the LABEL ruined the band.

good web startups aren't about money, they're about building something new. as fugazi puts it, "when we have nothing left to give there'll be no reason for us to live". basically, google was JUST GETTING STARTED and they KNEW it - they were following a brilliant brand into the infinite sun with no knowledge of how they'd milk it until all of a sudden the answer popped into their (well Bill Gross's) head.

so selling out means you're done developing the product. that is cool if you go design something else, but generally, the product winds up being dead on the vine. big companies buy small companies to scare and posture at other big companies and grab a few headlines.

in order to get acquired, you've got to have a "hit". some bands are one hit wonders. these bands like to work with major labels, which is OK if it makes the radio a bit cooler that summer (cf Cracker). but the major labels buried the Gang of Four, just as surely as they'd snip Twitter's in-house innovation capacity in the bud. That said, if the Twitter guys are "done" with innovating, good for them, go ahead and exit! but i hardly believe Twitter is done developing their product. therefore, NO SALE, and the chance for Twitter to unleash a bidding war for a tiny sliver of equity such as what was engineered by Facebook.

- Srini Kumar
MetaNotes.com
Hah, everybody was in here saying the sky was falling and they would be shut down overnight, but it turns out this lawsuit threat isn't as real as it seems.
I bet those people are living like kings in whatever east european country they are in.
OpenLaszlo can create rich internet applications in its own LZX format, which can compile down to Flash or DHTML. Cool stuff.
Exactly! That's what we're doing in our own niche right now (launching in 1.5 months). Our first phase is targeting businesses exclusively, although for now not the larger ones because those take mega time and $$$ to sell to (which is why software they buy always costs so much...).

Look at Basecamp and Highrise and you'll see plenty of proof that this strategy is totally viable.

The other huge advantage a web-based app can offer over the traditional corporate apps, which those apps can't easily compete with once you start rolling, is that there's no hardware + license fees, only a monthly service subscription. You take the headache and high initial cost out of it, and you open these types of apps to a much wider class of businesses too.