skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A good read, but I find it interesting that his answer to the "what would you do if just starting out" question is the bland and obvious:

"some kind of web based business"

Well, yeah, thanks Rich that's a great help!

This is why I love the openness of PG&co - compare their "ideas we'd like to fund" section - http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html
Start part-time.
Figure out how to reduce time you waste on your full-time job.
Get some angel money - you will need some prototype for that though.
Reduce your monthly spending and pay off loans first.
Join early stage startup that is willing to pay some salary since the beginning.
Just some obvious advices on top of my head.

OR

Maybe startup isnt for you? Thats just fine, its not for everyone and millions enjoy happy lives and families being employed. Once you admit this it may become less emotional for you and you might actually feel much better mentally!

I think its kind of problem for many readers here: HN pushes that mantra that every hacker have to start something himself.
The "This is my child" mentality is what i would worry about. They treat their dog like a human and expect everyone else to do the same.
Python code that writes a multibyte long integer value over serial to Arduino
Sorry, faulty memory...
Does your Startup have a Club?
I don't understand. Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'weird' and why the BSD's do better?
Was going to say the same thing. Gotta keep a steady income to manage student debt. My wife is also working on a masters.

I'm still working on it at night, got a new idea this past month and working making it happen at home after work. Also got the company setup but other than that, I can't quit working the day job.
It's missing Lovelace (Ll), the standard unit of suckiness.

http://www.infonet.ee/~sbernard/asr/computer.html
I have the same issue. I just started my company part-time on the side and it has worked out so far. Things move a bit slower but you don't have to worry about funding or coming up with enough every month to pay for the house.
Umm, So if someone has done something similar before - there is no reason to start?? Then I think pg can safely shut ALL YC companies and call it a day :) And call google and and ask them to shut down the company as yahoo was founded earlier. )))))
Thoughts on Yahoo BOSS Monetization II
School is what did it for me, my program was pretty rigorous and I didn't want to mortgage my future by letting my grades suffer. Plus, I was working full time anyway. I just waited until 2 months before I graduated, started my LLC and have been slowly working at it ever since. We're just about ready to ship our first product and I didn't even quit my job. My main suggestion, write down your ideas as you have them and keep them somewhere for later when you have more time.
They actually did a similar thing a while ago in Boston - Using an old Hood Milk plant as a datacenter...I believe it has since changed hands though.
Q: What are the top three ways to find funding for a new business?

OP's answer overlooks the top one way to fund a new business: your first customer.

Think about it, most of us already have everything we need to go into a software business: a computer, bandwidth, a little gray matter, a little desire, and a decent chair. All that's really missing is a customer.

Find someone who is willing to pay for something, build it for them, and get paid. You've just knocked off multiple birds with one stone.

Funny how often this is overlooked.
It's a fair comparison, Ed (though I never think good ol' paper magazine is something that we could be replaced. It's just a different reading experience).

Let's put it this way: This is the only way Hacker Monthly could move forward and sustain.

Don't get me wrong. I love working on Hacker Monthly and enjoyed every seconds I spent on it (this came by surprise, actually). I love sending email to authors asking for permission (and sometimes have a lil conversation), spending days after days on the design, curating articles and so on. I love it all, except one thing, it took too much time.

The money we made on the past issues (advertising + print magazine sales) is, simply put, so little that it could not justify 10% of the time we spent on making for the magazine. I have to spent the rest of my time working freelance contract work to pay bills. And honestly, the past two issues wouldn't be made possible without the voluntary help from Ricky (who worked so much more than just a proofreader, thank you!).

We believe Hacker Monthly provides so much value for the readers that we could charge for it. The subscription revenue would enable us continue to produce really high quality stuff for years to come, without burning ourselves out.

I hope that explains well.
This reminds me of google's April fool's joke "gmail paper" about converting emails to traditional post.
Yes, but would those companies have become popular if there hadn't been a free version in the beginning? Would as many invest in an unknown product in the beginning to eventually make it known?
Entrepreneurial Tightrope: The over-50 crowd is a lively bunch
why would you carry a sword or a gun onto a university campus?

You don't ask why I'd carry a book, or an MP3 player, or a peanut butter sandwich. Why is it any of your business why I'd carry my sidearm? But to be pedantic:
* I'm on the shooting team, going to practice
* My boyfriend threatened to kill me
* My class project is to engineer a new trigger mechanism
* I just like to
* etc.

What I choose to carry is my own damned business. If I create a danger to others, that's a different story, but simply carrying a gun or a sword poses no more danger than countless other things that we constantly ignore (say, driving).

most people would needlessly have to drag weaponry around

Not true. First, the guns would have a deterrent effect even if only a non-trivial minority had them. So long as we're creating a good chance that a bad guy will be met with resistance, we're achieving something. It doesn't need to be a certainty.

Second, how many people lug around golf clubs in their trunk all the time? And, how many people are permanently attached to their cell phone? Heck, a sidearm is a whole lot smaller than a purse; a woman can just put it into her purse, so what's the big deal?
Apple to do payments?
You are our first digital subscriber (and followed by a whole lot more).

Thank you all.
UglifyJS: A Fast JavaScript Compressor For Node.js That’s On Par With Closure
0.8% of free user accounts eventually upgraded to paid.

When only 1% of users were using paid?! That's doubling your paid user-base!
I have to graduate college--I've committed myself fully to school. In the meantime, I try to learn as much as I can from personal projects, internships and interactions with those in the startup community.

I'll feel ready to do something big (and have enough knowledge to possibly succeed) in a couple of years.
E-Junkie should've that handle. If it miss it the first time (while you're at the shopping cart), it will include it when you are about to pay in the PayPal page.
It might be that startup is not for you. I'd suggest to stop reading HN(as it can be very dangerous for you mental happines-constant glory tales to founders) and find a way to increase your salary on f-t position. I dont know what are you doing but i think you can set goal of making 2-3x of you current salary. There are better resources to read to archive that goal

DISC: Above is just my imho, listen with caution, i dont know your story well enough to advice.
The problem is context. A formula means nothing without it. Identifying the correct context (or even just the most likely one) for a formula is Not Easy.

Different fields within maths, engineering & physics frequently reuse names and symbols to mean different things, so formulas which look the same can have completely different meanings. And as you alluded to, formulas which look different can end up meaning the same thing.

MathML is split into presentation markup and content markup. The presentation markup describes the rendering of a formula; the content markup describes its semantics. If anyone actually used the semantic markup, it could help with this problem.
Panopticlick - How Unique and Trackable is Your Browser?
Buy one way ticket to SF

PS:
I dont know why somebody downvoted this and dont really care about that. This was a case that changed lives for at least two friends of mine. I hope somebody might benefit from that. Its a question of like $500 for somebody in the UK. I fail to understand when ppl from well-developed countries complain for such small issues. Read what it takes from somebody from india china or pakistan to get to where you are right now and get how PRIVILEGED and blessed are you !
I guess for Richard Branson cases, the initial capital requirement for consumer oriented media/air line/mobile/finance ventures probably is larger than revenue from initial customers.
Is the U.S. turning a corner on high-speed rail?
Empathy and Perspective
Yes. We started our hedge fund accounting business six years ago with one customer, and I still have a copy of that first check. I like what Branson says here:

"I felt our limited capital kept us focused on finding the next great act, and ultimately this was a real contributing factor to our success."

Our business may not be worth huge sums of money, but it pays the bills, and that makes it a prize indeed.
I know student debt sucks. (( Try to pay it off as fast as you can. Set a goal of paying it of in 1 yr
"an HTC representative let slip"

Do PR people really let things 'slip'? To let something slip is usually indicative of an accidental giveaway. If a PR person tells a tablet-oriented site that HTC are working on a tablet too, surely this is a regular announcement without any useful or interesting details?

At the very least, HTC could have bought a blogger to circulate rumours or pointed a trade magazine to 'expose' an order from a supplier's factory. It's this attention to detail that put Apple ahead of the crowd!

I've been holding off and holding off, waiting for a decent iPad competitor to come along and it seems that there could be a few in 6 months or so - Notion Ink's Adam looks very nice and I am sure that HTC's tablet will be pretty too. However, Apple have shipped, the thing works and it has a reasonable software ecosystem. I can actually go to a shop and buy one.

Since I actually want a tablet-like device, I can't really think of any reason not to buy an iPad right now. Why has it taken so long for competitors to provide an alternative?
Ask HN: Selling domains, upselling, coupons and others.
After a few hours of getting harassed with a management panel from a famous domain registrar (that should not be named), I asked myself why couldn't there be a domain seller focused on selling domains with a no non-sense control panel, no upselling and no "coupons"/"discounts".

I knew the market was saturated, but I decided to research about it anyways and now I have the following question:

Would you buy/transfer your domains to a place where the fixed price would be $10 per domain/year, with no upselling (none at all), no hidden fees, free privacy (turn it on and off at any time) and a modern uncluttered control panel?

If not, what makes you stay with your current domain registrar?
Certainly, but just trying to point out there are costs to every decision and the unbridled optimism of the OP is annoying. Trying to bootstrap right out of college will lead to more bad outcomes, in my opinion, than just about any other choice.
When does JavaScript trigger reflows and rendering?
Hipmunk (YC S10) Embarks on Mission to Make Travel Search Easier
That's one name for it! ;)
>Food is neither a fashion nor a way of life. Avoid eating meals with anyone who describes themselves as a “foodie”.

Not all foodies are hipsters. Some foodies have a very healthy relationship with food that we could all learn from.
In Singapore you also have a very high chance of getting caught. The change of getting caught is a much better prediction for crime than the severity of punishment.
But how many free users came in in the mean time? Maybe the raw number was doubling but the paid user percentage wasn't. And even it was he found a way to get an 800% increase.
Case Study: PDX API with geo data and CouchDB
H1B sucks i know :( Sort of legal "voluntary" slavery. Maybe startup is not for you and you should focus on your core job, master at it and look for career grows? For that you might want to stop reading HN too much and focus on relevant sources.
NASA shuttle launch video from the perspective of a solid rocket booster
Scaling an AWS infrastructure - Tools and Patterns
He's not being bland and obvious, it's just bland and obvious to us. Online business is still a smart part of business in general, to someone of Richard's age who gets as many pitches as he does "web based" is not bland and obvious. That's my take anyway.
Ask HN: Has a candidate's political views ever stopped you from hiring them?
We're hiring a bunch of people for one of my startups and I checked each of their FB profiles (for whatever reason) and I noticed one candidate has some political views that I strongly disagree with. Now I've already decided to hire them because they are very talented and I don't feel any differently towards them because of our differences in opinion, but I'm wondering if anyone out there has not hired (or not been hired themselves) because of differing political views?
How about this as a modern alternative: http://soundcloud.com/shamantis/j-biebz-u-smile-800-slower
How many lives would he ruin if drugs were not illegal?
Looks like "the web changes everything" is coming around full circle. To see the future one need only look in the past. What are retailers doing today? They've been at this for, what? Thousands of years, right?

In other words: some things are going to be expected to simply be provided (e.g. free wifi at starbucks). Some things people are just not going to pay much for, not even as much as you did (e.g. loss leaders like Milk). Some things you can mark way up.
Adding: Just noticed that some of the email servers are responding back saying they will accept a max of 10 emails per connection.

I am sure every emailing receiving server has its own darn rules, so how do large cos manage sending emails to all such services without getting blocked or by adhering to the random rules of each of the email receiving servers?
It sounds a bit like you want to have your first customers bear your entire initial costs (500 * 88 is over $40k). This is great if you can swing it seems very unlikely if you price yourself entirely beyond what people are used to paying for a monthly print magazine. I think it also cuts out any potential customers who might be willing to pay some non-excessive premium.

There are less blunt instruments than sticker-shocking your entire market - for instance you can offer cheaper print subs and a fancier, Super Platinum Premium Founder's Club version for those who feel like being generous - let's say, 3 years, maybe throw in some advertising space and a mention on a thank you page, etc.
Discussing University Entrepreneurship in NYC with MIT's Entrepreneurship Review
People have no bloody idea about saving energy
Books vs. E-Books
You count part-time as having started one's dream company?
It's far easier reject a candidate up front than it is to fire them later.

I don't have any data, but I know of several companies that take 'culture fit' very seriously and won't hire a candidate if they feel that they won't fit in.
You mention burned out. Could you not take a break away for bit? You also mentioned you spent a considerable amount of time building the base, thus I'm assuming you have put in more time and effort than the others. Why not try and take a week or a month away (either doing something else or vacation) and see if you feel any different? You will get a chance to think and solidify your decision to leave.

Could you maybe change roles in the company? Do something that brings back the energy you once had towards it?

However, by the tone in your first 2 sentences it might be too late. It sounds like you have already made the decision to leave and do not believe in the company at all. In which case, the others might not even want you there anymore anyway and I can't blame them.
There's also the units command: http://www.gnu.org/software/units/units.html
A typical web-app startup isn't for me at this point indeed. I don't want to create a company from get-go. I want to create the science (hardware+software+new algo) first, spend 6-12 months working on it with my target users, and then once it is functional, make it a product. I can't do this part-time. I have to do this full-time but I can work part-time (consulting etc.)

I will have sufficient savings soon. For me it's not a question of if but when. It is the wait that's killing me. And then I see questions like this that make me feel even more impatient. But I truly appreciate such questions. Keeps me steadfast.
Undramatic? But, the knife fights, the tense meetings with corrupt Chinese officials who could have you thrown in jail, the forty thousand a month, the 5-star hotels; all of that, undramatic?

The problem is that you are now an unreliable narrator; you may not even be the protagonist in your own story any more. Who is Max Klein? A cipher, a nobody, an anonymous entrepreneur sharing his tales from behind a veil of mild obfuscation? Or is he a device in a larger scheme? Perhaps he is an advertisement for a correspondence school? A scheme to defraud a Saudi prince? A character escaped from a novel, whom the author is desperately trying to contain? Who knows?
But of course they aren't the only ones to worry about!
Baby Gender Selection in Thailand (video)
Interview with Dave Marcus of McAfee Labs
That's why you offer free trials. :)
I don't understand why paying me money is a problem, and I don't get it what kind of fraud are we speaking about.
Normally the following should happen:
1.I create an account on their site with my username and password. I log in with this account.
2. I upload the contents (game).
3. Logged in with this account I could:
a.: specify my PayPal account to thich I expect the money to be transfered.
b.: specify my international bank account number (SWIFT code)

How can be there fraud? If I specify someone else's bank account number then only I can lose on that. I cannot imagine how could I do any 'fraud'. This is beyond me.

Edit: It is quite absurd. We have a global economy in which it is easy for the money to flow in one direction but very hard (or sometimes impossible) to flow in the other.
but they aren't going after the handset manufacturers, Google can hardly hand Oracle HTCs profits if Google never sees them.
You're only seeing the winners. An ill-defined software product (which almost all software startups are), is similar to scientific exploration - you start with an idea, but you have no idea going in how much effort (months, years, decades) it will take to realize that idea, or even if its possible at all. After all that, what you end up producing may be not what customers want at all. In the time you took producing your new innovative software product, the market could have moved on.

The immediate example that comes to mind is "Cuil," - a search engine (large market) started by ex-googlers (great team), with $5 million investment (well-funded). It took them forever to launch (because its a hard problem), and partly because of that, they got poor PR and little traction. They've got another $25 million investment since then, and almost nothing to show for it.
True, there's no guarantee. There's no guarantee that you'll find "work at a company that lets you work on interesting problems and learn new skills". Everything here is subjective. :]
So the real advice is: Offer free accounts and then get rid of them.
Why Traditional Ads Work, and Digital Ads Don't
I know quite a few people use their iPhones/iPads for such writing.
Did the App Kill the Web?
check out pandoc http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/
TODAY I'm meeting a friend I haven't seen for a quite a while at the pub after work, and it would rude to cancel on such short notice. After that I probably should be getting to bed since I have to work tomorrow.
You're kidding right? Manchester's heaving with activity. Just look at CWJobs (ok, I know that's different to startups, but it shows dev activity in the area).
Also, I live 40 miles north of you in Preston, and there's very little here. Doesn't stop me dreaming of my own startup one day.

That said, my excuse is:
Before I got into software dev I tried to get into the music business. Unfortunately, that's much more about salesmanship than it is about music - you have to convince bar owners and club owners to put you on, you have to advertise your gig, you have to try and make a profit and pay your band, rent a van, etc. etc. It put me off being a musician (that and arrogant singers/drummers :) ).
I don't want to be put off being a software dev too. I need some way of working past my disdain for that side of things. Then I'll be fit to start my own business.
I think you should use a free plan if actively using the 'free' plan will eventually force the user to go to a paid plan. e.g. dropbox.

If you just give your core product away for free then users will only switch if they need the extra features of the paid plan. You can still use 'free' for marketing, because total conversion rates with a free plan will probably be higher, just don't expect these 'free' customers to switch if they don't have to.
I'm doing it. I wrote an ultra rough spec one month ago, tried selling before building, found that only 1 person out of 20 or so that I thought it would be relevant was interested, am refining again. It's been about a month, we should launch in a week or so. This probably won't be a huge company, just looking to make around $75/active hour for 20 hours per week for the next year or so whilst longer range projects grow slowly.
In This Region, Two Plus Two Sometimes Equals Six, Sometimes Ten
Luckily, ADHD is still unknown here (Italy, and as far as i know also in the rest of europe, UK excluded), i wonder what will happen when the gullible public will discover its existence.
ADHD treatments could become even more popular than homeoteraphy.

EDIT: Report about ADHD awareness in Europe: http://www.adhs-deutschland.de/pdf/pdf0007.pdf

EDIT2: Why the downvotes?
PB4NB: A NetBeans plugin for pastebin.com
The Web's Senses are Evolving to Optimize Ad Value
Investment in the Email Ecosystem
Please rate my app
Chrome OS Tablet Going on Sale Nov 26 on Verizon?
Sure. I see no problem in starting something part-time, why not? If you dont have enough savings and want to bootstrap it might be the only option. And its not bad! I was always inspired by DHH talks on coding basecamp and rails for like 10h/week. Personally I start all my projects part-time.
I expect in the near future we'll see more Trial Membership Plans ala Netflix and others and the Free Plan will be removed in favor of a demo example or a "nearly free" plan.
Probability Chip
When this version of WebKit makes its way into Chrome I'll finally be able to stop using Firefox. Nowadays I only use it for MathML.
Political affiliation or activities can result in protected-class status in a few jurisdictions in the US (DC and NY at least, I believe), sometimes only under certain circumstances. Check your particular state's non-discrimination laws to be sure.

That said, if you get along with the person and they can contribute to the team and they're also OK with disagreeing with you on these issues, it shouldn't be a problem. I'm a gay atheist, and I have a close friend who's actually an evangelical pastor. We get along just fine despite our radical differences in outlook because we respect each other.

Culture is about how you communicate, what you value, and how to make difficult decisions as a company. Consider at what level those values sit.

Human interaction can't just be a checklist. A person is more than just a Facebook profile.
Thanks, was just wondering (Stgt-Vaihingen here)