skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this is the explanation for why YC gets hundreds and not thousands of applications.

Most hackers get jobs and generally make quite substantial income. Then they get comfortable with being able to provide for themselves well (and frequently a girlfriend or wife).

Even without kids there's a lot of commitment there. A 1 year lease on a nice apartment, a girlfriend/wife "accustomed" to living comfortably, car loan/insurance, etc.

Years of people doing this means that the highest potential founders have day jobs right now. For them paths to a startup are 1) Make a lifestyle change and go back to having little money. 2) Get sizable funding 3) Manage to pull off something in their spare time.

I think #2 and #3 are rarely successful, making #1 the most likely path to startup success for someone in this position.

Give up money, car, (nice) housing, girlfriend/wife(?), etc. to slave away with no life on a startup that will probably fail. Certainly seems like a good filter for determination, the most important attribute, the chances of success for these people must be higher.

I suppose YC figures that the potential for these people is not significantly high enough to justify the smaller number they could fund. Better to do 12 x $20k investments with 25% chance of success than 2 x $120k with a 50% chance.
Couldnt they come up with a simpler/shorter name? I couldn't figure out the name while I was reading th OM article - it was only when I saw their website I realized the name was i'm in like with you!

Do not have an accoun yet - can't comment on the service. On the surface, looks like an interesting idea.
It seems like folks lean towards S-corps, which are limited to US citizens. LLCs cause problems when looking for money, or even wanting to allocate shares. C-corps are expensive. So, what can you do?

Create an S-Corp and give options (not shares) to a non-US shareholder?

Is there anything short of a C-corp?
I agree. The people that would be most affected by a pg essay are those that already aren't happy with their job (or potential job).
Sounds like you need to start talking with ClintonKarr.
The power of free
Incantations For Muggles
Anyone else notice lots of Wizardy references in tech articles recently?
Five reasons PC vendors should offer Linux
"One thousand (or even one hundred) Justins are not so interesting."

When the draw is pure novelty that is true. When it's someone you're particularly interested in it's not. Maybe only startup founders find Justin interesting, but there's a "Justin" for every group of people.
Someone I knew in Hong Kong researched this, and he said that if you can deposit $x in a U.S. bank, INS will give you an "investor's visa".

I forgot what was x was exactly, but it was six figures, IIRC.

Then again, that was a while ago (pre 9/11, when some immigration rules were changed), so you may want to confirm that program still exists.
Paul Kedrosky: Microsoft + Doubleclick?
Work and Wives
I've read a lot of stuff recently by startup founders about the reasons to start a company while your still young and single, but I have to say that I could not possibly be doing what I'm doing with my company if it were not for the support of my wife. Anyone have a similar experience?
Terrific essay.

I worked for startups all through my 20s, but now at 37, I, I find myself up against point #9.

9. Family to support

I'd love to found a startup, but having a wife, two wonderful kids, and a $500K mortgage give you a very different perspective on the startup lifestyle.

I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and they are encouraged (forced?) to maintain a reasonable life/work balance, (The latter is probably the hardest to achieve; a startup requires an almost monomaniacal focus).

In return,the incubator would gain access to a pool of talented people who would otherwise not be able to make the leap.

Is this being done now?
If you're the Jobs, you would find a way to get your message across effectively even if the questions on the application didn't present an easy opportunity to do so. For someone who's a Steve Jobs, the application questions provide a natural opportunity to market yourself.

(My first answer was going to be "If you have to ask you're not the Jobs", but I'm working on tact in my comments.)
Humorous article, but serious point.

YC, like it or not, is pre-disposed to accepting certain types of founders: under 30, doing web applications, etc.

But the opinion of YC (or any other angel/VC) is not the last word on whether or not your venture succeeds.

There was another VC firm who posted a page on their web site listing the deals they rejected -- it included some huge successes, like Google -- can you imagine a VC admitting they turned down Google?

But that's the right attitude to have; and more entrepreneurs should think that way, too.

You will make mistakes, have false starts, hear a lot of "no"s from potential clients, etc. but it's all part of the process.
The sad thing is that web2.0 is a sales business too, rather than a technology business.
The alternative is anonymous comments, which usually lead to a significant drop-off in the quality of discussion.

I think "Let the users see what they're getting into before registering" is a more accurate description.
"I imagine a startup incubator where the founders are provided with salary and benefits comparable to working for a corporation, and they are encouraged (forced?) to maintain a reasonable life/work balance,"

Google. Except the work/life balance.
Hello, Aur Saraf again.

"Either you didn't read the article carefully or have not used the site."

I've read the article very carefully, which is not to be said on the way you read my comment: By asking for an invite, I expose the fact that I haven't used the site.

"On most dating or Social network sites, people can easily cast a wide net of people [...] Once a game is finished, the person who put on the game and the chosen player establish a connection like in other social networking sites."

So basically, IILWY is limiting/filtering/queuing connections based on a 'how much he's willing to invest' filter.

Why is that a better filter than any other random filter, like, say, what day of the chinese blogoscope he was born or what color hair does his grandma have? It seems like something totally irrelevant to relationship success, IMHO, especially at a stage where the parties don't know each other at all.

To tell the truth, I just don't like services based on limiting the user. I think that requiring the other user to accept a connection (like most IM services, LinkedIn) is good enough at filtering connections without forcing it on the users.

Are you a founder/involved person? You sound so. If you are, cool. Regardless, can I get an invite so that I understand better what this is about?
May I ask what grad school you attend? Why has it been one of the best decisions? People? Projects?
It would be fun for a few moments (for boys), but that's it.

Geeks are people who tend to stay OUT of the really stupid ego matches, which is what it would become.

Geek girls I've talked to, like every other girl, naturally understand that a good relationship hasn't more to do with intelligence than beauty - both are factors that can add a bit, but insignificant compared, so only guys would be lured in.

And remember that the only way to "win" an intelligence competition is to not participate.

Yes, there are criteria that has value in relationships (contrast with "people value in relationships") that could hold such a site alive. But it is really hard to judge them.

The really good tests would create a situation where any high value bloke that applies would have girls chasing him on his application stage, before he's even in. That would have good sides and bad; in the long run, it would obsolete the site. If you can find such a test, though, you can make a lot of money out of site like this.

There still is a lot to say about communities that pick their members. Email me if you want to continue the discussion, I have one good idea that I'd happily share.

A "dating site for geeks", though, should be done completely differently. No competition, no pressure. No meat market. Just a nice, calm place to meet people, talk about actual subjects ("star wars is hot", not "you're s0 hut1!"). Modeled after geek conventions and get-togethers (D&D, hacking weekend, ... Geeks use the same recipe for all). It would even succeed. I'm pretty sure something exists, though.

Aur Saraf
Mike Davidson: "What Will The TV Spot Look Like?"
Make an infomercial for your startup, get free advertisement, coverage and review
Ahh, my specialty.

SonOfLilit in gmail.
How did you meet Xobni guys?
If the rumors are true, they'll have to worry about Google...
Youtube becomes Flickr?
Startup Camp 2 - Date and Location Announced
This sounded like a fun way to get your company name out there. You have to make an infomercial and then a few judges give you some feedback on your delivery. If you're the best then they give you free advertisement on their site for a month.
Engineering can be a lifelong profession, but the longer you spend trying to be a good engineer the more likely you are to work for someone who just Doesn't Get It. Once a company gets to be a certain size, especially if the people in charge aren't technically skilled, politics and perception trumps physical laws; an engineer who can't make the case for a solution on technical grounds (this is the cleanest way to solve the problem) or on business grounds (this is the cheapest way to solve the problem, and we save $200K a year by doing it this way over the way we originally thought of) but on political grounds (this is neither clean nor cheap, but it uses this buzzword-compliant tech and will increase your budget by $1.5M and require 2 people to support) is not likely to be a happy engineer.
a good point, I think it can work both ways, but my wife is a great sounding board and brings a unique / non techie point of view to the discussion which is extremely valuable.
New GPL3 license deals with contentious issues
For a marketing brochure I sought feedback from two professional writers and from my wife. The best advice of the three was my wife's. Moms are the main customer, but one of the professional writers is a mom too.

If you're racing with competitors to get the attention of people who live their lives on the web, having no other commitments is an advantage. That's not what I'm doing.
I'm still not sure this license works well enough for me to use any GPL-licensed components. I created and sold some software several years ago that communicated with MySQL, and those guys wanted me to open source due to their use of GPL. Even though my code was completely independent and my own, they still wanted it open source due to some obscure language in that license.
I think a lot of this stuff applies to starting anything new. I thought about church planters who work for non monetary rewards. Same stuff applies to pioneers in any endeavor.
great stats on how a massively popular startup actually can earn money. While they may not have broken even yet, $9.34 million in 2006 is nothing to scoff at.
All they need to do now is get past the hurdle of locality. Okcupid and plentyoffish haven't even done that really, outside of california or really condensed areas. I'd be using it right now if it had more women in Vegas. Once that milestone is gone, amazing growth can begin.

Mr. Forman seemed like a nice guy when I met him at the startupschool reception. I wish them the best of luck.
The reason to start a startup when you're young and single is because you have no commitments. Once you have kids, you can't afford to take that kind of chance with your life because you're also responsible for their lives. But a spouse/significant other who's genuinely supportive is like a partner in the company who's sharing your equity -- if you make it big, he or she makes it big too.

On the other hand, a spouse or significant other who's not supportive -- or who means to be supportive but who doesn't actually offer much support, which is worse -- can put enough of a drag on things to make the company fail.

And as brlewis notes, a lot depends on the pace you're trying to run the company at. If you're using the traditional VC-funded web startup model and working 100-hour weeks in the hacking zone, your relationship with your spouse/SO is going to suffer. If you're using the consulting/micro-ISV model and expanding the business gradually, it's likely to put a lot less strain on the relationship.
A look into Silicon Valley
This looks interesting. Anybody here going, or went to last year's?
The problem with motivation for an undergrad is when you realize that everything doesn't need to be the way it is now. Let me clarify. Most of us have been raised our whole lives with the mantra, "You have to go to college to succeed." I know that my parents didn't go to college, and they were always saying, "You don't want to end up where I am, working in a factory," etc.

The problem with that model, however, is that a standard undergraduate education is beginning to become old-fashioned and irrelevant. How many stories do you hear about students going to four years of school only to graduate and be unable to find employment? While the problem is not nearly as bad in engineering as in other fields, it's still the case that more and more people are going to college, and as a result, a degree doesn't look nearly as great as it did 20 or 30 years ago.

I personally have started to become disenfranchised with the college model in the US. As an undergrad, I have visited some undergraduate committee meetings and talked personally with a few professors, and the bureaucracy of the whole thing is somewhat disgusting. Even if a professor wants to make a change to the curriculum (for the better), he or she must endure countless meetings and votes, even for something that is clearly a good idea. It may take a year or more just to make a minor structural change in a few core courses.

Moreover, department heads are not much worried about the success (or lack thereof) of undergrads. For whatever reason, national groups that rank colleges look mainly at entrance criteria, so as long as the college can successfully lock out those students with low ACT scores (which are largely irrelevant), they look good on paper. Meanwhile, they hire new professors based only on their research and some interviews, without much regard for teaching backgrounds.

In the end, once you go off and create your own startup and work on your own projects, you start to see that college is largely not helpful to an undergrad. The stuff that is stretched out over four years could probably be learned quite easily by most in two or less, if it was all restructured a bit. College, in effect, is just another corporation, one that is in the business of paying professors and researching new ideas. It just happens that most professors do not produce enough ideas quickly enough to justify their income, so undergraduate students make up for that by paying tuition.

Once you realize that you can be successful without completing (or even starting) your undergrad, the dedication, motivation, and finances necessary to complete college just don't look like such a good trade anymore. Most courses follow a textbook, anyways, so just buy the textbook, study it yourself, talk to people online, and you will probably do just as well. The only downside is that you'll be missing that shiny piece of paper.
I have a few invite codes available. They're email invites so post your email or send me an email about it (address is in profile).
Anyone go last night to Web Innovators Group in Boston?
BritePic: Redefining The img Tag
This is who was there and demo'd. http://webinnovatorsgroup.com/wiki/webinno11

I found a few little blogs about it. I'm wondering if anyone had some feedback on the demos presented.

http://cardvio.blogspot.com/2007/03/web-innovators-demo.html
Stupid Quotes from the dot com days
Yeah, the largest problems with dating sites today is the "creepy" guy issue, and the problem that marginally attractive girls are in the minority, and get literally bombarded by guys. Hopefully, this can eliminate these problems with the bidding system. Women are still typically the choosers in modern socity, and this lets them have more filtering.
That's a good point too - my wife has zero understanding of the programming world and no desire to understand it at all. She's great for telling me when my ideas suck or when they might work.

Because of YCombinator's relocation requirement, I can't apply. I completely understand why they have that requirement and what's more - completely agree with it. Unfortunately, relocating is not an option for me as we have a 2 year old. Even though I live in Maine and Cambridge isn't that far away, it just wouldn't work.

My drive to found a startup is very strong - I'm not afraid of failure (god knows I'm good at it!) but I'm struggling with how to do start something up with a wife and a child. The whole micro-ISV, consulting thing is not something I want to do.

I know the conventional wisdom is "don't do it". But that's just not an acceptable answer for me.

Does anyone have any advice for me? I would absolutely appreciate it.
duplicate post - my apologies.
Dvorak being Dvorak
Scribd, the "YouTube for documents," copyright violations and all
Apollo and Slingshot - Taking the web offline
C-corp is fine, don't worry about it.

Resident agent == US citizen or service.
Any other officers/owners can be offshore.
They said they're a yCombinator-funded startup, but they also said they're based out of New York. Does YC now have startups in other cities, or did they move to New York after the SFP/WFP program?
[3] There need to be some number of big companies to acquire the startups, so the number of big companies couldn't decrease to zero.

No there don't. There only needs to be some number of entities with deep pockets and marketing expertise. Those entities could be small companies and individuals, or networks thereof.

While it might turn out that a large black-box structure like today's multinationals is the most efficient organization for accomplishing certain important tasks, it doesn't seem obvious to me that it must be so.

Michael Sullivan
IP Agreements - Safe to launch a startup while still working?
This is something Ive been wondering about for several months now. I figured the group here might have some useful advice.

Like most other tech companies, the company I work for required I sign an Intellectual Property agreement stating that any ideas or work that I produce while an employee is property of the company. So this clause would include any work related to a startup. I know, this really sucks.

PG talks about this in several essays. Basically what it sounds like is that if there is ANY indication that you started work on a startup while under an IP agreement, VCs and acquirers will simply not touch you. Has any one else found this to be the case?

From what it looks like so far, my options are:

1) Jump ship and not look back. This puts big financial strain on us though as we don't have funding yet.

2) Leave as an employee, and rejoin as a part time contractor without signing an IP agreement. This would pay the bills and rent in the early stages but would probably be pretty draining physically. I also lose my unvested shares in the company but meh.

3) The CEO will sign a document releasing our specific idea from the IP Agreement. Has anyone heard of this happening with success before??

Or we could probably just start working in secret and building the product, but this is probably not a good idea because we wouldn't have early customer feedback. I definitely believe in "release early, release often". Or an easy solution would be to get accepted into YC but I know chances of that are pretty slim :(

Any advice is appreciated.
Do you have cofounders that can move, and you could visit alternate weeks or every weekend? If you have no cofounders AND you cannot move, that's two strikes.
The third comment down links to this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAWDYaWAVQQ

In short, he admits to intentionally playing the Mac community in order to get hits. So if people just stopped giving him attention, all of these false predictions would stop.
I need help in this category. I'm currently doing consultant work full time to pay the bills (and keep the girlfriend happy) while working on my startup nights and weekends.

My girlfriend simply HATES computers and this makes it hard for her to understand what I am doing, why I am doing it and what it could mean later on. To her, it's not work, since it's currently not bringing any money.

Luckily she does let me spend some time on my startup, even though I could be spending it her. Going to take advantage of it while I can.
kfischer (at) gmail dot com

Thanks
"Once you have kids, you can't afford to take that kind of chance with your life because you're also responsible for their lives."

I agree to a point, but having kids does not relegate you to life in a cubicle, slowing building your 401 K, and complaining about not having enough Paid Time Off.

I think if you have a burning passion to start something and
there is a significant potential pay-off down the road you are doing your family a dis-service by not pursuing an opportunity to make your lives better.

Nothing worth doing is easy.
Inxight on Google - Knowledge has replaced OS in post microsoft area
I'm going this year, but did not go last year. Not sure what to expect but it should be fun!

With the insane cost of most of the hot web conferences, and the primary value that you get from conferences being people you meet, this is a great opportunity. Same crowd, no VC funding required to afford a seat.
IP agreements are the least of your worries. They don't matter that much and are really really hard to enforce. Basically it matters if you steal some kind of trade secret of a lot of existing clients/contacts.

Not having enough time to properly do your startup should be your main concern.
I have a cofounder who'd be willing to move, yes. And I supposed I could alternate, but based on the relocation requirement, I didn't think that was an option.
Typically, employers just don't care about ideas that are outside their line of business. After all, if I come up with a great social networking site but my employer is a financial software company, stealing my social networking IP will just be a distraction from their business activities. They're worse off for taking ownership of the IP.

Do tell your employer what you're doing and clear it with them. Aside from being the honest thing to do, it also sets you up to get formal legal permission. If they're not willing to do so, you know that immediately and can weigh your options from there, including quitting or giving up the startup.

In some cases, your employer may even give you money, advice, and customers. I once worked for a company whose CEO was the former CTO of Cybersmith (the gaming cafe company that went bust around 1999). She came up with an idea that was useful for Cybersmith's business but was not something Cybersmith was willing to put resources into. Cybersmith became her first (and only, it turned out) customer and gave them significant resources to fund development.

"3) The CEO will sign a document releasing our specific idea from the IP Agreement. Has anyone heard of this happening with success before??"

This happens more often than you think. The most prominent example is Apple Computer - Steve Wozniak was on HP's payroll when it was founded, and needed HP to sign away their rights to the Apple I. One of my cofounders is in the process of getting a similar release from Sony Entertainment, and I'll probably need something similar from my employer (I have verbal permission already).