skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting, but my eyes!
Wow. Just wow. That is heartrending, I really don't even know what to say.
dear Paul et. al.

I'm a Paul myself ... :) Y Combinator is an inspiration for me! I think that as Y Combinator incubates more companies successfully, more and more groups will apply. :)
Both Zimbra and SalesForce.com are doing it, i.e. taking an "enterprise" product and making it web-available to anyone.

And while both still sell to large companies, they also reach individuals and smaller firms, too.
Vutool: Stealth Startup of a "Google Earth" from the ground level
Enterprise software has a bad rap because it's such a jaded business; decisions almost never get made for the right reasons, and the level of politics and bs is absurd.

From my own experience: unless you're doing something really special (and even then it's not guaranteed), it's tough to convince a large firm to license your product if you're a startup or 2, 3 man firm.

The best way, actually, is through the proverbial "back door", i.e. make versions available on the web or downloadable, and get a critical mass of employees within the company to use it.
Toondoo: New startup that helps you create comic strips
What's scary is this reveals how Microsoft basically wrote a Wired story. Yet another reason why "blogs" will win out, not even Microsoft can control them all.
Can new startup iLetYou compete with Netflix and Blockbuster?
As comfortable as Google is you're right in acknowledging that there are more ambitious challenges to be had.

Good luck -- enjoy the ride.

"Fortune and love favor the brave" -- Ovid
"Does every pair of founders consist of a Jobs and a Woz?"

I think our school system is very much designed around this idea of "give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, teach a man HOW to fish and you'll feed him for the rest of his life."

Almost everything we learn in school is a HOW question. Hacking is a HOW question. To the extent that school focuses on WHAT questions, it's busy work like memorizing the places and dates of historic battles. WHO, WHY, WHEN, and WHERE are barely touched touched on at all, and that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of questions that don't fit into this paradigm.

But there are other questions that aren't how questions. They aren't taught in school, which leads some to believe that they aren't important or don't require intelligence or that they don't even exist.

Success in a startup is partly a HOW question, but it's more than just that. After all, the point isn't knowing how to manipulate tools, but rather making something people want.

I think the reason why MBAs (deservedly) get a bad rap is because they don't know how to answer the HOW questions, but they also don't know how to answer any other questions either.

So I'd say it's not really an answer of one hacker and one non-hacker, but rather that both put together cover the full range of human thought.
LTR and RTL
Greate article.

But I have the impression that PG means "to start starup is to launch a web application". right?
PR move, just like "unlimited internet". The architecture doesn't support unlimited anything, but like everyone else I have, what, 100MB in there, tops? So declare victory and go home. Doesn't cost them a thing except some config work by the Mail team.
London Bridge Bluetooth lights - data visualization & visual design - information aesthetics
This essay was exceedingly entrancing, enticing and thrilling!!!!!!!
It made me very pensive and extreamly vexed!! I thouroughly commended your effort, however for your intellectual ability you could have tried harder!! Durrr :p
If you choose a problem to solve where the customers move slowly, you actually have an advantage over a 23-year-old working 16 hours a day. With infrequent customer feedback, it's hard for the young startup to capitalize on all that free time, and it can burn through its cash waiting for feedback and growth.
big or small, market leader or niche player?
What are your plans on putting YC up on the TDP? and tell PG he rocks!!
What do you all think?

(Especially about: "...it all hinges on the perception that the ultimate control and efficiency requires resources to be employed or owned. Skip that self-imposed limit...")
see http://juwo-works.blogspot.com/2007/03/better-business-model-for-incubators.html
Justin.tv: Does this wide angle lens make me look fat?
HOMBRE: Ajax-alike Thin Client for Any Phone (New Mobile Runtime Environment)
6. No cofounder
Is my main discouragement. I'm 28 and have been out of school for 6 years.

13. Uncertainty interferes a little.
I have a comfortable , quiet apartment and I'd be risking that on a startup. This obstactle isn't hard to overcome, though.

Other comments on the essay

2. Too inexperienced: In my case, being too inexperienced meant that the idea of a startup didn't even occur to me. This advice might have helped, but I probably wasn't listening.

12. Need for Structure:
While some people do seem to have a built-in need for structure, sometimes that structure can be "There Is No Structure." I'd say:

The problems appear when the expected structure is differs from what actually exists.

Employees will stagnate in what feels like a structured environment if they are given no instruction. However, if it's clear from the start that no structure will be provided, they won't waste time waiting. On the other side, managers may get upset if employees don't follow policy with military precision, despite the fact that military structure hasn't been provided and the relevant policy is 30 pages deep in a handbook no one has read in 2 years. The manager can either figure out how to include military drilling, or accept that degree of structure is unworkable.

My impression of Y Combinator is that it's fairly clear early on how much structure is provided (or not provided).
If yc rejects google, they can come to me. I'll find a way to scrape together $15,000 for a 6% stake in their company.
What is your reason for working on hard AI problems at Google?

Not a rhetorical question.

One reason to worry about how my site renders in Safari is that I know people use Safari and if my site doesn't work for them they won't use my site. There's a thrill that comes when people enthusiastically approve of your work. Also I know my site will be higher quality and more valuable if it renders in safari. The more valuable my site is, the more likely I will be able to make money off of it.

Come up with a list for the Google job, and see how it compares. For me personally, both sound good.
Linking Physical Objects to the Web: MSR Lincoln Project
Video interview with Justin.tv on Look! Shiny!
The Third Test Version Of Mozila 3 Relesed
Possible solution: You can develop your startup's product with GWT and not have to worry about Safari (or any other browser) rendering properly.

Then you can focus on the the challenging and rewarding problems without worry of dealing with the mundane. The difference will be that they are problems YOU want to work on, not what Google wants.
There you go. I think maybe that's the key--take an existing segment which is back in the early 90s in its usability, put it on the web with the latest UI, usability, etc., and you then go right up against the existing suites. I've actually seen NetSuite do this for ERP, and their UI isn't even any good.
Paul Graham convinced me to drop out of school / quit my job [Vote up if true]
Absolutely it is; I spent a long time this year working with a small real estate company that uses very primitive software and analog techniques to track very complex business processes. Existing software that would help them is too cumbersome or requires too much training; they can't afford to hire a consultant to sort it all out for them.

This is the crux of my YC funding application, so I really hope the answer is yes!
looking at the "product" page, it looks like he could still use a jobs. or at least a description of what the problem he's solving is.
Well, my point was more that I could think of a number of examples where one guy did the vast majority of the talking, and no examples (in my very limited knowledge) where the two founders were close to equal.
I absolutely think it can be. I think it mainly depends on who you work with at the enterprise software company. Its exciting to work around smart and highly motivated people, even if the product is a seemingly "boring" B2B application to us web hacker types.

Before I started working at my current company all I thought of as "cool" was startups and cutting-edge B2C web services companies. It really expands your horizon when you get the chance to work at an awesome enterprise software company who is solving a real business need..

Business software CAN be cool..
This is all supposition, but I'm willing to bet that if such a position is available at Google, it would be necessary to have at least a Master's and preferably a Ph.D., with an emphasis on AI, in order to get such a position. The beauty of startups is that you can start them whenever you have the time and inspiration, and the artificial degree barrier is non-existent if your product is good enough.
7 most crowded spaces for your new web startup
Justin.tv on AP news wire
Engineering as a profession?
With all the startup school buzz, everyone seems to want to be an entrepreneur. The idea is: make a bunch of money, retire and become a VC.

What's the plan 'B' if a startup fails (or multiple ones do)? Does anyone here view engineering as a lifelong profession?
"AI problems at Google" is just an example. I find hard technical problems interesting. A problem is hard if I don't know in advance whether or not I will be able to solve it. AI is hard. Making a good OS is hard. Startups avoid hard problems, because they have enough things to worry about already.

I'm not saying the job at Google with Peter Norvig (ah) is perfect. I was just pointing out another reason why I'm hesitant to make a startup.
Wizard Schools? - A crazy look at a new way to teach CS
There's nothing that says you can't start a startup to employ yourself as an engineer.
Sebastian Thrun is a rockstar in the AI world. He's the guy that won the DARPA Grand Challenge. I got to see him speak at a conference last year. It only strikes me odd that he would found a company doing non-AI stuff.

Ah, maybe this is his first step towards a self-driven car revolution: to drive autonomously through cities, it's helpful to have a map. And a 3-d immersive map is better than a 2-d one.
I'm also curious if the interest can be maintained long term. I don't really see it being able to scale much but I could be wrong.

I think its safe to say that this is just the beginning for Justin.tv. A lot more press coverage will come they have fantastic momentum right now.
Many 'Hot' Web 2.0 Sites Don't Have The Traffic To Back-up The Hype
"I wouldn't feel comfortable telling my ideas to people who copy others so obviously. maybe they hoped nobody would see?!"

Or maybe they've internalized the idea that ideas aren't the important part of most startups, and it didn't occur to them that people might see it as a negative.

I haven't applied (yet) to either, due to age (33) and a mortgage, but I'm still thinking about it. :)
new.ycombinator RSS feed
Does anyone else wish new.ycobminator came with an rss feed?
Alex, polls are lame on Reddit. They're even lamer here since there's no down arrow. Please use Pollground or something similar.
I think there is probably a lot of opportunity for smart little startups to compete with enterprise software in the way microcomputers competed with mainframes. Just make something good that everyone can use, and eventually businesses will realize they can use it too.
Isn't it at the bottom of the page? RSS | Bookmarklet | Feature Requests | Y Combinator | Apply | Library

http://news.ycombinator.com/rss
Please use a link rel="alternate" to let us know faster that you have a feed :)))
It's a little discouraging, after considering PG's idea that we may be on the cusp of another production revolution, to consider some of the ideas that you put forward here. I do think, however, that you are right in saying that it is very hard to rebut the idea that you present.

I don't really think, though, that what you present are the precise beliefs of Kaczynski. In your comment, you seem to have the idea that decreasing costs of production (which is largely due to improvements in technology) is a good thing, while the decrease in freedom is the thing that is bad. It seems to me that anarcho-primitivists actually believe that technology itself is the bad thing, because it departs from the pure, hierarchy-less society of hunter-gatherers.

It is truly an interesting endeavor to consider where the boundary exists between what is good about where we are headed and what is bad. I think that all of us accept the idea that those who have greater drive and motivation to succeed should be rewarded for their efforts, and it's also hard to deny PG's contention that people now are living more luxurious lifestyles than kings of yesterday (heated houses year 'round). We may also argue that if people are content with their station in life (i.e. doing nothing to change it), then what is the problem?

On the other hand, I think that nearly all of us would agree that a situation like that in the Matrix would be a bad thing; even though the people believe they are living well, it is all a facade. Additionally, we are perfectly okay with improving the lives of friends and family members who have been less driven than we, presumably because we love them.

I guess if you consider the implications of that train of thought, if we loved humanity, we would be perfectly fine with sharing everything equally, regardless of the amount of work the individual does, and we thereby arrive back where we started, with hunter-gatherer cultures that have gift societies. We can even see evidence of this model working in the open source movement today.

I'm not really trying to make any points here, I'm just pointing out some interesting questions that your post (and my readings on Kaczynski) brought up in my mind which made me question what I had previously considered to be unquestionable truths. Perhaps it's not necessary for the entrepreneur's reward to be directly proportional to the amount of wealth the he or she has created, especially considering that with the current state of social stratification, opportunity is certainly not equal.
Ringside Startup - Techrunch writer is taking contributions to fund his startup
Trampoline: Harnessing Social Behavior in the Enterprise
Awesome essay Paul! Tell it like it really, really is.
Other posters show an inability to engage in a sufficient level of abstraction. Original post is an interesting question that has nothing to do with AI, Google, or Safari.

The point is that at a startup (especially the two guys and a laptop variety) you do absolutely everything yourself, while at a big company you are supported by IT, QA, custodial services, etc, etc.

The interesting question is whether there exist jobs for which that support is worth the money and freedom one gives up working at the large company.
I wonder how large a factor student debt is when people consider the one or the other. A guaranteed liability can be a powerful motivator for finding guaranteed income.

(Although if you think that a job at a big company is guaranteed income, you've never worked at a big company going through any kind of hard times!)
Google doesnt want $15K. They want connections and expert advice and guidance; can you provide that?
Last.fm bigger than stumbleupon surely you jest!
He could also use a comment, and then it wouldn't be quite as lame.
I do have to agree with dfranke.

While I certainly understand the concept, and I agree it's fun to get a gauge of people's reactions, I think you'll learn more reading the comments than you would with any simple poll..

There's also just that things like that are never so simple- I'm sure that pg has been one of many influences on people. I doubt very many people would go through their life, happily working at their job, read an essay, and drop everything ;)

While pg is persuasive, I would like to think (hope) that anything he writes is one factor among many.

(And again, Please- No polls like this. )
Isn't plan B start another company? Are you sure you want to be an entrepreneur in the first place or just getting caught up in startups school hype. Ask yourself if this is what you want to do for the rest of your life and don't dabble in it if your heart says otherwise..
Are subpoenas from transit authorities covered in YouTube's TOS?
From the Unabomber Manifesto:

"technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people's hands. For example, a variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations... But if these machines had never been invented there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them."

"It is a chronic complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society."

I take it that what he is saying is that technology creates social complexity, both good and bad, which then inevitably leads to the loss of liberty. I know Bill Joy, who co-founded Sun, wrote a good article in Wired a while back about reconciling Kaczynski's ideas with Kurzweil's.
Online Entrepreneur University Launches with a $1 million scholarship
[shameless plug]

To get updates on startups from the YC feed (and other like-minded sites), you can subscribe to this feed: http://www.seeksift.com/xml/6u106Rn2Hm/rss.xml and if you want to change the list of sites it uses to aggregate & filter content, you can do that via this link: http://seeksift.com/asp?act=edit-sources&id=6u106Rn2Hm

[/shameless plug]

Disclosure: my company, a micro software firm in NYC, developed SeekSift.
To start a company or join one?
I see the popularity of Justin's "lifecasting" creating a whole new range of ideas for the upcoming web.
YC seems to mostly invest in founders right out of school - many on their first startup.

I've thought about this route - but I'd guess I'll learn more by working at a successful small startup for a few years first. What does everyone think?

Is there a bias @ YC towards first timers?
Talkr: Add a chat widget to blogs
The very last title won by Real Madrid was the National Championship, at the middle of 2003. Beckham himself never won anything there, even playing with Ronaldo and Zidane :)
5 tips for startup ideas
I prefer the lawfirm model of business: steady growth, repeat business over the years. Of course, no one becomes a billionaire this way but one can do pretty well. Would this qualify as a startup, as defined by startup school?
Well, since he's eventually going to push the mobile broadcast technology to the users, the real question is, how can you continue to receive attention until the release of this platform?
You may already know this, but unlike reddit, comment scores here affect karma.
Well actually the point was to try to start an interesting discussion and get people sharing stories, but I see your point.
"But if these machines had never been invented there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them."

That is the quote that stands out to me, and what it tells me is that he believes technology itself to be the bad thing, because it breeds the conflict and resulting regulations.

Regardless of this minor issue, I think that we are both thinking along the same lines.
One decent approach is to create two comments with instructions to vote one up and the other down, so you stay karma-neutral. So you need a total of 1+2n comments for a poll with n options. Like so:

Do you think this is a good idea?

(Vote this like you would an ordinary comment)
It's visibly a joke, but I don't see why it has to be. Most bloggers that are overlooked "beg" somehow. This is usually done by submitting their site to tagging sites or they simply become active in commenting on social sites.
Vote this up for yes.
Vote this down for yes.
Vote this up for no.
You know a technology is bad when someone linking to it has to say "warning" after the link. PDFs are also in this category.
Vote this down for no.
"Business" is almost always about how you present yourself/your ideas. Jobs is a genius at presentation. I thought I was great at presentation,

It's helpful to think ahead and prepare multiple pitches, including the elevator pitch, the casual pitch, and a full blown presentation, including difficult questions that will probably rise up. Some questions will be difficult, and are more of a test of the presenter than the actual idea. This shows the amount of thought and foresight a presenter puts into the plan, as well as the dedication.
This looks nice. Mobile is lame right now because you can't develop anything and have it go across all the carriers. Hopefully this can fix it. I'd love to get to know the developers of this.
Building a Team - Seeking Character, Trust, Creativity, and Passion
Image search the way it's supposed to be
I was in love with Electrical Engineering. But reading Paul's essays upset me because it was so true: After four years of banging my head on the books, I would be expected to get a job in a cubicle for the rest of my life. While designing circuits and solving mathematical equations is quite orgasmic, it has its down sides too.

Inspired by Joel Spolsky and Paul Graham, I decided to leave University to develop a microISV product. I realized that selling microISV products is fun, but not very scalable...and it almost felt like doing a job. That's when I decided to tackle something big; a social network for geeks.

I would like to some day go back to University and study Neurology or Mathematics. But for now, pursuing my startup is much more enjoyable. Thanks Paul, Joel!
This is the way image search should be. It is stable under rotation, cropping, noise and loss of color. Very impressive!
Good point about photo sharing. But what's really surprising is that people are still making text-sharing sites. Do you realize how many text-sharing sites are already out there? It's pretty much hopeless today to do anything with text that hasn't already been done.
A couple notes (it looks to me like the submitter is actually the writer, so I'm putting my comments here):

Some of the ideas are interesting, but I wonder if the writer of the article has actually tried them out. For one thing, asking children and older relatives may present interesting ideas, but how are these people going to get exposure to your ideas if they aren't out looking for them on the Internet?

Also, I had a problem with item 3. "Ask women. It looks like that most of the startup founders are men. This leads to biased view of the world." Okay, this seems like a good start, it is basically stating that diversity can help produce more ideas. Continuing, "Women have better understanding of everyday problems." Whoa, there. Isn't this employing the very bias which the tip is supposed to avoid? I would say that women have better understanding of some problems and men have better understanding of some problems.

4 & 5 were also kind of cheap, in my opinion.

In short, nice thought, some interesting ideas, but I think it could use a little work.
Yes, definitely the way image search is supposed to be, available only to users of Microsoft products, and only those who use the extremely secure IE6 or IE7.
I'm going to add explicit support for polls. As soon as I get done reading hundreds of YC applications :(
It's not PDFs that are bad so much as Acrobat. When I'm using kghostview or something else that doesn't require me to go work on another task while I'm waiting for it to load, I don't mind clicking on PDF links. Of course, a lot of people abuse PDF and use it where they should just be using HTML, but that's not the technology's fault.