skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
VCs = Angels = YC = AgentsThey all finance and support young entities for a % of a future asset.

Compare a very scalable model, IMG Worldwide. Take baseball for comparison sake.

Talent Scout = PG colleague who reviews applications using performance criteria = bank using advanced credit scoring system to approve or reject loans

Reddit = Alfonso Soriano = Successful loan applicant

Paul Allen = PG = Drew Rosenhaus

YC is popular not because they aren't a VC but because they are a VC who provides more perceived value for what they charge. That means just like IMG, their model is scalable as long as their value proposition is maintained and continues to be favored. All YC needs to do to fund 1,000 companies next year is to hire/acquire/develop 50 more PGs with specialties in more focused markets and sub-markets. Not simple but definitately doable. Also fully automate the application and evaluation process so that "people" only touch the top 3%. Continue to be careful with funding amounts but generous with time and connections. Continue to distribute and increase your value through your customers by financing their meeting each other and adding value to each other. Basically, YC is a social network with most of the value right now distributed offline through their customers. News@YC will change that to be sure. I think it's not only possible to grow up real big, but the direction you are already headed. Just make sure your scalability has a bit of Ben & Jerry's thrown in, they did a great job of keeping their value system in place long after they grew. PG, you mentioned it's the scaling of the partners responsibilities that is hard. If the partners maintain the integrity of the barriers to entry (active role in developing and maintaining your application evaluation tool) and support (ensuring key events and high-level connections are solid and cascaded down from their organizations to yours) you can do it. Just my $.02.
Launch Story: Startupping (Part 1)
Launch Story: Startupping (Part 2)
Launch Story: Startupping (Part 3)
I'm currently talking with a friend about starting a business that I had already considered starting on my own. We have worked together in the past and things went well but I can definitely see how some of the 'friend problems' in this article would apply to our working arrangement. Is it better to try and go it alone or take the chance and work with a friend as a co-founder?
If you really look at those numbers, they become really "interesting".

The only application making a profit is drop-send. (Sorry, "top secret" = "not enough" for me) Some of those sites have some outrageous costs indicative of major VC involvement. On the surface, none of them (aside from freshbooks) seem like a very good way to make money either. Granted this is my highly subjective take, but I see it as this:

Drop-Send - Profitable, traded high expectations for more secure results... may have competition problems in the future, which is probably why its for sale. It has a great potential though, and room to move in the cost to profit area to compete.

Freshbooks - Good looking app, should be able to pay for itself... ridiculously high monthly costs are a liability.

Maya's Mom - Great Idea, better have a killer idea to make money off of it though, I don't think ads will cut it.

Mobissimo - Not promising in my mind.. already need to explain in words how they're different from expedia and travelocity. Not a good sign.

Wesabe - Interesting concept, but there's no way in hell I'd give them my account information. That's a big leap of faith for a start-up to ask of their customers.
If only it didn't cost money. We've also considered newswire press release services, etc., but I'm unconvinced as to how things like that would attract actual users.
I would guess that most people afraid of dropping out lack the entrepreneur's mindset. That is:

Purpose of school (to the entrepreneur): Train to MSPW

Purpose of startup: MSPW

When viewed from that angle, the only thing to fear is that you won't be able to hack it yet. (no pun intended)
I agree with others around here that doing it by yourself is going to limit your scalability. I'm working with friends right now, but we've done a good job (at least I think we have, we'll see) outlining the expectations and goals of each of us. So far so good, and things are going well. I think that if you've got good, open communication in your business you're fine in general.

I've had issues in the past with friends and business when communication wasn't explicit.
iLike picked up a similar startup, Fotodunk, last Spring -- simple idea, but very slick execution.
nice one. Be interesting on a citizen journalism level. Take photos from different places in the world and mix them with news feeds and get perspective of users on the ground. Could see people subscribing to heysan for the on the groundlevel photos. Looking forward to how this plays out :)
joe - your objective should be to make noise to attract users - not to make noise in general. So i would concentrate on getting musicians and bands to use your product.

A couple of good ways
1) create a nifty myspace page explaining the benefit - befriend as many bands as you can and leave them messages

2) Approach some high profile bands to use the product (email is good). Then leaverage their participation to get other bands to use it.

Don't worry about techcrunch traffic - thats the wrong sort of noise you want to make.
Any guesses on how many 2007 summer applications have been submitted? Big jump from the last one?
20 minute video interview with Google CEO (worth checking out)
Thanks. I do my best to keep it interesting on YC News.
Go to concerts, offer drinks to the bands and talk about (read: sell) your product.
I don't know if it's efficient (I guess it probably is) but at least it's fun.
I think Y Combinator didn't receive as much publicity this year as they did earlier (Jessica's book certainly helped, though). Judging from the number of users on news.yc, I am guessing that there are less than 500 applicants. Which to me is quite a low number considering the opportunity!
Great site gustaf. I love the simplistic UI and one page sign up. Here is a minor fix: increase the window size of your "terms of service" page. It is hard to read when the user has to scroll both vertically and horizontally :)
First Photos From Upcoming "MySpace News"
Yeah definitely. I assumed since Techcrunch gave a lot of publicity to YComb that would help in a big way. I read somewhere that in 2005 the applicants were around 250 or so.
I've stopped buying books on specific tools / programming languages. I can almost always find better information online. (Ruby is one exception: you pretty much need the pick-axe book). safari.oreilly.com is a great resource when nothing else is available. However, I still regularly purchase books on "higher" topics like algorithms or mathematical abstractions, the sort of books that I'm more likely to find in my university's bookstore than at Barnes & Noble.
Does Google count as Web 2.0?
thanks, we will add that to the release later this week. how do you think auto-post to myspace works?
I don't think the argument with Sequoia Capital stands because they invenst in many other companies. So, why didn't some other company bought YouTube? Because obviously Google really wanted to make the aqcuisition...
how awesome would it be if bloomberg asked youtube to pull this video, or sued them for putting it up.
Here's a great way to grow:

How about inserting a clause in your funding agreement? Any company that you fund should provide a small percentage of profits + time to help new founders.

This small percentage of profits would be given to YC, on condition that YC would use it exclusively to fund new companies. Of course, 'profit' implies that YC would be able to fund 1000 startups a year only if its existing investments are successful. Essentially, YC would earn the opportunity to increase the # of companies it funds based on the success of its previous investments.

And as for the founders time, it seems you already have that covered.

The most limited resource seems to be your time. I don't think there's an easy answer to that one. You may need to expand your partnership....

The question for me is: are there even 1000 companies worth funding every year? That would be cool to see. Perhaps some of the profits could be directed towards developing the base of potential entrepreneurs.
I think the reason everyone is applying to YC is because of networking and connections which is really valuable. Now, if there were 1000 companies being funded by YC it means there would be so many people with access to these connections. Which means the value of YC's network would drop. A lot of people then wouldn't feel really erged to apply while this competition the are feeling among them when applying, would be lost, if anyone with iq higher than 130 was getting funded...

*update:

more people getting funded = (lim markets - shrinks/saturation) => probability people fail > probability people succeed => bubble breaks

this will be the feelings and hopes bubble, and not investments bubble, because obviously whereas with the same money (e.g. 1 million USD) invested during 1999 only 1 company could appear, using YC's approach with the same money, more startups are given birth.

Thus this is the bubble also but not in investors return (because the rate of propability increases using YC's approach) but in founders feelings...
Fixing Venture Capital - Joel on Software
I better get to work on messaging.
Look at ways to make it viral. Get fans to invite each other
http://www.auralex.com/acoustic_studiofoam_4p/acoustic_studiofoam_4p.asp
Social Network For Gamers
Has Ycombinator ever funded a group that hasn't known each other long? For instance, a group that met at Startup School?
I'm curious how this stands a chance in light of XBOX Live and popular gaming sites like Gamespot. Facebook has an ongoing petition for a "Favorite Games" profile category, but I know that Gamespot has had a tough time getting people to interact outside of commenting on news articles and previews.

Sort of bothered by the site's cluttered design -- the blog posts on the left hand side are colored to look like cheesy, forgettable advertising.
I saw Boord last week at a startup panel at Florida Intl Uni. It reminded me of Garcia-Marquez's book "In Evil Hour/La mala hora", in which a town is plagued by anonymous character assasination.

There are two problems that everyone latches onto when they hear about it: posts are anonymous, and you can't opt in or out. The model is coercive. If someone wants to attack you you are given no choice but to register and marshall your friends.

On the other hand, I discount objections that everyone immediately latches onto. Often that means the idea is simply strange or taboo, not unworkable. Remember that the first proposed application of anonymous digital cash was an assasination pool.
Music's New Gatekeepers: Apple and Silicon Valley
I would imagine such a situation to be dicey. Startups are forged around shared passion, trust, and ability to work well together, not too different from marriage. Using the marriage metaphor, I think going into business together on a first impression puts you and your cofounders in a tight spot.
Aren't the biggest social networks for gamers the games themselves? (at least for MMOG)
I definitely hear what you're saying (my background is in interactive games)...aside from MMOs, this is another compelling reason why a unified online framework like XBOX Live works so well.

Things like Gamervision are more focused on networks for gamer interests ("life outside of the game"), i.e. discussing things that matter to gamers. There's another one specific to WOW called Rupture that is VC-backed and founded by Shawn Fanning of Napster fame.

Again, I'm not defending things like Gamervision. I'm more keen about Raph Koster's work.
I'm not a fan of Mac OS X by any means, but I have to admit, the hardware is impressive. I'm in the market for a new laptop, and I'm hard pressed against picking one up because they aren't that much more expensive than the laptops that I am looking at.
It's a Segwell.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2853515&CatId=2511

Versus

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?family=MacBookPro

These are comparable systems, but the Apple has, as I said, roughly an 800 dollar premium. Actually, the cheapest macbook pro costs the same as the high-end Toshiba. If you make good money, it's not a big deal. But when the girl in the coffeehouse asks me what kind of computer she should get to go along with her minimum wage, I'm basically scum to recommend an Apple.
So what your suggesting is creating mini YCs with specialist interests?

For example you could have a mobile apps 'agent'. This person would seek out the best ideas for mobile apps, find the best teams, maintain connections with mobile blogs & mobile network operators and pass the best teams back up to main YC.

O'r you could have geographical specialists who, for example, look out for startups in the UK and send the most promising over to Boston/Mountain View.
It's not automatically dicey. My cofounders and I found each other specifically for the purpose of starting this business. We're four months into our venture now. We get along extremely well, our skills complement each other nicely, and we have a lot of faith in each other and in our business. I can't imagine having a working dynamic as strong as this one even with my close long-term friends.
one thing to remember is that much like doing a startup in general, there are no hard and fast rules about getting YC funding.

YC had every reason not to invest in us - we weren't technical, we already had angel money which complicated issuing new shares and we were based in the UK. they still funded us.

YC funding is less about worrying about all the reasons you won't get funded and concentrate on making as many reasons why they will fund you.
Speed Dating with VCs
Quite insightful, Adam! Thanks for that article...
This article made me smile. Perhaps more importantly, it made me reread WhyFP, and the pastiche WhyHaskell. I'm a member of the choir, of course, but it's often good to read over a classic text to glean fresh understanding, and perhaps most importantly to see how "timeless wisdom" applies to your current adventures. (It's for that reason that I'm rereading The Mythical Man-Month.)
Yeah Dan, that's right on. The basic business practices employed today would flow through to the tentacles of specialization and the over reaching controls and management would still reside at the top like any other holding company structure. It's likely you could improve on the typical holding company structure but something along those lines. I work at the Group level of a global financial services firm and I think my stripes are showing a bit here :) Not just mobile apps but also a p2p apps expert, b2b apps expert, transaction processing expert...the options are as broad as the marketplace. I'm thinking big.
A few critiques:

1. Get your TOS rewritten by a lawyer, pronto. Several sentences aren't even grammatical. Don't ever say "we will" in a document like this. Use "may" or "reserve the right to" instead. IANAL but I suspect that your current language is causing you to forfeit your claim to being a common carrier.

2. You don't need my email address. Let me just provide a username instead; or better, OpenID.

3. Make it more clear that the tab on the bottom right expands into a menu. I didn't realize it until I dragged my mouse over it by accident.

4. Let me change the address to which I can send photos, or at least generate one that's easier to remember.

5a. The text "How it Works" needs to be a link to a prose description.

5b. The "How it Works" image needs to be less artistic. When you see something drawn in that sort of style you expect it to be decorative, not informative. I didn't realize that it was intended to convey information until I tried to click on it and nothing happened, and then looked closely at it.
I see what you're saying, but, to a certain extent, you won't be able to test what your team is truly made of until you guys hit that first bump -- this is when things become clearer, and I would imagine you wouldn't want to wake up one morning wondering how you got in that bed in the first place.

Nonetheless, I'm happy to hear that you were able to find good cofounders!
Nice one, Daniel.
I still go for dead tree on most subjects I'm interested in. I rarely read them all the way through however. For me they're mostly meditative aids that help me sort out my thoughts when I run into a wall.

When I'm stuck I can only bang my head against the problem for so long until I get frustrated. Having a dead tree version lets me completely leave the computer behind. Reading about anything related helps my mind reorganize and regroup. After an hour or so with my nose in a book I have at minimum an idea of something new to try.

Also, the book store I go to is in the same building Bioware was based out for many years. It's just a reminder to me of success that was born just a few blocks from me.
Whenever you shrink a market by creating wealth, you'll grow other completely unrelated markets. The money left in consumers' pockets is unlikely to simply remain in their pockets indefinitely.
Django makes it very easy to have something working up and running right away and has a fair number of advantages that go along with it. After looking over languages and frameworks it is what I've picked to write any future web app in. I've yet to see anything more compelling.

A nice tutorial and walk through is a good way to get your feet wet with a framework and language. You have to build a site using something and have to start somewhere. Because of Django, and lack of sleep, imageboard.net was up and working in a single weekend. It's worth checking out.
Is Google Changing Its Position on Net Neutrality?
I'm curious, did an admin change the link to be direct to wired or was it done by msgbeepa?
The fact that nobody took the bait and started a flame war is a testament to the quality of the YC news community
Second-tier university endowments and pension funds, the ones trying to catch Harvard & Amherst in endowment performance. They know that if the fund performs well, they look like a genius, yet if it fails, the poor college students and retirees are left holding the bag.

The whole economy has a huge moral hazard problem. There's a reason why John Nash won a Nobel Prize.
Amazon (and others) will sell you time on a massive grid. Amazon's is called Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and it seems like it might be a good alternative to a VPS -- the elasticity of each instance would be a boon to a quickly growing web service.

I am currently developing my startup's software on a dedicated server running FreeBSD, and I am paying some attention to making it so it will scale (probably in a load balanced cluster).

To this end, I have set up FreeBSD jails (low overhead chrooted full installs) so that I can test splitting up the application in various ways.

I would imagine that a transparent grid system would reduce the need to worry about scalability issues for many uses.
Ten things you should not say to your VC.
I know of cases where cofounders met at startup school, but we haven't funded any. The most ad hoc group of founders we funded were a pair who knew one another online but hadn't met. That didn't work out very well.
To combat linkjacking, people with editor auth can replace linkjacked urls with the url of the original source. The original submitter still gets the karma points though; he was after all the one who brought it to everyone's attention.
Every Demo 2007 startup ranked from 1 to 62
We really need a down button on the links. So many of them suck.
elias, THAT story is a keeper, and it's going in the vault!
This one comes from Paul Graham, from 'How To Start A Startup':

"What you should do in college is work on your own projects. Hackers should do this even if they don't plan to start startups, because it's the only real way to learn how to program. In some cases you may collaborate with other students, and this is the best way to get to know good hackers. The project may even grow into a startup. But once again, I wouldn't aim too directly at either target. Don't force things; just work on stuff you like with people you like."

Granted, it's targeted towards a college student (which I am), there's an underlying principle that can be applied to most any case you might face. Just do projects with people you like. Too simple.
Is Your Startup Destined to Fail? - The 90 percent failure rate myth
What is Phil Mickelson doing there on a Segwell?
my favorite line: "At any rate, it seems clear that some people simply want to believe that entrepreneurship is harder than it really is."
What is left that is interesting to do in CS? Why is it "completely ridiculous" to suggest that everything interesting in CS has been done? Disprove it by example.
I cant believe someone actually posted this - google and you will find an article by someone who saw such an advt.
and says why it is such a bad idea
that is true.
Did you code pindax.com?
good stuff.
yes, it is. my neighbours who were never friendly, became downright suspicious when I worked from home.
Collaborative startup specification: let the masses tell you what to build (so you know that you will have many users before you even begin)
Why try to guess what many people would want? Let them tell you more directly via a service for collaborative startup specification. Unlike implementation, specification -- at least at an informal level -- can be done by pretty well anyone. Of course, you will need to provide some way to end up with a coherent spec from all those user contributions. But if something like wikipedia can produce stellar results, then why not this?

And when you start working on something, why not keep all those people up to date with your progress? They would probably be very eager to see what you are doing with their spec contributions. And they may evolve the spec over time, again, in a collaborative way.

When your startup is ready to launch, you will then have all those people ready to try it out and tell their friends.
They're trying to compete with Digg/Reddit with *that*? It looks like Altavista circa 2000.
I thought this video looked vaguely familiar, and then I noticed myself standing in the peanut gallery.
The music business, huh?

Finally, we're going to start roping in the chicks! Just like back in the FORTRAN days!
I've always been pretty skeptical of the 90% number, but I don't think this article clears up the matter. I'm assuming all of us here aren't interested in opening up a mini-mart (rather we're interested in startups in the PG definition of the word -- basically something that scales). And yet, the "over half" figure that's quoted in the article I'm sure includes things like mini-marts. And I would guess that a mini-mart business has a better chance of staying open over a year than a tech startup does. So the "over half" might be inflated in the other direction.

Also, I wonder if companies that in reality fail before one year might just tend to wait until the next tax year comes before officially shutting it down with the government. If so, depending on how the stats were found, this could inflate the success percentage.
Wikipedia isn't the right mechanism. It's fine when you're collaborating on documenting something that's completely objective, but as soon as you get into something controversial it descends into chaos. There's good reason that some of the highest-quality articles on Wikipedia tend to be the ones about math.

Darcs/git might be a better model for this sort of thing: everybody gets their own working copy and can merge changes made to other copies into their own.
Maybe you can use something like reddit for this purpose.