skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that's probably over-thinking it-

It's not about making a good impression to pg and his friends.. They're smart developers, and I'm sure they aren't going to turn down a team because they didn't participate in news.yc..

What YC does give is
A) A user-driven techcrunch-style site, where people can discuss the nuts and bolts

B) Focus- The conversation on sites like Digg or even reddit can devolve pretty far, and people end up spamming the site. News.YC has avoided that in part, because their answers ARE "graded"

C) A chance to discuss things with other like-minded people. Out team is going to be applying to YC this summer, but even if we're not accepted, News.YC will be a good source of discussion with other people who are thinking along the same line.. Even if we had no relation to YC, I'd read/write here, if only so that I could see people's replies.
Is this really suitable here?

Clintonforbes, I think this belongs more on Digg, rather than news.yc- I understand you're really excited about your leak or fake or whatnot, but for YC to remain useful, it really needs to be focused. Please don't post things like this here.

Apple is hardly a Early Stage Startup, no matter how much they might want that image for marketing purposes ;)

I say this as a happy Mac user, but please- No thank you.
I think this is a matter of Knowing the Audience, and giving them the details that matter to them..

For instance, if you know what's going on with lease information- You've done this before, you're all set, bringing up the lease at all is just going to cause confusion.

Your VC will spend time talking about the issue, when you need his advice on issue X, or Y..

I think this is an issue where lying isn't really appropriate, but choosing what to raise as topics of discussion is more useful.
I completely agree WRT purpose-

YC is much more useful to bring up things that you might not have thought of, or to hepl you understand the larger issues, rather then the minutiae of what's going on in 2.0 News.

One of the uses I've found is going back through the articles I've upvotted, and used that as a source of links to send to the team, so we're all on the same page about things, such as UI elements and the like..

While I get a lot out of the site individually, beign able to point to a study, or other people who have written about some of the issues is a persuasive tool, and one that helps to ensure that we have a better product all around.
Dealing with the Information Explosion
Cisco enters web software market with WebEx acquisition
OSX inventories, tips & hack collections | 43 Folders
I read the first half of the article thinking that this was written today instead of 7 years ago, it sounds very familiar
I've this story floating around for a couple of weeks now about how the world is going to run out of storage space. Am I the only one who finds this supposed crisis to be a little hard to believe? When I run out of room on one of my drives, I figure out what to delete. Usually old and unneccessary data gets the boot. Is it so hard to believe that the world at large won't simply do the same? Albeit on a grander scale. Even better, we may become more efficient in what we decide to store in the first place, imagine that.
Social network traffic up 11.5 percent; MySpace still dominates
Fred Wilson warns about "dumb money"
Here is a related post by Phil on Profy: Online Communities Continue Growth

http://www.profy.com/2007/03/15/online-community/
Yeah, the social stuff and the girlfriend are not really top issues, but still things we thought about. In fairness, my co-founder told me flat out that the gf thing was not a huge issue for him, simply because, like you said, it's going to be rough for them either way, and she understands we need to make this work.

As for the social aspect, I'll admit it - I'd like to be able to occasionally have some fun outside work. Do I think we're going to be partying every night (either in Cambridge or Denver)? Hell, no. Would I like to have some good friends around? Well, yeah. Is not having a group of friends available a con? Yeah, it is. My life is both work and play. I have no illusions about the ratio of those two while creating a startup, but I'd still like my limited play time to be of high quality.

Plus, It's very unlikely it would be for only three months - if it were just that, I'd wouldn't worry about it. But the reality is that if we move to Cambridge, I we wouldn't be leaving unless we had a good reason.

In any case, thanks for the feedback...
How to improve your pitch process with entrepreneurs
This is from 2000, Feb 2000 no less. I don't know of anyone saying this kind of thing today.
I don't think that we're going to end up destroying ourselves with our excess data but I think it makes a good case for centralized data storage. If you could hold all of your personal data in one place you wouldn't have to copy it to each computer, or email it to yourself every day or so. Just finding ways to not have to copy everything all the time would solve any problem there may be.
Ignore... sometimes the bookmarklet isn't handy.
Google introduces more privacy (will anonymize server logs)
There is an update now on the article. Could be a very wise move.

"Update: Spokeswoman Kay Luo and co-founder Konstantin Guericke have since responded. Both said the change had nothing to do with the financing. Hoffman hired a recruiter almost four months ago, and interviewed 72 candidates. Hoffman wants to build LinkedIn into a multi-billion dollar company, they said, and realized LinkedIn needed to scale, which means giving more attention to management issues, something that isnt his strength. His passion is in the product, said Guericke, rather than in sorting out management stuff. Nye is a protege of Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell, someone Hoffman respects, Luo said.
When you sit down with VCs to set terms for a few million in A-round funding, it will be a question of whether they take 25% or 50% of your company.

Between connections, advice, and time, the extra strength you'll have at the bargaining table at this stage (the increase in the ratio of what your company is worth/how much money you need) should allow you to more than make up for the 6% equity...assuming your idea is good!
This reminds me of all the dumb money that's been pushing the housing market, pushed by dumb lenders (sub-prime, option ARMs, no-doc loans), etc. I mean dumb not because homebuyers are stupid, but because the average loan originator makes their money selling the loan -- not making sure the loan is a good investment.
Thanks for turning up guys, was great to meet you all
Are Web Interfaces "Good Enough"?
If you're in Canada, and you set up a sole proprietorship for your dad, then you didn't incorporate it. Corporations and sole proprietorships are mutually exclusive categories of companies. Setting up a sole proprietorship is as easy as going to a business kiosk and filling out some forms.
Haha. As much as it sounds like self-help, new age material, I like them all.

Thanks!

Jimmy Lin
Top 10 Lies VCs Know You're Telling (Guy Kawasaki)
I think it would be better if there were less items on each page, font was bigger, and we had categories for each submission so that we could filter it.
This is a good post. I especially like the conversation around Eckel's point about Flash perhaps being better suited for Web apps than DHTML/JS. I can't really put my finger on it very well, but Flash apps just don't feel real. I never really get the sense that I'm the one controlling the application.
Applying to Y Combinator without a VISA?
Hey,

I posted my email in an old discussion about non-americans wanting to apply to Y Combinator. I got more than 10 emails so there seems to be a lot of people with questions about this.

There are a couple of groups in previous Y Combinator programs with one or more international founders, and I'm one of them.

Getting a real work-VISA to the US when you are 22 is virtually impossible, but should it stop you from applying? I don't think so.

Let's keep this thread open for VISA discussion. I'm happy to share my experience and knowledge

Gustaf
I wouldn't say it's impossible to get a work visa - I've gotten TN1's before, and am currently on a L1-A with a few months left before my Green Card is finished. I received my L1-A 2 years ago when I was 22, now at the age of 24 it took roughly 8 months to get my Green Card under the EB1 classification.
Ask the Wizard: Creating Competitors
3 interesting points.

I really like how he explains the lack of open APIs in terms of giving your competitors, as opposed to your users, a chance to fill in gaps in your service.

I can't say I have much experience with his advice on partnerships in not strategic areas. How would a startup best spot a partnership with potential to go sour as he describes?
This shows the value of human relationships in startups -- the people who are most successful spend time cultivating them, and take a long-term approach to investing their time in them (I may not back this person today but I want to keep up with them to hear about their next big idea)
I'd say it's probably pretty difficult. I'm certainly not an expert, but to come in to the US on an Investment Visa, I think you need a few million in the bank..

To do it as a Employee, they'd need to do H1B (which I don't think applies here), or standard immigration.. If it's a standard work-visa, there's a problem in that you're not working for anyone..

It probably isn't impossible, but it'd make things substantially more difficult.
Interesting! But doesn't L1 require you to be employed by the same company outside of US minimum 1 year? Did you study in the US?
To get a H1B to do Y Combinator is probably not an option at all. H1B require certification of the employer etc, which you are unlikely to get for a brand new startup.

If you find a way to be in the country then you can probably worry about VISA when you know your startup is going to be a real company and you'll take investments etc.
Certainly a good read-

While I tend to be a bit of a details oriented person when it comes to UI, the most important aspect is reducing friction to the user.

If a user has to go to your website, download a plugin, wait for it to install, restart their browser, and then go back, you're going to lose them.
This is the same problem when it comes to downloading an application. You want to make it as easy as possible to get things going, as quickly as possible.

Ajax gives users this- Flash is useful, and with Flex may gain inrodes into whole-application development, but It's still hairy- While flash is installed in a huge portion of desktops, most of them have old versions..

Using it also ties you to technology owned by a company other than you. This is a key point- Look what Adobe has done with Acrobat- It's a great format, but for YEAR it got slower with each revision..
If this happens with Flash, there's nothing you can do about it. It's a closed standard, and you don't own it.

At least with browsers, users have a choice of implementation..

Adding Flash adds a layer of abstration- Each time you do that, you lose a bit of control.

I'd rather use a Ajax toolkit like GWT- Even if Google screws up, it's OSS, and I can fork from the version that worked well for me.
Yes - this is where having a partner in the US is really helpful. My partner was able to setup our holding company, and I was able to work for it for a year and then go for my L1. We are then able to start smaller organizations in which VC's can own their percentage, and rest being owned by our holding company allowing for things to still be legal for my current Visa situation.

It's a little bit more complicated to setup, but well worth it and allows you to qualify for a Green Card much faster than the traditional avenues. I'm not sure YC/PG's standpoint on adding this layer of complexity to the incorporation procedure they undergo with YC Funded Startups, but I'm sure that if the team and idea is good enough they'd work with you on this.
Free Web Site Monitoring
It seems like if you are building to flip you might get lucky, and at certain times (like 7 years ago) that's easier than others. But "build to last"/"build to work" are on the same side of the coin as "make something people want": the odds of succeeding and making money are better if you are aiming to build something great that's actually worth acquiring.
User interface friction Research Vista vs XP vs Mac OS
Hey folks,

I've actually just gone through this process. I'm a Canadian who just finished school and here are the option my US-based immigration lawyer laid out for me:

1) E2 investment visa: not easy to do. You need to meet an undefined "minimum investment criteria" which is typically $500,000 but if you're lucky you may be able to get in with less.

2) TN-1. A legitimate option for Canadians and Mexican. You need to find an American to own your startup in the U.S. and you start a company in either Mexico or Canada. You then get hired by the owner of the U.S.-based company and get a TN-1. You can't be the owner of the U.S.-based company but you can have an option to buy the whole thing.

The nice part about this is that you then get the American-based company to issue you an H1-B visa the next year and you're well on your way to a Green Card.

3) L2. Find someone on an L1 visa and marry them. You can then work for anyone in the U.S. including your own company
Caterina Fake: http://www.caterina.net/archive/000965.html
How does one qualify for an EB1? The requirements look daunting...
Latency in general is an excruciating side effect of Vista. I'm running it in Parallels on my MacBook Pro and it's really tough to keep from throwing my Mighty Mouse across the room. Load up XP in the same environment and I'm good to go. Starting to wonder why I "upgraded" the thing.

Just to be balanced though (somewhat), the Office 2007 UI is slick. It's nice to use once you get over the learning curve. You'll catch yourself saying, "where the hell is Paste As Special?" for the first week or so though.
What sort of alternative end users (or possibly uses) would you foresee?

There are already quite a few generic mailing list services out there, which is why we're trying to target musicians and build a site centered around fan bases.
Time to start making apps for the Google Phone
There are people that have this mindset, although I don't think it means that we are in a bubble. There are always people looking to get rich quick. The fact that it's so easy to start a Web Venture today means that there will be more of those kind of people in this space.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/10/01/8387088/
As a Canadian, don't you just need the citizenship card to get in America? The borders are pretty much open, so I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.
Bruce Sterling on death of "blogs"
Google Maps for all non-free sites starts at $10,000 / year
What about frequent visits to Boston from Canada, say once a week? Would that work?
Use of the regular free Google Maps API is not allowed for sites that aren't available to the public free of charge.

"The Maps API is a free beta service, available for any web site that is free to consumers. Please see the terms of use for more information" (from: http://www.google.com/apis/maps/ )
'Build to flip' is a fine idea. Of course you still need to make a good product, but I don't think 'build to last' is right for every company or every idea. A world with 100 new HPs every year would be top-heavy.

The ecosystem needs a few big companies with billions of capital and global reach, but there's nothing wrong with building up a good small idea and selling it off after a year or two to be integrated into something larger.
I apologize if this is a repeat. I should have assumed Guy's whole site is probably somewhere on this news feed.
I think the main point in this posting is not how bad it is to start off with the first adopters, but instead to think how they will be alot different than mainstream users, and what you learn from them (click through, advertising, new users, etc...) might not be exactly how things will work with the mainstream crowd.
He can argue that dumb money is feeding venture fratricide and results in major shakeouts, but you'd have to carefully distinguish between simple "knock off" companies and worthy competition. Smart money goes into companies that offer an improvement over an existing ideas.
Delaware has a long, clear history of case law, which is why many companies are incorporated there. Alot are also incorporated in Nevada (my home state). There it's like 200$ total. For a start-up, you normally don't need a whole lot of "lawyer juice" in the equation. The forms are very simple. You basically fill out the articles of incorporation document, then fill out a listing of officers/board members (initial listing of officers), which can be changed later. You also need to have a resident agent, which doesn't need to be a physical place, so long as lawsuit stuff can get there. Many places offer resident agencies as a service for as little as 99$. The deputy just needs to be able to deliver you some lawsuit/whatever. You send it all off to the secretary of state in whatever state you wish to incorporate, then in a few weeks later you get a copy of the forms back plus a certificate signed by the secretary of state saying that you're incorporated under that state. Normally all states have a website where you can look up information about a particular corporation. Every year you have to pay a few hundred bucks or so to rewnew the initial listing of officers. It gets a little more complex if you have investors and the company is initially shared between several people/other companies, but overall, its really that simple.

Delaware might charge more because of the simple fact that so many companies incorporate there. Finally, those "incorporate" services that charge a few grand basically give little advice and just fill the paper work out for you. They take advantage of the naive.
Their very public nature about "doing no evil" is one of their most marketable qualities. It's interesting that in the FAQ, they say they're also working on a way to let users opt _out_ of anonymity if desired.
I agree with that. There is nothing wrong with selling your company, but if you start your company hoping to sell it for millions in a year, it seems like you're just setting yourself up for trouble.
With ubiquitous interweaving technologies, it's always been difficult to clearly categorize the things we have on the web. Blogs as we know it in its purest form will "die", as Sterling puts it, but this is true for all the other terminology we assign to the things we do online. It's the beauty of perpetual evolution.
A strong antagonist makes a strong protagonist. Computer users wouldn't support the open source movement so enthusiastically if Microsoft did not exist. Genghis Khan, the prolific leader who conquered the world, learned early on that by determining a common enemy he could unite the divided Mongol tribes and unleash a force unheard of. Similarly, if it were not for IBM back in the 80's, Steve Jobs would've never been able to build a cult around Apple. Strategy, therefore, is not just the art of planning the line of attack; it is also choosing whom to fight.

Some smart entrepreneurs tend to use their comeptition to validate their own product. While the article is great (I mean it), it should be noted that it is not always bad to have competition.
I wonder how this applies to sites that are free and publicly accessible but also have charge-access premium features and areas.
It's a good read, but yeah I believe it's been floating around here before.
I read that it was fine to use the free one because it has less features and ads. If you pay the fee you can disable the ads and use the extra features. I don't think it's anything to worry about. If your site is big enough for Google to notice and ask you to take down your google maps integration, you have a good problem.
Well, yes, the 12-month selloff strategy is probably uncommon for good reason.

I suppose most ideas require more than a few months to create real value.
It seems we're all coming to the same conclusion here:

If the social scene, the necessity of travel, and girlfriends is even thought of as issues, perhaps this funding program really is _not_ for you. Perhaps, even, it may prompt you to reconsider if starting a company at this point is right for you. Pursuing a startup requires an extraordinary amount of dedication and focus; the issues presented are not indicative of that.
Is Twitter popular because no one has real friends who text message?
What is original content?
Seth's Blog: Thrill seekers
Investors are certainly looking for companies that can go public or get acquired. Arguably only those, in fact. What's changed is that no one now would expect that in 12-18 months. That was just Bubble craziness.
Thats if you want to spend money in America. I grew up on the border and even worked a short stint in customs. They can be right anal if they think you're actually do anything productive. Could've just been the fine folk in Montana. Tight squinting eyes boring through your soul. Fingers rapping gently over the grip of their pistol. Waiting and watching you as a stillness fills the air, offering you no escape. "You boys ain't look'n at taki'n jobs from good 'merican boys now are ya?"

As someone mentioned, you can 'visit' but I'm not sure how well that'd work overall. Boston is a 5 hour drive from Montreal. If I recall correctly YC has funded outsiders before. I would be very interested to hear how they managed.

I think Y Combinator would be an amazing experience that I wouldn't get anywhere else. I'd be more than willing to give up several months of my life to move to a new country to learn and work with amazing people. The question of the border is the biggest stumbling block in the path.
Come hear the founders of reddit speak @ UVa
? (Visits  PageViews)
hm. that was supposed to be Visits (GREATER_THAN) PageViews?
This is not really good information for California, but then this is a syndicated article, not locally written.

If you're not going full-on Delaware C-Corp like YC does and you're going to incorporate in California, I really think most startups would prefer an S-Corp over an LLC.

Feld's VC perspective on structure:
http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/001539.html

The California tax perspective:
http://www.taxabletalk.com/posts/1138032374.shtml

Furthermore, CA C-Corps don't have to pay the $800 minimum franchise tax in the company's first year:
http://www.taxes.ca.gov/CorpC.html

I don't think LLCs get the same privilege.
How to work in the US as a Canadian.
Also of use:
http://www.grasmick.com/nafta.htm

According to this site it seems like it'd be fairly easy for Canadians to go and work for a few months in the US. I'm not a lawyer, so not 100% on any this but it seems fairly clear. I'm sure YC has real lawyers who will work out any details. This is just mostly to put my own mind at ease about trouble getting in. And it looks like it won't be much trouble at all.
"If your site is big enough for Google to notice... you have a good problem."

Exactly.
Probably the worst (= most overdone) business idea in the history of the planet: internet games + social networking. Well, second worst. Worst would probably be "Find gold in California."

Launching within a month, hopefully.
Twitter - What are you doing?
Anyone have opinions on Apollo?
If that wasn't your goal, if you just wanted to start a business because you wanted to run your own business, should you look for other types of funding? Are you basically out of luck with most professional investors?
So maybe do a tourist visa for the 3 months. Then sort it out properly later. Is that what you would suggest?
Yes, I know it's pre-release, but I was more wondering about what opportunities a platform like this might provide (even if the answer is "none").
That'd be the time to look into a loan.