skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think one of the biggest factors fueling the initial bubble was the misconception that the costs of doing business online would rapidly drop to zero, so it didn't matter if companies were spending way more than they were making in the short term. The bubble burst because investors figured out that:

A) The cost of hardware wasn't dropping to zero because companies needed to upgrade hardware to keep up with the competition, rather than doing the same thing at a lower cost.

B) By far the biggest costs of doing business were the people and not the hardware, and those costs were going to remain fixed.

Do you see any underlying ideas fueling this bubble that will ultimately be proven false, leading the bubble to pop? To my thinking this reunion.com thing is just a case of stupid business, rather than some underlying common fallacy that's pervading the web. (The closest thing I can think of is that we are all just overvaluing the ability of startups to create wealth, but if this is true then the bubble also has a lot more room to grow before it pops.)
jaggederest is right. Sometimes we get too bogged down with planning, researching, positioning, etc. Just have an open discussion. This will save you a lot of time and will get you to a happier state of mind.
Would you elaborate on what you mean by "similar goals"?

I'm not a MySpace nor a Virb user, but I'm under the impression that Virb is a "MySpace killer," erring more on the social networking side, rather than music sharing.

If you look at it that way, I would think it makes sense to pack a lot of auxiliary features (blogs, video, music) revolving around a central function (friend tracking). It's like creating an amusement park. After you have people coming in, you put rides here and there. iJigg would be more like an open concert hall. Does that seem right?
You mean a manual crawl through http://paulgraham.com/ind.html ? I've often wondered how all the stuff there is organized. New essays we can find out about, but how is one to know when something else is added to this index?

There's no date on the link, so it's not clear how recent it is.
I am in the same position as you. All suggestions here seem reasonable but my advice is don't wait until you have a hacker cofounder. Use rentacoder and try to create a prototype.
If you goto Virb, ~75% of the homepage is dedicated to music. So whatever they may say, I think the idea of Virb originated with music and then they got too mixed up with the fad of packing all the other "web 2.0" features like videos, blogs etc.

Of course I can't be against such features as they are critical to growth but I think the idea of "pack all the features you can" is a bad one and encourages lynching as 37signals folks have pointed out. Instead start small and focused then grow the features. Like facebook.
Java the SUV of web deveopment tools
Intelligent online task management | Smartsheet.com
(delete please)
well I think I was very agressive (just because I'm not that a big Java fan), but I was intended to say that the java language is beautiful by itself, all that OO stuff and the fact that you don't have many ways to do the same thing (like you do when using those intepreted and crazy languages like perl) makes any code looks better.

But concerning that "only will code what you let them" I'm saying that Java lets you define the interfaces (I'm talking about MVC now) and your coder MUST implement that no matter what.

I'm sure that the distance between a bad code and a good code in java is nothing compared with a bad php code and a good php code not to say perl where you can write the same thing in many ways.
Thoughts? That I can't pay the bills with equity perhaps? :) If there's no liquidity event on the near horizon, I have no incentive to even join, let alone stay.

Colour me bitter, but if I'm going to work for peanuts, I'd rather do my own thing and have more control than I would as an optioned employee.

Minor equity (as opposed to the founder's equity) in a company that isn't going to flip (something built 37signals style) is of limited use to me, unless it's wildly profitable and paying out a considerable share of the profits.
Of course the problem is, not being technical you are always prone to the 'Warren Harding' error. [0] You know, someone who dresses badly, uses a mac notebook, talks real fast about technical things that has all the attributes of the hacker except they are crap at building product.

Some suggestions for finding a co-founder can be found reading, Students guide to Startups. [1]

Reference

[0] Warren Harding was 29th President of the United States and had the distinction of being pushed forward because he had the perceived traits of a leader and turned out not to be so good. I picked this up reading the Malcom Gladwell book 'Blink', 0-7139-9844-X.

[1] pg, 'A students guide to startups'

http://paulgraham.com/mit.html
Blub languages just take me a few hours. Haskell took me several months to really grok.
Will cPanel be the next IDE?
What are you guys thinking? Of course this is another Kiko situation. Google's new app is going to be the talk of the town when it launches. And Zenter is not even public yet.

I would think Zenter had a chance if they were already available for public use, but think about it. They are still closed beta with no customers, etc....

This is a prime example when you have a good idea (such as Zenter) but take way too long to execute. Zenter should of went from concept to public app in 3 months time. Then they might of had a chance against Google.
Of course you could not watch it [0] or download the mp3 [1].

Reference

[0] Virtual consoles are great for this, just switch to another console.

[1] mediaberkman, 'Web of Ideas with Paul Graham, 9, November 2006, 1Hr.19m"

http://media-cyber.law.harvard.edu/AudioBerkman/paul_graham_2006-11-08.mp3
Wow actually this is the idea I applied with to YC.
thanks for the link
It will help me improve my own product.

I'll just need to refresh my japanise ;)
Not that I have an opinion on whether there's a bubble going on today, but I'd like to point out that there can be more than one "Bubble," you know. I'm just saying it's very difficult to really identify and act on a bubble when you yourself are entrenched in the middle of it.
Yeah, I just went through most of the index by hand, mostly for the purpose of submitting here. I'm an addict.
Well back in 1984 four guys decided to start a software company called Nantucket. The two developers first ever C project was writing a dBase compiler. That compiler became a full fledged dBase dialect that even spawned an active third party tools market. Not to bad for a first project.
10 Things I Learned From Startup School
Scoble.TV Shuts Down. "Justin.TV is safe from being cloned."
Actually, the guy seemed more like a manager/business type than a hacker. The first thing I asked him was "are you spying for Google", and he hemmed and hawed actually. He gave no indication at all that he was interested in doing a startup himself, but wanted to figure out what we were doing.
Shouting at people to use your product may work, but I think long-term you're better off making something users want!!!
I can't help but to think that the founders can be made to act more like needy girls. Make them want you, make them think that they are about to lose because everyone else recognizes how valuable you are. Make them think that they could not go on without you.

More importantly though, working like a dog for years just to impress your for your employer!?! This is not the startup way.
jmak at sbcglobal dot net
I disagree. It is true that:

1. Video is a slow way to process information in the internet era.

2. Weinberger doesn't come off well. The frequent interruptions at the start are irritating. What starts out seeming like a talk turns into a debate between two people, and the change in format is jarring for a bit. And it is hard to understand what Weinberger is getting at. This might have to do with our disparate vocabularies, and the wide disparity in the worlds he and I live in.

In spite of these, W does have a point. It is non-trivial to separate the fashionable from the timeless in a thing of beauty. 'Space aliens' may require a human-like visual cortex to appreciate the Mona Lisa. Does that make it just a narrow fad as well, or is a visual cortex a protocol prerequisite to evaluating it? As I asked PG over email, where does fashion end and convention begin?

A lot of the ancient philosophical arguments are between polar opposites like these. Should we find out about the world with reason or the senses? Is mind or matter supreme? Is it ok to abort foetuses or not? We know that one can exaggerate anything to make a point, and yet it is easy to fall into the trap of ending up with an extreme viewpoint because one can't decide where to draw the line. Eventually we (will) figure out for each of these issues that there can be richer answers than the obvious black-or-white.

So beauty can be timeless, but also tightly bound to a context. It is not clear that all of the latter is bad. How to separate the two? Open question. Relativism is no worse than believing passionately in the wrong anwer.

---

So much for the academic debate; PG's outlook is more utilitarian[1]. The problem of building beautiful things is a hard one, and it makes more sense for a builder to 'flow timeless' rather than to follow fashions. The alternative may work too, but there's less percentage in it. This is perfectly reasonable, it's just not the same question W is grappling with. Both of them are right, they're just asking slightly different questions. They don't ever figure this out in the video, IMO.

BTW, I believe this conversation contributed to a PG essay:
http://reddit.com/info/ufsk/comments/cugnx

[1] A utilitarian philosophy of aesthetics, heh.
I made the interview! My team was one of the "We're doing X but easy to use" people. We didn't have a functioning demo but we did have graphical mockups of the design. I thought we nailed it, but apparently Paul didn't get it because we didn't have an animated demo. I've been kicking around an essay for a while about just how trivial easy-to-use design can be, it'll be on here eventually.
I thought the interview was pretty interesting. Good to see some critical thinking and conflict over one of PG's essays -- much more interesting than just a biographical interview or unnecessary flattery.

My favorite part:

"If you want to date a painting -- like in the sense of to identify its origin, not to have a relationship with it..."

Thanks for the clarification there... ;-)
Finding jobs with startups
A hacker friend asked me a while ago how to find a job with a startup, and it bothers me that I've never been able to give him a satisfactory answer. I wanted to respond "through friends" but that's not very helpful to someone who isn't as well-connected, which he isn't because he made the mistake of taking a mind-numbing job when he left college and losing touch with his classmates.

Startups don't often hire recruiters, and most of the "startup" job ads on the internet job boards seem to be either a) established companies claiming to be startups in order to sound trendy, or b) Ponzi schemes. So what's left?
McKinsey: Companies Remain Wary of Web 2.0
I hate Snap. They're worse than useless. Luckily, you can easily opt out (just click options).
Pricey - but it does look interesting.
From what I've read about Tonic, they have a lot of tech for Powerpoint compatibility--in particular, reading Powerpoint files, writing powerpoint files, and converting them into file formats which do not require powerpoint.

Slide.com doesn't do anything with PowerPoint. If you go yo Slide.com, you can see that they are not a presentation software company; they are a social networking widget company. Slide.com is not about technology--in fact, their tech looks downright trivial. They are all about branding. Slide.com has no technology to buy; they only (maybe will sometime) have customers to buy.
Thanks, that is good to know. So if we create a new C corp with our new application and build in an API, then create an add-on service with our original LLC later that can add value to the new application, the investors would be less worried?
Its not the big businesses that are the big market for web 2.0, it is the small businesses that have the most to gain. If small and medium sized businesses can get the IT infrastructure of the big companies without having to worry about and pay for the upkeep at a reasonable price, web based application adoption will be huge. Also, once a business invests their time to create data in a given environment, they will stay as long as that app continues to provide the value they need as switching to something else can be very expensive.
Google doesn't have managers! Everyone there is 10 feet tall, types 200 words a minute, codes in a new version of Lisp called GLisp and can beat up Chuck Norris. You must have been mistaken.
From the demo, it doesn't seem intelligent at all - just nice formatting of folder based task lists. And for those who have tried task list project management, which my firm did a couple years ago with ACE project, it is hopeless as soon as you have a complex job with a lot of tasks - especially when the task system does not integrate with all the other data for the business. In fact, it started to slow us down. (Hence my "hair on fire" for actual intelligent project management and my startup)
The startups we've seeded are more likely to get funding than to consult on the side. When they do consult on the side they do it as individuals, not as the company.
Agreed, a week for basic literacy and years for mastery. Based on my own experience I'd say it takes two years of using a language every day and following news groups to be able to write it idiomatically. Every year after that helps you get stuff done (knowledge of tool chains, packages, and the dustiest corners of the language) but the returns are diminishing.

Code from those early days of basic literacy are the thoughest to look back on. "Hey, why does this perl code look like it is trying to be C++?"
And learn Lisp :)
To the extent this deal is bubbly, it's not because it reflects some conceptual misunderstanding but more that some VC firm has too much money to invest. That was a big cause of the original Bubble too.
Preferred stock is only as bad as the terms that come with it. And that's a continuum. If you have preferred stock with no particularly onerous special rights, as for example we bought from Justin.TV, then it's no worse for the founders than common. Better, in fact, because you can claim a lower value for common shares when you give them to new hires.
I do wonder what we'd do if the weather suddenly got worse. We might have to encourage companies to be more self-funding. Maybe we'd accept fewer.
I've never used Grails, but I've used JBoss Seam in a couple of projects and I love it!

http://labs.jboss.com/portal/jbossseam/
Howdy,

The good news is that startups are actively looking for good hackers. Investors are also looking too, since that's one way they can really help their companies. So he can find cool startups and email them, or find cool investors (like YC) and work from higher up in the stream.

My startup, Xobni, is very actively looking for great hackers. We are YC alumni and recently raised a series A financing from Khosla Ventures. We're still a small team, too, so all of the benefits of working for a startup are in full force here. You can email jobs foo at xobni dot com (remove foo)!

Adam
Email them!
Businessweek stories are placed by suits, for suits. [0] I wear shorts &
ripped shirts so I don't take to these stories so well. I'm really not surprised about blogs, wikis not being customer faced in old economy companies but the enlightened hi-tech companies are catching on. [1], [2]

How long is it until an application or combinations of applications allow a company to build new products & generate profit that cannot be done the old way ? [3]

Reference

[0] pg, 'The submarine ~ suits are back'

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

[1] Matt Mullenweg , "Sun isn't relevant to startups"

http://photomatt.net/2007/01/18/relevant-sun/

[2] Jonathon Swartz, "Courage is Relative"

http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/good_bad_and_brave

[3] Old ways means communicate by phone, don't use wiki's, blogs etc.
Thanks for your input, but that's not really the same.
Seriously though. If you're a good hacker then other good hackers and entrepreneurs want to talk to you. Find an in. Sell yourself. Figure out a way to get a conversation. Start with startups likely to be using technologies you know. It does not need to lead immediately to a job, just get the ball rolling. Founders know other startup founders.

It definitely helps if you're genuinely interested in startups and what they're doing and look forward to talking to good hackers yourself.
great tips on business management
Should you write a business book?
It's worth reading to put this post, 'Companies Remain Wary of Web 2.0 ' [0] in perspective. A lot of technical articles originate as PR or paid placement. Thats why if you find an original post written by someone on a blog it can be superior than the drivel placed.

Reference

[0] news.yc, 'McKinsey: Companies Remain Wary of Web 2.0 '

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2007/id20070417_670567.htm?campaign_id=rss_innovate
I'd recommend your friend to attend to as many start-up events as possible. First, many start-ups use such events to recruit. Second, he may be able to find a matching partner looking for his expertise. WorkIt.com is an excellent resource if your friend is in Bay Area.

Another idea is to tell your friend to provide contracting services for start-ups. That way, he/she can test-drive the company while making a few bucks on the side.
I'm not a huge fan of it, but my immediate thought was 'emacs'.
One of the four rules of gun safety: never let your muzzle cover anything that you are not prepared to destroy.

Hard to do when the muzzle is mounted to a camera that's surveying a crowded square.
Before I picked up Java I was programming in Perl and C. I remember that amazing feeling with Java that things just worked as I expected them to. A few years later I worked on another Perl project and spent two days chasing a bug that I could never even have made with Java (due to default initialization of variables, weird scopes and stuff like that).

I think Java still has a lot of things going for it, and my most favorite aspect is the documentation. I never spent a dime on Java books because there is so much excellent documentation available online (starting with the Java Tutorial for beginners). Compare that to Ruby, where you can't even get a specification of the current state of the language for free.

Also it seems most of the new developments in IT are being developed for Java first these days, like Aspect Oriented Programming, Dependency Injection and whatever (granted, maybe some of these things would be superfluous in other languages to begin with, I don't know). You get a really good IDE for free (Eclipse), and new add-ons and frameworks for Java are almost forced to also provide plugins for the IDE to work with. For LISP you are still supposed to use Emacs. What do you use for Ruby on Rails?

That said, it seems to me the problem with Java is not the language but the people using it. There is a lot of overengineering going on, that just isn't fun anymore. Many people (especially the bosses in the large corporations) have become dogmatic about certain ways to design applications, that are often inappropriate (in my opinion).

I also long for a faster way to prototype, and I am putting a lot of hopes on Groovy+Grails or even Ruby. But I have the impression that many people who bash Java don't really know it.
I've used this a couple of times, its been very useful, would be great with a visio-like integration. collaborate and create simple flowcharts
Did Vonage hang Up on Customers?
A whole lot of startups post on Craigslist. Searching for "startup", "funded", etc works pretty well. Quite a few totally legit early-stage startups post there.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=startup&format=rss
Same here. I can't live without a comprehensive set of key-bindings.
Web based Emacs-like code editor
Check this out http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/
I'm sure there'd be some really good responses, but most of us are probably about as far from average internet users as it gets. It really depends on what the product is though.
Hopefully Parrot should go someway to solving that
I dance on the grave of Java's web prominence. Let it be forever relegated to its proper role in banks and other large organizations that don't actually do much.

For years blub programmers have won decision-making arguments against hackers by convincing the boss "Java is Enterprise" and proper hacker languages are only for "sloppy work". People are finally realizing how hollow those great-sounding promises were.

VINDICATION IS NIGH.
Java's big advantages are saving you $50 in books, a crappy bloated IDE, and fad paradigms?

"But I have the impression that many people who bash Java don't really know it."

Interesting complaint from someone who just bashed Perl and almost certainly doesn't know it well.
Sharing photos online?
iPhone: The Microformat Killer App?
You mean I should have used "strict" and I wouldn't have had any problems with Perl? It's true, I am not a Perl hacker by any means. The aspects of Perl I have seen are sufficient for me to wanting to avoid it like the plague.

I am not saying that there can't be valid reasons for hating Java. I just think most of the times it is rather the specific frameworks than the language itself that pisses people off. For example I can't bring myself to write EJBs - having to create 5 files just to be able to call a method remotely exceeds my pain tolerance. Yet in many big cooperations someone up in the management chain has decided that every Java Application has to use EJBs. That I hate, too. It's misleading to judge Java based on that perversity, though - EJBs are just a framework written in Java, not the Java programming language.

Anyway, out of curiosity, is Perl still relevant today? Why would people choose Perl over Python or Ruby?
Patenting VisiCalc
When The Long Tail Wags The Dog
How To Find Hackers At College?
Lifehacker: Better Gmail (Firefox extension)
I agree with pg's belief that college is the best place to find cofounders, so...

1. Where do hackers like to hang out on campus?

2. What languages do great hackers love using?
Oh, and about the book: yeah, I bought the Ruby book, and even the rails book. It turns out that I am often traveling and would like to toy around with Ruby when I am not at home. So having to carry those books around just sucks. I think it is a HUGE difference between a free programming environment and one you have to pay for.

Also whenever I take on a new programming contract, I just start the computer the company provides me with, download the Java documentation and off we go.

Fad paradigms: no, but I know that if I need something, someone has already written a framework for it.
ctrl-y doesn't work.
How do you manage information (bookmarks)?
I don't think tags are the ultimate solution, and in the end delicious is still only a flat list, as are the bookmarks in the browser. Any better ideas for remembering things?

On the one hand I have the theory that all attempts at organization are doomed (ie trying to define useful categories and hierarchies), and ultimately one should just use a search engine to retrieve information. On the other hand I find that I don't enjoy using iTunes very much, because it is hard to accidentally rediscover music I haven't listened to in a long time. In iTunes I guess the normal way to select the music to listen to is to search for it. Before iTunes I would browse my file system and accidentally find lots of music I had forgotten about.
Yeah. The graph is pretty bad. 80% of it is filled with 3 null curves. And we need some comparison point with a better-known site to get some idea of how big a deal this is. And a log scale on the y-axis.