skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Noticed this mob hawking interest on flickr (startup tag) this morning for Geezeo. Followed the site & found this site.

Interesting points:

- backers are business types

- no tech founders at the head of the table.

- not transparent (no information on terms, process)

The reason YC is an interesting vc prospect is the whole process is transparent. You know the details upfront. Not so with other companies, why?
i totally agree with this, here in the midwest i can barely find a handful of folks that even know what i'm talking about when it comes to 2.0 type ideas...

it is heavy, and you feel lonely, and yet you also feel like you got nothing to lose other than a house, a life, family and everything else... which is why we all need to be more wealthy, and more sane via yoga and good workouts...
Like puzzles? Puzpix.com -  give us your feedback!!
We like puzzles and pretty pictures - so we made this little baby in the last week :). We'd love to hear your feedback, what you think and see what your top scores are...

enjoy!!

Puzpix.com - by Sumon Sadhu (sharpshoot), Jamie Quint (jamiequint) and Tim Davey (Timmmah)
Want a succesful startup? Just stay away from these...
puzpix.com - have you got the moves?

My Record - 8 seconds!

Also, IE Warning - Using this site with IE may hurt your eyes - New layout in the works...
Cool stuff, guys. I aced that PG puzzle in 10 seconds flat.

Is this using the script.aculo.us effects library?
how many moves?
Thinking of working for a startup? Understand this first...
also try the more difficult ones...not only the 9 , but the 16 and the 24 (correction :)
9 (3x3) - 16 (4x4) - 25 (5x5)

25x25 would be INSANE
I think paul bucheit's post http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/equity-math-for-startups.html
is a much more clear explaination of the same concepts.
sure... but realize that those costs of production are sinking fast and heading asymptotically towards zero. The downward slope for film is slower (more people involved, 100 instead of 10), but headed the same direction.

There's no reason, with hundreds of aspiring producers and engineers, that a good band with limited resources couldn't cut a great album for $1k instead of $100k. Given, of course, that the band could find a producer willing to work for the same reasons they want to play.
7 rules to maximize your creative output
10 Reasons why proposals fail
What makes you think they're investors? I don't see any mention of funding on their site. All they say is that they're "all about entrepreneurship," whatever that means.
Sorry, I just realized this is a dupe. Dan posted the same link a few hours ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=5471
You can't quite treat the company as being worth the post-money valuation after a VC round. Angels would pay way more than 1% of the pmv to buy 1% of a company Sequoia had just backed. What they'd pay is the market price.
yep - sortable floats
'... On the positive side though ...'

I'm not being negative, just accepting the reality of the situation.
You can't change human nature.

The system will always be playing catch-up using algorythms against people who want to hack with the system. I'm not saying this is a problem now but it might pay to think what happens the first time 'news.yc' gets slashdotted & overrun with the /. goths, vandels & huns.

It pays to think how can the software be written to enforce the culture? 'Artifacts of initial design' will have effects on future user interaction? [0]

'... I do believe it will only take a few tweaks to the site (for instance adding active discussions to the weighting that determines the front page order) and maybe 30-40 regular contributers to get the critical mass for discussions going. ...'

They have already started :)

'... I've noticed regular contributors such as Alex3917, python_kiss, rms and danielha (and of course pg) are constantly making valuable comments, just a few more guys like them and I think we'll be set. ...'

No. It was an interesting listen to Joshua Schacter at Startup school [1] talking about the energy required to counter the noise. But this a positive story The best thing aside from the comments to come out of YCNews may be the tools, algorythms developed, created to manage the sig to noise problems that will occur.

Reference

[0] Joshua Schacter, 'Startup School talk'

http://notelab.infogami.com/startupschool2006

[Accessed Thursday, 22 March 2007]

[1] Joshua Schacter, 'YC VC presentation, APR 2006'

http://wiki.ycombinator.com/presentations/apr06/Joshua_Schacter.mp3

[Accessed Thursday, 22 March 2007]
Moore's Law hits physics in memory chips - Yahoo! News
I'd class this as a problem. Delicious solves this by having the link on submission checking for uniqueness. If the link has been submitted previously you can't re-submit. The submission process should also be checking for link aliases (/index.html, index.htm, index.php).

Should be added to the todo list.
news.yc already takes care of that. I was able to get by it because I posted a direct link, while Dan's link went through Guy Kavasaki's blog.
I completely realize that. 1000 bucks for an album is not reasonable though. At this point it's around 10 grand for a solid album with an okay producer. That's still a big investment for a small band.

Production costs will never reach zero. It makes no sense. You're always going to have good producers out there, better engineers, a genius mastering person and great studios that people will pay for. Anyone right now could make their own movie with a home camcorder but I'm sure they'd rather go with some professionals.
Damn, missed that. How do you check, rectify for that? aside from honesty? It's a matter of the more authoritative source, so how do you check one link is more authoritative than another algorithmically?
How much damage does a 17, a "derivative idea" make? There are some me-too Web 2.0 websites which do not really have new ideas but execute pretty well, and attract quite a number of users. An example is flixster.com. I wonder what's the composition of execution and idea that lead to success.
I'm going to say yes as well.
my point is that the quality level of the two ends (what you get from the world's best producer and what you get from a mediocre or inexperienced one) are quickly approaching each other, at least in technical quality.

The point is that what you could do at home for free (or with some help from smart people for cheap) now is orders of magnitude better than 3 years ago, and is still improving.

Some people will always be willing to pay. But everyone else won't HAVE to.
ps. domp, are you going to be at startup school this w/e?
It wasn't a stunt; that was all too real.
'... What makes you think they're investors? I don't see any mention of funding on their site. All they say is that they're "all about entrepreneurship," whatever that means. ...'

On the about page ...

'... With over 20 years experience building financial software and technology companies they are dedicated to helping entrepreneurs bring enterprise level success to their ideas. ... if you'd like to have a simple chat with us to tell us about your project or learn more about us, we'd love to hear from you ... ' ~ http://www.startusup.com/about.php

On the project page ...

'... Start Us Up recently joined up with the founders of Yamji, Theron Parlin and James Carppe to build business development opportunities and strategic alliences so Theron and James can focus on what they do best ...' ~ http://www.startusup.com/projects.php

I don't know what they stand for. There is a complete lack of transparency. My guess is they are an offshoot from a parent financial company spinning their products to the user market. I've seen this type of setup before.

Hawking for 'startups' developing web based apps. Pitching without doing the hard-yards. And not being explicit, in what they offer or stand for.
Yeah I agree. The amount of money is no doubt going down. I mean my brother's studio can make a recording that sounds close to the 50 grand ones by just putting triggers on the drums and doing all these other tricks. Would a big musician pay to record with a 20 yr old? No chance in hell.

I wish I was going to the startup school. It'd be nice though if I was cause I'm sure this conversation would have been much better. I didn't realize it was a free event until it was too late.
Building small apps like this is a great learning experience -- I'd love to read more about what you learned by doing it, and what kind of traffic you are seeing
If you're saying that AFTER Sequoia has backed a company, on some later, subsequent round people will pay more, I agree that is supposed to happen.

But that doesn't mean the company was worth more at the moment Sequoia invested. I think the key difference between your means of valuation and mine is that I don't believe that the "market" is meaningful until the founders' equity is liquid.

The "market" is only a useful guide where there is a meaningful correlation between the "market' and the eventual, risk-adjusted value of the company when it becomes liquid.

In that respect, I believe that the VC PMV is a better indicator of the risk-adjusted Present Value of the company.

VCs spend an awful lot of time and effort researching price, and they don't seem to be paying a huge discount to the risk-adjusted PV of companies they back.

The plural of anecdote is not "data," however what I understand is that Angels as a whole are an unreliable indicator.

YMMV, but if someone is telling you "We paid a dollar, but it's really worth two," I would keep my wallet locked in a safe.
I constantly miss that one aspect of college: thousands of intelligent, motivated, somewhat naive, experimental people thinking about the same problems for no reason other than "because it's interesting".
isn't 5x5=25?
there are definitely 25 tiles on the hard puzzle.
Seems like they took the video down, or the archive is broken.

For when it comes back up, it happened just after 1:40AM PST on March 21st.
heh, yeah, oops
"Lonely"?! That's the biggest problem? What about the hundreds of other posts? Come on...
New Technique Stores Data in Bacteria DNA
Here's Sting's take on the issue:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cffpdZIFjxc
Nice puzzle guys, now all those twitters make sense :)

Is Tim the one I met at opencoffee?
Dekoh Challenges Apollo As Desktop/Web Platform
CIOs Spurn Web 2.0 Startups - Enterprises Want Suites and Large, Incumbent Software Vendors
MoblogUK licenses platform to Channel 4 in ground-breaking TV project
Patience and persistence can pay off
Startup founders, what books did you find most helpful?
They spurned microcomputers at first too. Big cos will always be the last to adopt new technology.

This doesn't mean things are hopeless for startups, though. It just means they won't get the big cos as customers till they themselves grow larger. Or to put it more optimistically, that they will grow larger by gradually consuming the market share of the "incumbents."
About 14 months ago, I had little knowledge of how to execute a startup. In particular, I wasn't familiar with any online marketing tactics. The following books helped me a lot in that respective, and more:

1. Positioning, 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing/Branding, Focus, Marketing Warfare

2. Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing (I didn't like "The Big Moo", "Free prize inside" or "Small is the new Big").

3. Founters At Work

4. Wikinomics, Wisdom of Crowds, The Tipping Point (Blink! was alright). I am looking forward to reading "The Long Tail" and "The starfish and the spider"...has anyone read them yet?

6. Why We Buy

7. Hackers and Painters

8. The E-Myth revisited

9. The Art of the Start

10. On War, The Art of War by Machiavelli and Sun Tzu (not exactly for startups, but definitely useful)

11. Crossing the Chasm
First privately funded spacecraft to achieve orbital height
Very good list. I've been compiling a list for a while now using google notebook. Its a big mess and many of the books I have yet to read but it links to a few good lists such as the ones on joelonsoftware and onstartups.

http://www.google.com/notebook/public/14636089903511277449/BDQiPSgoQ98yW0vQh

Also python: long tail is a good read, drags out a bit though. Possibly more my attention span at fault there.
If I were to tag this link, it would've been "Guy, Kavasaki, Eric, Schmidt, Google, CEO, Interview". There is a good chance Dan would have done the same. So tagging helps a lot.

Moreover, tagging leaves open the option to build recommender systems through collaborative filtering. I believe one of the reasons Reddit's recommendation tab was broken for so long (and still is) was because it was difficult to relate content without the use of tags.
It took a long time for most bigcos to adopt mobile phones too.

From what I've heard trying to sign a bigco up for anything is a lot of work, usualy far more than a small startup can afford to spend on a single customer. The company will spend so long evaluating your software that you'll have run out of cash before hearing a yes/no from them. Better to chase individuals/small biz at the start because they're easier to sell to. Of course there will always be exceptions (loopt and boost springs to mind despite not being an enterprise app).
Hey Jamie and Sumon, that's awesome. The interface is great since it took me about 2 seconds to figure it out. Though, you guys might need to increase the complexity of the game in order to make it more addictive. Nobody likes to solve puzzles they know they can solve :)
good sociologist type q's raised here.

could this 'loneliness' be an indicator of 'personality' as well as being a single founder? For instance are you (anyone) energised in the presence of crowds? (for me, no). Variations in founder personality types come into play here.

could also be an indicator of how many 'related/non-related' social groups you inhabit. Do you meet others in other social contexts? I mix in 3-4 non startup groups, thats more than enough.

There are definite advantages of working in groups of like minded. The sharing of knowledge, contacts, protection ~ I'm primarily thinking of how other ape-like creatures work/live, passing on knowledge & skills. Doesn't the web allow this kind of behaviour virtually?
did you try one of the hard puzzles (5x5), if you search for your own images you can find some that are pretty hard! thanks for the suggestion
Using an EEG cap, a startup hopes to change how people interact with video games
ClaimID adds social networking
Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Is it often the case that one founder tends to dominate the decision making process (e.g., Steve Jobs vs Steve Wozniak)?
There are many communication cues the web doesn't distribute. I can't see if you are frowning or smiling as you read this, I can't hear if your voice is desperate or confident. I would bet that much of that information contributes to ape-like creatures sense of well being and progress.
Yeah, and stay away from this site, and reddit, and for the love of god, stay away from justin.tv.
great list. I'll take some time to go through this. To this I'd add the

- JOS software reading list [0]

- JOS management reading list [1]

There are gaps in these lists but pretty much cover the best for both programmers & business - types. But the lists needs updating as I note pg's 'Painters & Hackers' is not listed nor is Cal Hendersons 'Building Scalable Websites' [3].

Reference

[0] Joel On Software 'Book Review, reading list'

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html

[1] Joel On Software, 'Management reading list'

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum.html

[3] Cal Henderson, 'Building Scalable Web Sites, 978-0596102357':

http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356
Is this a dupe? Or just a rehash of something I've heard far too many times?
Hackers and Painters is on my list three times :)

I'm going to have to check out Cal Hendersons book sometime but first I have to make a good site then I can worry about scaling it.
Win friends is great. I managed to find an old yellowing copy at the local library shelved under economics :) For those too AD to read it you can just check out these lists of rules to follow on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People
Development? Yes.
But I'm not sure anything has replaced PARC/Bell Labs style research.

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=2585
So far I've made mistakes 3 (marginal niche), 8 (slowness in launching), 10 (having no specific user in mind) and 17 (fights between founders). They were painful but instructive.
yeah shows how much I read. Hence why i like short lists. Take the time to also listen to CH on Carson Workshops [0] & this one [1]. Also check out the O'Reilly chapter from the book [2].

[0] Carson Workshops, 'The Future of Web Apps, carsonworkshops.com/summit, Cal Henderson'

http://media.libsyn.com/media/carsonsystems/Cal_Henderson.mp3

[1] Carson Workshops, 'Building Enterprise Web Apps on a Budget  How We Built Flickr, ~ 10Mb, 10 min.'

http://odeo.com/audio/1207043/view

[2] O'Reilly, 'O'Reilly, Building Scalable Web Sites, Cal Henderson. Chapter 5: Data Integrity and Security, ~ 5Mb'.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/web2apps/chapter/index.html
Ahh, if only google notebook would actually structure the data in a pretty way just like your numbered citations
I really liked "The Tipping Point". Anything by Malcolm Gladwell I would have to recommend.
If you want a company, not just a startup: anything from Nolo press
"...it has also been my observation that a majority of all entrepreneurs have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or AD/HD."
Also, see:

http://www.windeaters.co.nz/publications/innovation_entrepreneurship/Adhd2_web.pdf
the question is ... can you extract your data?

Then you can do with it, what you like! This is the bane of my existence and I want to own this problem!
I wouldn't call it "blogging for the lazy." There is a very legitimate reason for Tumblr. Don't you ever have an idea or come across something that you just wish you could jot down or share with the world without writing a lengthy opinion piece about it?

In a world that is feeling the weight of information overload, I think it's great that someone is allowing people to just get to the point and "cut the crap" so to speak.

I'm not saying that blogs like TechCrunch aren't worth reading. They are. But I bet Michael Arrington has a lot more to say every day than he can write full blog posts about.
I would pay more at the moment Sequoia invested. There are a few reasons:

- They have a record of picking winners

- They probably invest at a lower price than other VCs (because people would rather have them as their VC)

- The odds of success are improved due to the credibility and connections provided by Sequoia.

It would basically be a cheap way of getting in on their fund, assuming the premium wasn't huge.
And this:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2005/september/79342.html
Secrets of Success
Dan, thank you for sharing that awesome list. Joel's recommended books are great; in fact, back when I was developing a micro ISV, I used to turn to Joel's website for advice. That is where I discovered Paul Graham's "Hackers and Painters". Since then, I have shifted my allegiance to a new mentor :) I think the book brought three major changes in how I think:

1. Think big: Since I was developing a micro ISV, I had never really considered scaling the business to millions of customers (aka users). "Hackers and Painters" entered my life just a few weeks before I was about to launch my product; and I realized I had to develop something that can scale. I took a leap of faith and decided to instead pursue web startups; the opportunities for growth were many times in magnitude.

2. There are others like me: Toronto, Canada is not exactly a Silicon Valley. So uptil then, I didn't know there were so many other young entrepreneurs pursuing the same goals as me. Eventhough I wasn't acquainted with other hackers, I could at least gain a sense of security that I am not alone.

3. The Art of the Start: The single most valuable lesson I learned from Paul's book was the governing dynamics of web startups. Before reading it, there was not much inspiration or reason to think big because even if I did venture into online startups, I wouldn't know what to do.

While I have read some excellent books, I can credit Paul's work for watering the first seeds.
Dating Web site targets 'fit, good-looking' people
I had long pined to read Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, but couldn't convince myself to spend the money; when I arrived at university, I immediately found a copy, and greatly appreciated it (not to say I agreed with every point). I thence read Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and found it fascinating--for anyone who's ever taken an interest in typography, visualization, or the theory of communication, it's an excellent read. Even if none of that interests you, you'd still benefit from the book: it shows you how to think analytically about human factors, which is a relatively rare discipline.
"Hackers and Painters" had an immense impact on me a couple of years ago. Like pg, I multiplex art and hackery (I suck at painting though--sculpture, printmaking, and theatrical design are my areas), so to read a book that validated and supported that duality was to find a good bit of clarity regarding my course in life. I still go back to H&P every few months, when I get worried about such things.

Just yesterday I started reading "Founders at Work", and from what I've gotten through, it's going to be great. More on that later, if this thread last.
Nick Bradbury on Tips for Independent Developers
i've been in this situation before and in general, i agree. and there's a similar kind of suckage being the only technical guy in a startup (i've run a startup for a couple years with a non-technical guy -- smart, but not a hacker.)

in my case, i'm working on a new idea alone at the moment while i find the right cofounder. i've found that a good compromise that still allows you forward progress is to hang out with people who are in the same boat, even if you're not working on the same stuff. i worked over the summer with a couple yc guys who were also starting their own thing and it was great to have other people to bounce ideas off of and frankly to have other people who were stuck inside on friday nights or up at 3am (welcome to the startup world, kids -- often not as glamorous as you'd hope :)) when everyone else is out drinking. it didn't matter that we weren't working on the same stuff -- there was still that esprit de corps and a shoulder to tap when you're working on something cool.

i think it's just the being-in-a-room-by-yourself that sucks, especially if you have roommates on a completely different schedule. and i think it's worth waiting for the right cofounder, even if that means you have to hack the prototype or even launch a beta by yourself -- more startups implode for people reasons than anything else.

there's hope; a good friend of mine has been running his own show for a while after his cofounder left and he's doing fine (but works in an office with other entrepreneurial types), and founders at work has numerous examples of people who had to hoof it on their own for a period of time and did ok (evan williams, a bunch of others).

so if you're in this situation, just get some moral support and keep making forward progress until you find the right cofounder. good luck!

-drew
Agile Web Development with Rails was very helpful
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