skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey, best way to start a start-up without any funding is to JUST DO IT. Honestly, I am not trying to sound cute here but if you are the kind who has been PLANNING to start a startup for months now then NOW is the time to do it.

You don't need to do ANY further reading on HOW TO start a start-up. Provided you know what you are building, get working on the ACTUAL start-up rather than worrying too much about funding.

There are people on the other end of spectrum too that start too many startups. I was on that end and had to conciously control my urge to start new things and focus on one thing. A lot of you guys here though that have been THINKING about a start-up for months now just need to do it!

1. Call a meeting of your partners to finalize what product you are building; PIN DOWN who will use it; have SOME idea how you will get users

2. Have another meeting and sketch out all the functions

3. Start coding; set tight deadlines

One thing that might help is to start thinking of what you are doing not in terms of a start-up but as a product. When we say start-up we associate with it all the luggage of fund raising etc. but when you are just building a product it is a very specific goal you are after.

Good luck!

-Zaid
Columbus huh? Our team is in Atlanta. Shoot me an email sometime (address in profile).
I knew Jonathan from junior high.

I must admit that his (initial) success with Friendster encouraged me to pursue a startup.

So I ended up leaving academia to pursue a startup full-time.
Other famous people I knew from junior high: Randy Linden and Mark Vange.

Anyone recognize them?

As you might guess, I'm a bit jealous!
Where did you go to Junior High?
I love how you can't actually tell what Socializr does until you go through their very long and painful signup process.
Zion Heights JHS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion_Heights_Junior_High_School

I also went to the same SS as these people:

Earl Haig SS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Haig_Secondary_School
Oh that is great ... I last used VI and Emacs to do C++ development and then there was no concept of intellisense :-P ....btw, do I need to install anything to activate intellisense in VI/Emacs??
I also hate microsoft. When I learned of the xbox elite I returned my xbox. Now I don't have any microsoft products.

I disagree with the end of desktops however. I'd prefer to be a geek at home, not show geekery everywhere I go. I don't like how much time people (including myself) spend on computers and its sad that they bring their laptops with them everywhere they go. A PDA makes more sense. I know two people in my class who have laptops. Everytime I see them open the laptops the battery is dead and they look for an outlet to plugin. They also use the laptops while in class and distract people with windows startup music and MSN messenger beeps. This is a recent addition to cell phones going off in class.
For a company to be'dead' yet still make lots of money is a questionable concept. Invoking the fear of startups should not be a goal for MS, rather pulling an IBM and staying viable while Google and Yahoo innovate their pants off. I think MS is (slowly) figuring this out, and they have a lot of momentum and cash to help them along.
Old guy here (54). Great piece 100% on target. To quote one of my favorite movies, "your saying its all swirling around the drain. Had to end sometime." (Chhronicles of Riddick). Classic disruptive technology (web 2.0) transition, but still about five to ten years away from completion. Remember, Microsoft, like any adversary, has a vote.

A couple of things still slowing down the transition.

1.) Broadband is not yet universal. Rural areas don't have it always and it they do, it is pricey to get.
2.) The installed base will use Win OS's for quite a while still (i.e., Office, engineering apps, business apps), my bet is on a ten year transition.
3.) There is still and will always be value in a stand alone system with an operating system and a cpu onboard for the same reason that the internet was invented. Millions of independently functional and capable cpu's+OS is a million times more robust than central-source server farms having it all. It will only take one war and one EMP burst to prove that.
I agree that there are still some quirks to work out, but you have to admit that these things have been rapidly improving. If you consider all of the software and configurations that exist for any given Linux install (a virtually infinite number), then you have to admit that Linux has come a long way in about 15 years. After all, Microsoft had a 10-15 year head start and the advantage of being able to throw money at the annoying little problems that open source programmers don't like to work on.

As for Ubuntu, I personally have not been very happy with it. I have had much better luck using Gentoo, being quite satisfied with the software management system (called portage), and their approach of compiling everything. My system is very stable and fast, without too much effort.

I will admit that there are some problems trying to work with closed-source software like the Java browser plug-in and Flash, but there are generally step-by-step how-tos out there that say exactly how to get it working. 64-bit is still a bit rough in a few places. I predict that within a year or two, however, many of these issues will be ironed out and everything will be smooth.

Of course, if you're trying to install beta software, you should still expect some difficulty.
Jobitems - free job board
There are actually quite a few startup tech incubators in New York, although the reality is that costs simply are not what they are in Ohio, or elsewhere in the 'real world'. They range from the completely not-for-profit ones such as Pace, to the completely for-profit ones (at rents that would give our colleague from Columbus an instant coronary) such as Eemerge. In between are the ones run by NYSIA, PowerSpace, Rose Tech Ventures, and others.

Darren's idea, while a very appealing concept, will I believe, turn out to be impractical in the long run for lots of reasons. But that's no reason not to try :-)
It used to be the case, that if you created an application, you could be crushed very easily by Microsoft if they copied your functionality, because they owned the dominant platform.

I think Paul is right that Microsoft cannot do that anymore. The dominant platform is the web now, and Microsoft is not a dominant player there, let alone the owner. The web platform does not have an owner.

Currently Google is the most dangerous company for companies who bring a new application, but even they are not as dangerous as Microsoft was. It is still not perceived by its users as the company that brings the web platform.

For Google to crush MySpace or YouTube for instance, is not as easy at all as it was for Microsoft to crush Netscape.
Dead? I know you're making a dramatic overstatement, but as long as Bill Gates is still Chairman of the Board, I hardly think they're dead. How could you not even include Gates' diminished role in your list of reasons why they're "dead?" Gates is clearly the evil genius behind Microsoft. Look at the early flopping around of Vista and the Outlook slowdown fiasco - clear evidence that Gates isn't paying as much attention as he once did. He conquered the industry and doesn't much care any more - now he's off to conquer disease and ignorance and perhaps even world hunger some day.

Microsoft dead? Not yet. If they were dead, NOBODY in their right mind would be buying Vista - but just try buying a new PC without Vista... Lame maybe, big and increasingly incompetent, clearly - but certainly not dead.

Dave Whittle
- Former IBM OS/2 Evangelist
More like this:
1. Fucking the customer
then everything you mention
...most of whom are looking at Google now.
Again a "ster"
Be afraid of Microsoft or be afraid of Google - what's the difference, if you're a startup?
"It will take you 6 to 10 years to learn the business side, so you must look for a business-type cofounder right from the start", a former advisor insisted. Himself a business type, he despises techies, because they despise 'suits'.
The Big problem with a Big company: Let's say you're working on a great project and you know what the next step should be to make the project even better. But, management disagrees and pursues a direction that you know will diminish the value of the project. Your options are to suffer and watch your energy go to waste, quit and work for another company (repeat the above), or to start a start-up and do the job the way you know it needs to be done.

There has been nothing more stressful for me than having this scenario happen - I just can't stand by and watch my efforts go to waste. (The Big company context for me was in the Architecture world, but you can substitute any profession you like in the above scenario) The best stress-reduction decision I have ever made was to start my own company. It was very difficult financially at first, but it was completely worth it.
It's always funny to see people with Apple laptops struggle to get their presentations up and running when they come to my company in hopes of a partnership.
2% is not bad for a product that's still "beta".
Would love to listen what inspired you to go for a startup
Follow on: Use DBMS or fs?
Using public domain for instant content generation
So you agree with me - this is a better product :-)
This post is a follow on to: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=10001

Paul Buchheit @ startup school told us to put our heavily accessed, small data, in hash-tables kept in RAM. Paul Graham mentions viaweb used the FreeBSD fs as its database. It seems to me as if these two applications are very different, and cover a broad spectrum of requirements.

Is there somewhere I can read more about this subject? I mean, there is a whole industry developed around databases, they must add value... The typical response to such a query is: what are you trying to do? Well, given the two applications listed above, what would you have recommended? Me? I'd have recommended a database server. Why would you not have? How can I find out more? How do I achieve your level of enlightenment?

n
Need a Dose of Reality

From TFA: "Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway."

This guy needs a dose of reality. If he is "surprised" running across Windows computers, he needs to visit a business, any business. I'd say...99.9% of them use Windows. Perhaps he is just surrounding himself with counterculture hippies, or perhaps he wants to ignore reality.

From TFA: "Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops" well perhaps they need to fund more broadly. Cool is cool, but not always profitable.

From TFA: "Windows is for grandmas"...and 99.9% of corporate users, and most home users, and many students.
If I would have heavily accessed 'small' data I'd keep them in SQLite database.
Well, I agree with you that MSFT has had that head start and considering the situation they really are far behind!! I am using RedHat for production and I love it!! I use Fedora at home on a x64 dual-core and I have had a few issues, but they all have a workaround and my experience is great with Fedora....even freeBSD on the same box is PERFECT! However, one thing I don't understand is why do they come out with SO MANY flavors of Linux....why not imrovise what is out there?? Is there really a need for Ubuntu & Gentoo when there are so many other flavors that are good including Fedora (I know they are heading the windows route! LOL)... ???
You are right of course; I am somewhat hesitant to provide more details about it here. Judging from the handful of emails I have received, this is a good way to get the word out, and the real discussions can take place offline.
Suppose the application was gmail? Obviously, one big sqlite DB is not going to cut it. Someone, somewhere on here, mentioned having a sqlite DB for each user. I can't imagine this is what gmail does. It may have worked in the case of viaweb, but I'm not sure.
"Don't be a duck" and other good advice to grow your business
"I work at a newspaper"

Which is another dying industry, in case you hadn't noticed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/business/media/26paper.html?ex=1176091200&en=870eff3de332e892&ei=5070

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8HFM6GOB&show_article=1

http://www.journalism.org/node/797

I work at an R1 research institution. When I attend talks in EE and CS (i.e., the ones attended by the guys doing research for tomorrow's technology), I see essentially nothing but Linux and Mac notebooks. 3-4 years ago it was about 50-50 Linux and Windows, rarely a Mac.

I don't think Graham is disputing that there are a lot of Windows machines out there (in fact, I seem to remember the article explicitly acknowledging this). He's talking about tomorrow, not today.

I'll bet if someone had visited your newspaper 25 years ago they'd have seen CP/M or Wang systems.
Microsoft has just moved-on in scope. If you're running a $60B business and you need to grow it to make shareholders happy, you look for the next $10B business. A small project would be something that is a $1B business. It's an amazing scale--growing your business by a billion dollars is less than 2% growth and barely moves your stock price (you know, the CEO's goal).

In the space of YCombinator, start-ups are lucky to be targeting a tenth of that small move. They're not dangerous to those players because they've simply stepped beyond that level of playing the game. Sure, one of those start-ups could emerge to be the next big idea, but Microsoft can afford to sit back and acquire them or jump into the market when they see the opportuntity, after a couple attempts at a profitable model have assumed some of the risk. They have no need or incentive chase every little opportunity. Their not going to get it right every time, they missed both online auctions (eBay) and walk-up ad serving (Google), but missing these hardly renders the company dead or irrelevant.
One of the problems our project faces before launching is building up enough content to make the site useful for early users. Thanks to everyone's tax dollars, our problem is now solved and then some.

I've found ready to go databases and articles that will make our site an incredible resource for our users the day we launch. Can't they already access the data you ask? Of course they can, but the information is hard to find and not organized in a useful way.

We've set out to change that this year by making the information applicable and easy to find/search, add in local social networking features and more to our site. I'm so excited to find this I'm shaking!

Back to the drawing board (literally). Who needs coffee when you have adrenaline?
We applied only for YC, never bothered to apply to similar other ones as we arent interested.
Well, I haven't started a startup quite yet, but I am now in the process.

I've always considered myself an extremely creative person and one who had a mind for business. Being able to develop an idea from scratch, make it a tangible product, and having your own creation ultimately lead you to success, always always always has been a dream of mine.

I've always loved hearing about young guys and college students rising up and making such revolutionary products. What I love about it is that a few young minds can conjur up a product that can achieve great success, often times more than big corporations have been able to do. Almost a rooting for the underdorg type of situation.

At first, I thought that reaching such a goal was one that would be almost impossible, but, as I began attaining knowledge about the entire scene, I soon realized that launching a startup is incredibly feasible. Seeing YouTube, Facebook, Digg, etc. launch and become such revolutionary products in our time, and the fact that all these were started by relatively young guys who had great ideas, allowed me to believe that a young, smart college student such as myself could actually achieve my dream of dreams.

Being in a university atmosphere where I have met others with similar aspirations of starting a startup has also imbued me with fiery motivation. The support, diverse minds, and desire for success that I have been immersed in throughout my university experience has done wonders in stirring up my drive.

All of these together have inspired me to attempt at starting my first startup.
There are, for me, quite a few reasons it's unsucky enough in a 'better is better' sort of way these days. I use Foxmarks to synchronize my bookmarks, and I keep a detailed bookmarks toolbar folder categorized into tons of nested folders. Thousands of bookmarks by now I'm sure. I also use deskbar so I can just start typing the title of one of my bookmarks to launch it. This is far more intuitive for me than any previous way of running web applications, and the level of organization and interoperability I've achieved between all the apps I use (most of which have some form of live collaboration built in these days) makes any computer I'm ever at just feel right.

I feel there's money (or fame, failing that) to be made in a competitor to or addition to foxmarks that allows feeds of bookmarks to be easily subscribed to, so I could distribute a bunch of links in structured format to a development team, say, right in their web browser, that they could all collaborate on. Would take very little effort, and at least I myself could see immediate benefit.
I'll suggest one other disruptive piece of the puzzle. What's the sound of...

BILLIONS of copies of Mac OS X interconnecting?

- iPhones, iPods/tablets(soon), notebooks, desktops, media nodes, wearables (see shuffle jewelry to come).

And yes, something else will displace the Apple universe.
GUI text editors used to be my hero, ever since the first one I used that supported regular expression find and replace (dreamweaver's crap crap crappy editor, shudder).

For, heck I don't know, maybe two years, GUI text editors were my whole world. UltraEdit (needed it for reading EBCDIC data), JEdit, Eclipse, Komodo, Kate, GEdit, each with their uniquely useful featuresets.

One day I determined that I would run vim and vim only for all of my text-editing needs. Since that day roughly a year and a half ago I've developed some quadzillion immediate-throwaway macros via 'q1q@1', developed a .vimrc that follows me from machine to machine that I couldn't survive without, integrated into various little ruby scripts that I use.

I don't have the passion to do the parody right, but I figure while we're at it I'll push vim where I can. And I've pair coded for around a year on a RoR project where we've done all of the development in TextMate, so it's not like I don't have any TM experience :) ++| ft(m)w

I love working with this thing. I feel truly sorry for people who are limiting themselves to a single-mode text editor.
Running Rails on Amazon EC2
++| ft(m)w was supposed to read <ctrl+<shift+| ft(m)w

Not that that's any less dense
I think the key here is to define what you mean by "business-type" person.

Someone who can read a financial statement or is willing to learn, who spent a lot of time growing up or in school reading about the web business, who has started up a few businesses whatever they do, who is interested in that side of the company: yes (as long as they are technical too).

Someone who is an MBA but has limited real world experience: no.
On my 3rd or 4th birthday I recieved a toolbox as the main gift(yeah! hammer and screw drivers) so building and breaking things is something I just grew up with.

I hated all forms of entertainment(music, movies) until 12 or 13 and loved coding. Funnily my start-up today is about music.

-Zaid
This article is absolutely ridicolous. First of all, "Web 2.0" and "AJAX" software won't ever replace Desktop Software, period. The first issue is Performance. JavaScript is awfully slow compared to real programming languages, and this won't change because of some language-specific features. An eMail or calendar application is certainly doable with JavaScript (even though they still aren't as good as desktop software because of the latency). Perhaps even word processing and spreadsheets will be possible with an AJAX app, even though the current AJAX "word processing" and "spreadsheet" apps are ridiculous compared to MS or OpenOffice. But other things, like image editing, video editing, rendering and 3D games just aren't feasible with AJAX. JavaScript is too slow to compute stuff on the client and the latency is too high to do everything on the server, and also someone would have to pay for the server the work is being done on. It won't happen.
But even if it were technically feasible it wouldn't happen. That's because it doesn't offer many advantages over traditional apps. Sure, you can access your data from everywhere, but for everything that matters, that is already the case. For example, IMAP is spreading more and more - why on earth would i use some crappy AJAX eMail client?
And there's another very important reason why AJAX won't take over the World: privacy. There are a lot of things that i just don't want to lie around on someone elses server.

Secondly, high-bandwith connections aren't available for everyone. Think of people living in rural areas, and of people who just don't need it. Yes, those people do exist, and they won't spend 20Â/Month just to do what they already do with conventional software.

Thirdly, it's just not true that "All the computer people use Macs or Linux now". I study CS, and while most of my fellow students have tried Linux, nearly everyone returned back to Windows. That's because nearly every interesting piece of open source software is available for Windows too, while there is a lot of software that is Windows-only. An OS is just a platform for running software, and the software is what matters.

In the end, you even claim that Microsoft sucks. Well, the truth is, they don't really suck very hard anymore. Yes, Windows 1.0-ME were crap, but the Windows NT/2000/XP series is good enough for most people (I haven't tried Vista yet). I've never worked with Visual Studio, but a lot of people claim it's a superb IDE for C/C++. Then you have MS Office. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for almost everyone, and it doesn't suck any harder than it's primary competition, OpenOffice.org (In fact, OpenOffice.org's Base doesn't even come close to the functionality of Access and there is also no good replacement for Visio - no, Dia and Kivio aren't, and then there is Sharepoint and Exchange and a lot more). Claiming that Microsoft Software generally sucks doesn't help, because it's simply not true, and by expressing stuff like that you only make a fool of yourself.
sorry for double posting...
Looked at your --- How I Sold My Idea to my Co-Founders
and looks impressive :)
Yes thats the right approach, keep in touch with people who have same frequency in thinking and have the urge to go for startups. You will soon see that you will realise your goals sooner or later
It appears that the business life cycle has sped up in the last century. If it took Standard Oil 50 years,IBM 30 years and MS 20 to enter the decline phase, what should we expect GOOG's life cycle to be ?

Ironically, the business that views their 'competitors' as harmful and does not embrace and view them in a positive
way, will not benefit long term and will create many enemies - besides losing public trust . If Google is true to their 'do no evil' mantra, then they may possibly be the nemesis of big business and enjoy a very long business life cycle.
How do I change the name of my web application so I don't loose trafic