skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
some that haven't been mentioned:

- the innovator's dilemma by clayton christensen

- blue ocean strategy (kim and mauborgne) -- these two books give you a little bit more of a framework to evaluate where your idea adds value and give you examples of how/why some successful companies have been successful

- high tech startup by nesheim -- a little dated, but lots of info

- negotiation/people books: getting to yes (fisher, ury) and getting past no (ury), influence by cialdini
(useful for more than just startups)

- maybe some management books: peopleware (demarco and lister), the art of project management (berkun), first, break all the rules (buckingham)

- founders at work (livingston) to get inspired

+1 to crossing the chasm, and the godin & gladwell books, art of the start

blogs: onstartups.com, fred wilson, brad feld, seth godin, etc., guy kawasaki

-drew
Anyone here work better with a lot of background noise (like in a coffee shop)? Personally, I can hardly get anything done when it's noisy.
Haven't read it yet, but my first impression strongly agrees with the premise of the article.
Ok I read it. The article loses some credibility for almost completely being an advertisement.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
That is indeed an excellent book for personal development. Anyone who hasn't yet read it should certainly look into it.
The content of #17 doesn't really match the title in my opinion. I read the content more like "Solve a Problem You Have or Have Observed Yourself".

So many people want to start a company, any company, that they end up cloning someone else's solution with the idea that because they're so smart they can do it better. Sometimes this works, but it's a huge gamble because your product starts out 95% similar to someone else's and they're already way ahead of you.

Flixster is attacking an old tired monopoly (IMDB) that stopped innovating 10 years ago. Killing dinosaurs seems a pretty successful strategy -- worked for Google. Just don't try killing Flickr by cloning it and adding some oddball feature only techies care about.
Has anyone read "ANSI Common Lisp" by pg, yet? The painting on the front cover is actually by Paul :)

http://images.pearsoned-ema.com/jpeg/large/9780133708752.jpg
adhd and add are overrated. so many people have it. i was even diagnosed with it. its just so easy to fit into the DSM/IV description. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM_IV
Keep talking.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Neumann-U87-Ai-Shockmount-Set-Z-Microphone-with-Box?sku=271404
Y Combinator Startup News clone in spanish
Okie, I think the biggest issues are:

1) Aiming money only, in other words, money as a cause not a consequence

2) Not that will lead to a failure, but will make your life harder. Startups that deal with technology for technology, in other words, are trying to solve problems of the technology itself. You should create something that will bring a better life for the slashdot nerd reader and to the 3rd world 60th years old retired "guy"

Do something that will make people happy, to feel better to waste less time and you'll be starting something with more survival probability.

I don't agree with the derivative idea concept. Google is the worse example you could have used. Before google we had yahoo and a bunch of spider/bot search engines. Their idea wasn't original, they just did something better aiming to solve search problem helping people not to waste their time.

More than just to create a search engine they created a way to make your life easier.

regards
Keep talking? Why are you linking to a 3000 dollar microphone? I don't see how this is relevant in recording cheap or adding to the conversation that we were having. There's a lot more to recording a band than having an expensive microphone.
There's plenty of interesting books out there and many are fairly specific for the task you're trying to solve. The book that has helped me out the most is Getting Things Done by David Allen:

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

It's better than any other personal development book.
- Tipping point (creates a urgency feeling)

- Built to last (tips and best practices)

- Blink (helps not to waste ideas, shows how your first impressions/thoughts could be useful)

- Phylosophy Books (Republic and Politics) - you can understand and have good insights about this social networking and community fever moment.

Anything you could read regarding usability, interfaces and scalability would help a lot when dealing with low money web2 related startups.

To know about extreme programming would be very good.
I agree 100%!
Awesome insights and helpful concepts/information
User Community and ROI
Dang, wish I knew about it earlier. I've a once a week class next to Fred's A-list PhD office at UNC.

This added social networking does not surprise me - Fred's report on social networking has been widely quoted so I am sure this must not be a weekend job to look cool.
Startup Metrics Series
Anyone interested in joining a team of Stanford students to try to get a Lightspeed VP Summer Grant?
Business side:

Most business books are fun to read, but it's really hard to say that any have been truly helpful. Most lean more to the motivational/inspirational side, instead of focusing on case studies. My suspicion is that business is probably not best learned from a book. But I'll list a few I like anyways.

Alan Sugar: The Amstrad Story
- Great story about how Sir Alan grew an empire selling stereos out of the back of a car. Instructive because his key insights revolved around understanding what the average user wanted, as opposed to the technical elite.

Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison
- He started his first company at 33 after working for other high tech firms. This book is neat because Ellison adds his own comments in the footer when he disagrees with the biographer.

Founders @ Work
- Pre-ordered it. I was tempted to read it all at once, but decided to spread it out over 2 weeks. I'm glad that I did - there's a lot to digest....

Product side:

Designing Interactions
- If you want to design great user experiences, it helps to see the thought processes great designers go through to create successful products.

Bulletproof Web Design
- Well written, concise. Cederholm knows CSS.

Hardening Linux
- I've seen many guides at the bookstore. This one appealed to me because it has both breadth and depth. The chapter on configuring firewalls was alone worth the price of the book.
it's an interesting idea, talk about niche targeting. ironically, the design of this site doesn't make the cutoff score (but then i probably shouldn't be talking). how did they make it onto msnbc.com?
Breaking: News Corp and NBC Partner To Kill YouTube
Kongregate (user generated flash games) gets funding
Domp, I've been loving the discourse that has emerged between you and far33d, and I have absolutely no idea what mynameishere is trying to say.

Not sure if the post is trying to be offensive, or if it's simply trying to help (though not clearly) the conversation.
Well I'd assume this would be very dependent on what you're planning to work on.
It would be nice to be able to downvote this kind of submission.
Same reason they're on YC News: They're doing something remarkable, in the Godinian sense. ( http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/ )
If Viaweb was a YC-funded Startup Today, What Would it Look Like?
Competition could help -- "someone to race against" as Reid Hoffman discussed in an interview.
"Shared Struggle" is one of the most compelling reasons for doing startups. A small ragtag band of hackers battling the odds.

When you're trying to do it alone there's the feeling that even if you did make it no one would know how hard it was.

Besides, who's going to write the tell-all memoir about the "real" you?
Isn't the LightspeedVP Summer Grant's application deadline on March 23rd? There's not a lot of time left to find a team mate.
Actually in my case, my start-up actually took me OFF my ADD-type symptoms. I realized that I had too many ideas that were keeping me from actually working on ANYTHING including school work. Soon as I settled on ONE startup idea, I could quit thinking about potential ideas and started work on that ONE idea.

After starting work on the startup, all of a sudden I was short of time and naturally forced to plan my day better.
one of the important questions is: are bigcos resistant to the software itself or the notion of buying software from a small startup?

from what i've heard about all things at the enterprise level, corporate accounts are notorioulsy sticky because of the process (it takes uncountable pages of paperwork to get anything done).

so maybe CIOs are reluctant to switch because they already buy from IBM/MS and it's just easier that way.

their loss...
Post URL to your blog
Mine is at http://www.zaid360.com

With so many "professional" blogs popping up almost everyday now, I'm looking to mix in some "more human" blogs in my daily read.
Sure one founder often ends up dominating the decision-making if that is how one wants to look at it. I look at it as more like who has more experience to make a particular decision - I'll question my coding partner once about his choice of platform but not twice if he insists; similarly he trusts my business decisions even when he shares his views.

This post does little to prove one founder is better than two. If anything, his examples are evidence that most top names have co-founders.
LicketyShip Launches P2P Deliveries
Read your snail mail on the Web: RemoteControlMail
Techcrunch empire to expand into seed-stage financing
Dilbert :)
Biggest security threat? Your naive, careless or malicious users
'... clean wholesome fun. A watering hole for entrepreneur animals ...'

love that quote. Someones whacked up a 'search for co-founder site' ... can't remember where.
We should all be planning to fly under big companies anyway and not targeting these kinds of large organizations at first.
Be Quick - But Don't Hurry by Andrew Hill with John Wooden. This book reveals the secrets of running a successful organization.
YC Companies: Where are they now?
I'm curious where, geographicaly speaking, are all those YC companies are now.

I can see some main options:

1) They stay where they joined YC. Either they remain in Cambridge or Mountain View.

2) They go home. They return to where they were based before YC, possibly because of visa issues or prior commitments.

3) They move to the other YC hub. For example justin.tv moving coasts after kiko.

Are there any rough numbers available?
GTD didnt work for me.

The bits that I did find useful were

1) make lots of lists

2) read your lists often
startup by jerry Kaplan. This book really gives you the insight and adrenaline involved in building an idea which was too early for its time. Emotional stuff :)

iCon: the unofficial biography of steve jobs. Tremendous into steve's character
Founders at Work
Hackers and Painters

(Disclaimer - I am moonlighting on my startup idea, but have these books to be a huge source of inspiration. Also, Joel's list is highly recommended. Another book, and it may seem off-topic is Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It helps to study the lives of those who have managed to pull off very successful businesses)
Well the two problems are operators and handsets. Tsumobi tries to make it easier to make apps for phones, helping solve the handset part of the problem.
1) Make YOUR users happy
2) Get bought out by big company ABC
3) Let ABC worry about selling it to the suits (They'll be better at it anyway).
What's the best way of giving away equity to co-founders e.g. on specific targets met, options, vesting etc?
Ok so if you're looking to use equity to build your team but already have a product, brand, some traction what's the best way to give away equity to co-founders? Obviously you can't just say here's X% of the stock - what if they leave next week for a new job, dont do any work on the site for the next 6 months? Presumably there are ways of structuring this but what are they and are they expensive in legal terms?
Anyone like to be Co-Founder from Bangalore - INDIA  ?
Founders at Work :)

and Felix Dennis' "How To Get Rich"
The Traffic Stats for Digg & The Other Top Bookmarking Sites Revealed!
Follow up on your leads with Lead Management software
Lack of Mac malware baffles experts
Sure -- it's what got me into Lisp hackery after I had plateaued on other languages. This led to Emacs and then RSI, but 2 out of 3 ain't bad. :)
Arrington has previously declared CNet his Goliath. I think things like Crunchgear is what he has in mind for expansion.

My take is that he finally realized no one can take over writing Techcrunch for him and maintain the quality that makes it so great. So he's hired Harde to work on all the details of implementing his Grand Media Empire Strategy while he's busy feeding the cash cow.
I've had to make up for a college education so these may be old hat.

Alan Kay's UI lectures: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978270

Ed Tufte, especially Envisioning Information

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP)
http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

Ed Yourdon: Death March... this is a great guide to dealing with enterprizey development. This shows you what to avoid in your own org.
VCs, the Economy, and Employment
DFJ's Fast First Close
I talked with the reddit founders, and they indicated that they're doing around 160,000 unique daily visits these days.

That would make Quantcast's number (100,308 uniques) seem low... I have a hard time even believing compete's 433,070 unique monthly visitors.

This also contradicts with Alexa's data, which ranks reddit at 888 world wide, & 239 in the US...
3 Different Ways To Market Your Web App
Jackpot of 21 Podcasts For web designers, developers and entrepreneurs
Schedule up for Startup School -- includes a recent founders panel
The shrinking server market (due to multi-core and virtualization)
If business wants slow response time and lack of innovation then they're welcome to it.
Sorry for the extreme confusion. You mentioned making a "great album". When artists go to make a "great album" they need to use great tools. Great tools are expensive. Ergo, 1000 dollars isn't going to do it.

"There's a lot more to recording a band than having an expensive microphone."

Indeed there is. Great point. Really great. Having _multiple_ good microphones is just one tiny necessity. It's just one tiny expense compared to everything else, and so that is why I linked to _one_ item. Do you want me to provide links to mixing boards, high-end reel-to-reels, synths, pianos, rental prices on orchestras, estimated costs of studio musicians, singers, engineers, producers, etc, etc? Because all of those things cost more than even very expensive microphones.

Hope I've cleared up the bewilderment.
How to be Silicon Valley
Founder of Silicon Valley "as detestable as he always appeared"
Why are there so few startups outside of the US?
I'm running an open-source software startup (apparently one of the three entrepreneurs who read this site and don't care about web apps), and I get plenty of interaction from my community. My problem is that no one else knows the code base or the problem space nearly as well as I do, which means the majority of my technical decisions are made with essentially no feedback.

I don't have problems with loneliness, and never really did even before I had an active community; I just have problems making competent decisions, especially since I'm a sysadmin turned developer, so I'm a bit out of water doing a software startup.

All you web guys need to quit yer complaining; at least you've got thousands of other entrepreneurs who are in the same boat. There is almost no one else in the sysadmin space, and pretty much everyone's eyes just glaze over when I mention that I'm working on infrastructure, not AJAXy web 2.0 bling.
Wow. What college did you go to? Unless you're talking about some particularily interesting skirt, I would have missed that...
It shouldn't hurt to follow the same basic model as most companies use -- some amount of options, vested at a specific rate, probably with a one year cliff and then monthly vesting after that.

You have to be a lot more willing to fire, though; you don't want to find yourself owing stock to someone who wasn't productive for a year just because you couldn't think of the right way to fire him/her.
Paul Graham on what business can learn from open source and blogging.
NBC, NewsCorp to announce YouTube Competitor
Great Kicker: Google doesn't seem to be particularly worried, either: execs are reportedly referring to the project as "Clown Co."
Here are a couple: http://www.flagr.com/maps/40

Quite a few of them are in San Francisco, too.
CNBC video clip: NBC and News Corporation announce partnership
Sorry to add to the influx of NBC/News Corp. announcements, but I just caught this on CNBC and a video might help the early-morning drowsy readers.
HP goes web 2.0, buys Tabblo
What's the lowest offer you'd take?
We're working hard on finishing up our YC application, and we're having a lot of problems with this one:

"If one wanted to buy you three months in (August 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take?"

First of all, what if we're not particularly interested in selling the company that fast? Should we just put some ridiculously high number that no one would actually pay?

Also, the numbers would seem to vary significantly depending on the details of the acquisition. Are we getting jobs at the purchasing company with good salaries, stock, and creative freedom? Or are we getting some lump sum? Should we put different numbers for different situations?

But assuming we knew we wanted to sell and knew some specifics of the deal, it's still hard for me to come up with hard numbers. Should I base it on how much money we think the product will make? Or perhaps how much money we want to have in the bank to fund future startups? Or on the estimated value of our assets after three months?

How are you approaching this question? What factors are you considering? Any help is appreciated.
Best Buy scores exclusive deal for Apple TV
I think that question, like the question about stock, is largely to make you think about the problem, and see how you react to it. Obviously, it's not possible to produce a number with any real meaning; just discuss potentialities, grand strategy, basically the conceptual framework you'd use for producing that number.

NB: As usual, this is me, guessing. Only pg knows for sure. :)
Some of these have been mentioned, but these stand out for me

Programming:

Getting Real

The Pragmatic Programmer

Hackers and Painters

Business:

Good to Great

Start Your Own Business (I knew basically nothing about
small business before I started, and it's a good intro)

Crossing the Chasm (good so far, haven't finished)

Technology/Culture:

The Long Tail

The World is Flat

Productivity/People:

Getting Things Done

Getting to Yes

How to Win Friends and Influence People
I agree with you; Tumblr seems to fill a niche somewhere between a public del.icio.us feed and a blog. It lets you show people things in a genuinely unified manner (unlike del.icio.us, which is links, only links, nothing but links), without obligating you to go into commentary. It's kind of like a multicast, pull version of emailing something nifty to a friend. I think there's definitely a market for that.
"The Long Tail" is definitely worth reading, although I sort of felt it was a topic that only deserved a long essay expanded into an entire book. Then again, I felt the same way about "The Tipping Point" - interesting idea and points, but it probably could have made just as big an impact in a book half the size.
Big guide to getting your questions answered online
A good way to start might be the rule of thumb that startup investors typically want a 10x return on their money (for companies that succeed). If YC invests $20K in your company in return for 6% of the company, and the company sells for 3.3 million, they get 200K.

Our three founders came up with a number in our own heads, then we agreed on something in the middle...which turned out to be pretty close to 3 million.

As to the question of whether to sell so soon, my personal feeling is that selling soon in a case like this would be a fantastic deal. Each founder would walk away with $1M, and the experience of being a successful entrepeneur. Next, take 100K and throw a tremendous party, take another 100K on go on a ridiculous vacation...then get back to work with the $800K you have left over and start up your next company!
The Business of Software: Real Advice From Real Business Owners
You're using the word "incorporate" incorrectly, which was my original point. To incorporate means to start a corporation. Therefore, registering a sole-proprietorship is, by definition, not incorporation.

The more general term is "register", which applies to the three forms of business: sole-proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations.

What you're thinking of is a business name registration. If you do business as your exact name, you don't need to register a name. If you make more than, $30k (I think), then you do need to register for a GST number.
A good product != a good company.

All the rest are about good companies, whereas 17 is about good products. That's why it doesn't fit the pattern.

We could make a whole separate list of schemas for creating good products too. But, as the grandparent observed, what's important isn't just knowing what the schema is but also knowing when it does and does not apply.
Er. I recommend not immediately pissing away $200K, but that's just me. If you're in your early 20's, a $200K investment could easily be $1M by your thirties.

Taking a $1M lump-sum means never having to work again. That's not to say you won't work again, or won't be productive again. But I'd feel really stupid if at some later date I had to take a job, just because I pissed away my capital.
I think you're onto something here. What I truly believe is to make something customers want. A sin that I fall in at times is making something customers don't want and by and large letting supply get ahead of demand. Another thing I believe is that if your product is going to do something then it might as well make life easier for the regular Joe instead of the computer nerd. Why? well in my opinion the regular Joe is more likely to belong to a larger market segment.
Looks great. I can't wait.
Cal addresses that by arranging his book in roughly the order that you should think about things. He recommends that you think about:

1. Version control

2. Issue tracking

3. One-click deploy

4. Internationalization

5. Security

before you start building your application, then you build and release it, then (and only then) start thinking about:

6. Email

7. Web services

8. Scalability

9. Statistics & monitoring

10. APIs

This mostly squares with my experiences (both with my own startup - currently on step 3, with 4, 5 and a launch-ready app already done - and working for others). The only changes I'd make are:

1. Move statistics and monitoring up the priority list, before launch. You want that data available to drive feature implementation.

2. I'm of two minds on internationalization. I think that most apps can wait until they're popular before they need to internationalize. However, i18n is really difficult to do later, after you've already built an app. I watched LiveJournal go through the process, and it wasn't pretty. So even though you don't need it, you may want to do it upfront because it'll be much harder later.
Microsoft VC Summit
Why do you have to take an offer at all? It normally takes anywhere from 1-2 years to make a site successful enough to justify selling for a gargantuan amount. In 3 months, how much growth can you get to show enough promise of future growth/monetization?