skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm in PA, but on the East side. There certainly isn't as much going on here as in Boston (where I was before), but it is not negligible either.
"... 20 employees wouldn't be completely unreasonable. Not all of them would be straight up coders, of course ..."

I'd agree with this bit, but it's the timing.

It really depends on exit strategy. I'm not sure at what stage the coy. is at - it hasn't been sold, has it received funding? Investing in 30 extra bodies is a lot. It takes a long time to employee quality people and is certainly against grain. One hiccup in the market and could be a Ev of Prya (Blogger).
People-powered customer service
We are beta testing with them and way cool. Startups needing a forum/q&a/faq/support need to try this.
AOL May Kill Their Netscape Digg Clone
love the usability walkthrough's. would be nice if they showed some examples of what doesn't work too.
"... I always wondered why did he use it in the first place though.... ..."

Same here. The cost alone would be one hurdle. The other is access to tools, languages, code and fixes, resouces. It's a matter of taste I guess.
Probably Forbes. The 4 are the Waltons, of WalMart fame. As for the others: Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Sheldon Adelson. Warren Buffet did get a degree, so actually of the top 10 (2006 list) it's 1 degree, 4 inherited, and 5 drop-outs. Buffett was already an entrepreneur with several revenue streams and felt college would be a waste of time, but he went because his father wanted him to.

And of course Steve Jobs dropped out (and started attending only the classes that piqued his interest), and Woz didn't get his degree until after Apple.
sarcasm meter explodes

perhaps more importantly, what do you guys think about the long-term viability of the YC model? are we going to get to a point (i.e. post-Web 2.0) where there just aren't any more opportunities for lightweight web companies?
The thing I hate the most about people's conception about businesses is the goal of IPO. I really don't understand it.
I think it's also important on a webapp homepage a try it button (without registration).
I think a lot of people want to try something before they start using it.
"... Hmm. Yeah, he's processing millions and millions of requests a day off of one web server. ..."

I wouldn't say It's not possible, just painful. Firstly there's the cost (os, tools, languages) and externalities (bugs, slow code updates). I don't know if I could face going to work using such a crappy environment again.

As for the number of transactions, you cannot deny this. The real test will be adding the financial transactions and converting hits to dollars. I like people succeeding - it just makes me wince (personal prejudice) thinking of the technology choice.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll consider adding them in. Ideally I'd like to make a plugin system where people can enter and share their crazy formulae & constants.
My original argument was neither based on revenue nor profit, but stability. I used revenue to illustrate because I didn't know the profit margin.

If anything, the fact that mySpace is only profitable to the tune of 1.8% strengthens my argument. Sure, they may still be in a heavy investment phase, but I honestly expected a higher margin than that.

>There's no reason they couldn't be making a lot more profit.

No kidding, but if you and I think that, why aren't they?
what doesn't work: http://clutterme.com
If you count dropping out of college, and then attending only classes that interest you -- without being enrolled or paying -- as going to college, then sure. Of course that model of self-directed learning is quite opposite the usual cookie-cutter process where you are told which classes to attend and how many "units" of them you "need".

If everyone did things Steve Jobs's way, college administrators would have heart attacks. For the most part, going to college means jumping through the hoops they tell you to jump through, and they send you home if you don't take the prescribed courses in the prescribed timeframe and pay the prescribed fees.
Just saw Daniel Burka mentioning Pownce had a page on the site. I think this is a great idea. So many startups have little to no customer service, it's great to see a resource for this getting setup.
True but the companies you fund only get better and better. And it would be hella nice to cash out. Everyone does fawn over YC and we'd all buy in.
Yes, actually. Forecasts mean little, real numbers and perhaps I'll moderate my opinion.

He's projecting 60% ish growth.
Google to sell overflow storage for Gmail, other apps
> to crusade AGAINST getting educated is profoundly depressing.

That's pretty much the opposite interpretation of what was intended, I think.

Learning is always encouraged. The point was not to throw away your life by joining the cookie-cutter brigade where you get molded to be like everyone else and your originality is stamped out of you so you can be a cubicle drone working for The Man (tm).
If you are looking for some of that, another excellent read is the book "Dont Make Me Think" by Steve Krugg.
Very cool... I think I remember seeing this concept discussed on Slashdot a few years back.

Two of the biggest problems in software development are - the client gives incomplete or wrong requirements, or the programmer doesn't implement them correctly. How are you going to keep everyone happy when the programmer decides the software is deliverable, but the client(s) disagree?
Pitch Deck vs Executive Summary vs Full Business Plan: The Most Utilized?
To paraphrase Guy Kawasaki, "I'm an entrepreneur, therefore I pitch". I'm wondering what you guys have found most useful in communicating your business to potential investors, employees, and partners?

Obviously there's a huge difference in ratio of information to time needed to create it, but I'm wondering if I should take the time to create all three just to have them handy, or none and just birth them on demand? Which have you found most useful internally?
About time someone stood up to these bullies!
Cheers for the feedback. Good questions ... spec disagreement is one of the things we're mulling over.

Currently it's the pledgers (the "clients") who have the vote on whether the releases are any good, or whether or not they're according to spec. But we've got in mind an agreements system for spec arguments like this. For later -- for now we're going to keep a close eye on things and see how they go.
The Limits of Efficiency
Congratulations for the launch. I remember this project being in development some time ago. Good luck.
MySpace's profit margin doesn't strengthen your argument at all and these revenues numbers hurt it significantly. These sites have huge value for the owners and that's backed up by very real numbers now.

> ...why aren't they?

Likely MySpace is much more interested in strengthening their position through reinvestment than trying to extract profits this early in the game. That's responsible and good business, even if they fail at it. Why does this surprise you?
Redeye VC: Voicestar acquired by Marchex
Most of the article is reasonable - except for the bit about the "sublimated sex drive". Did this guy just step out of a time capsule? Freudianism is past its expiration date.

I call foul. The idea that nerds are nerds because they can't get a date - that serious math is something that the sexually satisfied wouldn't bother with - is a pernicious stereotype, and if you're gonna flirt with that argument in the 21st century then you're gonna need data. Real data, not one-shot anecdotes like the life of Paul Erdos. (I'll see your Paul Erdos and raise you the thrice-married Richard Feynman. Now it's your turn: name a celibate jazz musician.)

If the urge to create software comes from a sublimated sex drive, why hasn't the world ground to a halt since we installed 24-hour vending machines for free porn on every programmer's desktop? Was reddit founded by eunuchs? How can YC possibly compete with all those live webcams and chat rooms?
Speaking personally, the front page of clutterme looks good. It's the samples that put me off. :/
Demo Day at Y Combinator
VCs Making More Deals, For Fewer Dollars
YouTube Killer Gets $100M in Funding
GDrive is Here
Congratulations. I'm paying close attention and hope things go well for you guys. I'll be promoting this at the earliest opportunity.

Couple things I noticed:

1. It's not clear what's in it for microPledge. You should be open about the fact that you're a business and not an open source lovefest organization.

2. Those JPEGs on main page should be replaced with GIF/PNG. The artifacts are nasty.

3. Might want to change the humorous text on "I agree" checkbox to just say "I consent to the agreement" otherwise you're possibly weakening your legal protection.

Also, you might want to monitor/search some mailing lists and _very_ tactfully suggest microPledge as a solution to "we don't have time to do that feature now/its not a priority" situations.
VMware IPO Price Going Up, Up, Up
I grew up in Pittsburgh, and there are good bits around CMU. There are definitely some bookish people there. It's not as bad as a completely random town in the middle of the country.

The weather's pretty bad though. I was surprised to read a few years ago that Pgh was one of the least sunny towns in the country. Then I realized why as a kid I associated sun with being on vacation: when we were on vacation, we were in other places, and everywhere else was sunny by comparison.
Google Phone?
Not sure if this is real or if its already been posted. Looks pretty.
Thanks for that. Problem: we're both an open source love-fest organisation and a business. :-)

From our help: "microPledge has intentionally arranged the fee structure to encourage free software. If you are willing to give something away, then so are we." -- http://micropledge.com/help/funding#licenses

Funny about the main page JPEGs (we did that for size, but looks like we might have to change back). On my screen I can't see any artifacts, but on some people's, yeah, they're quite bad.
Providence Equity Partners? $100m? This doesn't sound like a startup. And that means they won't get startup quality people to work on it. And that means they are doomed.
I'm a little confused why he 'likes my boyfriend.'
Innovation and the University-Industry Interface
YCombinator::Disqus : TechStars::IntenseDebate
Shopping 3.0: The New Face of e-Commerce
I've been very disappointed with Spock so far in my testing. People that are very easily found on other search engines hardly if at all show up on Spock. I hope they seriously improve the index.
I suspect a lot of the disagreement expressed here is due to the nature of the people who read ycnews (and the colleges they went to).

Entrepreneurially-minded people view college as this wonderful opportunity to learn, experiment, develop... while, most students are there for a few years of leisure followed by a lifetime of wagework, and as far as I can see most universities do little to dissuade them of this notion
I would wager that the chances of two separate startups producing detrimentally similar websites is negligible, unless you are working on a totally unoriginal me-too type site (and even then...).

[where 'detrimentally similar' is defined as 'so similar that the market can only support one of the two, assuming people actually want it']
Google just made lives of about 7 startups (that I know of anyway) absolute hell. :(

Everyone knew the day was coming (remember Lighthouse in 2004?) but everyone hoped Google forgot about it ;).
Oh my gosh, now that you mention it, it does look like when Cartman has secret meetings in the basement.
I hadn't followed it through to the source when I posted the Wikipedia link. That was a pretty cool little paper one of the mysterious admins of erowid wrote.
$30/mo=INR1200/mo

India is not that cheap yet ...
How to Create Business Cards That Bring You Business
What are you selling, really?
Large corporations are not entrepreneurial, it's not in their nature. They're already throwing government-like money at it.
It's actually being done. Can't say too much.
Web App Autopsy: Read Me Before Starting a Startup
# Don't launch your webapp in December, unless you're doing it to make January's sales look particularly good.
# Language choice doesn't matter: pick the one you like and get on with building it already.
# 1% is a pretty consistently advertised figure for the conversion from free to pay accounts. Only inflate this number if you're about to do a dog and pony show for a VC, otherwise you will only have yourself to blame when you manage to achieve 1%.
# The one number that's missing here which would help to provide a sense of scale is the actual user base of each app. It's almost like pulling a Michael Moore: the murder rate in the US is way higher than in Canada (they have 10x the population, but sssssh! Don't tell anyone or the numbers are less impressive!)
# Remember that, along with a bigger user base comes a higher support cost. Look at RegOnline's support calls/day compared to even FeedBurner's.
Can You Build a Startup Ecosystem Outside the Valley?
San Francisco is an incredible place for startups. There are so many positive factors to encourage entrepreneurs and help them along the way. It was an eye-opener.

More than anything, everyone's openness, availability and participation makes the difference.
Does the Internet/Digital Media Disregard Ethics?
A look into digital media and it's disregard of ethics and morales.
You need to find some way of seeding the current projects. The site looks baron as is. Perhaps you can pledge on a few projects that you could use internally.
Invite Users to Your Office For Pictures with The Staff
Some startups do user meet-ups and that's great. But there's another easy way to build user loyalty and motivate your team. Invite users down to your office to come have their picture taken with the staff. Post the picture on your site. It only takes 5 minutes and it's worth a lot.
do you know how much of a fucking heart attack that link just gave me??

haha. but this doesn't look like platypus (the real gdrive); just the ability to buy more storage for gmail, picasa et al.

(not saying gdrive isn't coming, but this ain't it.)
While USD $30 is only 1200 INR, one agent can probably handle more than six or seven clients.
Which database should my startup use?
We are looking at doing a startup website that will hopefully receive lots of traffic.

I am interested to know what databases people use for their startups.

Obviously MySQL or other open source ones are the cheapest options, but would these hold up a serious site like Digg, Facebook, etc? Or would it be better starting off with something like Oracle?
Why's this post dead?
Doomed? No way! They'll get the very best consultants money can buy to build an enterprise solution that will leverage their strategic advantages.

It'll be enterprise!! It can't possibly fail, and I'm sure they have the powerpoints to prove it.

(having worked for banks/government... I can imagine how the $100 million will be spent... and I can only laugh).
You know, if they keep giving YouTube free advertising, they'll never kill it. Just look at cereal killers.
For my startup I use MySQL although these days I'm checking out alternative DBs. But based on my research it seems MySQL gets the most support from hackers(correct me if I'm wrong). In terms of big companies that use it I do know Flickr uses MySQL.
There are a lot of YouTube clips with Spock and Kirk that would answer your question...
I've seen studies showing PostgreSQL scales better but I assume it's the kind of thing where you can manipulate the data to get whatever results you want. I know MySQL is better supported but can anyone prove it is faster than PostgreSQL?
Start with PostgreSQL. Switch to Oracle if you need to and can afford it.
rms shot you an email a night ago, I was wanting to touch bases with you regarding your talks on UI design.
A more complicated karma system is a good idea, but it would take a lot of tinkering to get it to work. If someone figures out how to do it right, they'd have the beginnings of a reputational economy, like in Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
with more expensive folding chairs
Go with MySQL.

Right now you have no startup, you should go with the option that will allow you to launch the quickest and cheapest. Chances are - you won't see 1/10th the traffic digg or facebook do.

No trying to be mean - I'm being realistic. You can worry about scaling when the time comes - but it probably won't.
Right, I just sent you an invite to chat in Gmail
I see, oh please forgive me if I look like I'm link jacking but I was wondering if we can touch bases on your talks on UI design? it's been a topic of great interest to me.
The only numbers that are real is the $550M revenue for last year, and the $10M profit. The $800M forecast is exactly that, a guess.

Murdoch paid slightly over a year's revenues for mySpace. That's not a bad deal (actually it's pretty sweet if you think there is a long term chance of success), but that thin profit margin is really worrying.

What's more worrying is that mySpace was sold by people who thought that yearly revenue + $10M was a good deal. When even your basic deal starts at 3x yearly revenue, one wonders why they sold so low.

If mySpace is investing to the point of razor thin profit margins now, they must either really have something up their sleeves, or are not as healthy as thought.
MySQL and PostgreSQL are fine relational databases and
you can build large systems out of them.

You might also consider embedded DBs such as SQLite (relational) or qdbm (non relational). If it were me, I'd go with one of these.

Good luck!
Don't worry, you haven't upset me :)
Lets play in fantasy land and say it does get that kind of traffic. I want to know if something like MySQL/Postgres/SQlite is up to the task? Sometimes you gotta spend money to make money, and I wouldn't want to head down a cheaper path if it would compromise the site and delivering a quality service to the people in any way.
This is the honest answer: It doesn't matter.

(Assuming you're not considering MS Access)
no problem, I send you an invite to chat in gmail
People who know me know I'm usually the skeptical one about the long-term value of Facebook and MySpace. You have me beat by a long shot though ;-)

With the humor of Will Ferrel in Anchorman let's "Agree to disagree."
Lift Web Framework
ETags, ETags, ETags (Optimize your website!)
Wii JavaScript SDK
Oracle shouldn't even be on the table. If you get popular at all they will try to rip you off and likely succeed. Not to mention it's a beastly system to manage and you'll never use most of its unique features.

My preference is multiple systems. MySQL for most stuff and Postgres for reporting and financial data. It's easier to scale MySQL because so many people have done it and it's simple. Postgres has lots of nice higher end database features for reporting and I feel (a bit) safer having it handle money.

When the purchase cost for both is $0 and managing them is easy it makes sense not to force yourself into making a decision about which camp you're in. More important than which you choose is learning to leverage memory well. Memcached being the easiest scalable way to do that.
On DTrace envy
BTW, DTrace is also part of Leopard!
Decentralised social networking
Time to build a proper decentralised social network, so you can keep your profile on your own server without sacrificing Facebook-like privacy controls.
Yeah, true. We've done some of that, and it looks like our users are slowly starting to do the same. It's up to you guys now: http://micropledge.com/pledge :-)

Good to hear the site looks like a British nobleman as is. ;-)
Oracle and MSSQL are right off the table.

Personally I prefer PostgreSQL, but if you are a database newb I would recommend MySQL. (I really don't mean that in a bad way, MySQL is easier to use as a beginner, and it has proven it can scale)
yes, they are.
Just wondering what advantages Oracle has over Postgres? (I'm skeptical, but I honestly don't know.)

We chose Postgres over MySQL by a very fine margin, but we're pleased we did. Seems to have fewer "try to make your life easier but end up doing the opposite" quirks.
Looks like they're in Hitler's basement.

Whoops, just killed the thread.
Are you sure you need a database? Maybe "none" is the right answer.

If it isn't, then maybe SQLite, PostgreSQL, or MySQL. At least, that's the order of preference for me, but I avoid databases when possible.

Google uses MySQL heavily, so it obviously scales (but I'm given to understand they had to work hard to do it).
The optimizer is smarter and it's better at concurrency control. You'll get better performance out of Oracle when you have very-long-running transactions or lots of transactions at once operating on the same tables. The former isn't a concern for most web applications, but the latter might be.

The above is received wisdom from academics, though, so it may be dated. PostgreSQL has improved a lot in recent years.
lol, sure.

Did you see this today on TC though... check out Woody's comment, #25. Interesting given the topic at hand, don't ya think?

Link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/09/wow-clown-co-got-that-1...
Yes, Digg uses MySQL and other optimizations.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewA...
If you're considering sqlite, you should read 'when to use sqlite' [http://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html]. Also see this thread 'Thoughts on using SQLite?' [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38287].
I would go with MySQL simply because so many big sites have used it: Facebook, Youtube, Digg, Yahoo, etc. If it's good enough for them, and free, it doesn't seem like you can go wrong.

See a list of companies using MySQL:
http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/press-release/release_2...

Or a talk from the guys at YouTube about how they scaled:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6304964351441328559

The only exception would be is if you are primarily handling financial transactions. Then perhaps Oracle would be the way to go, since your customers will be more conservative about the technologies they would accept.
I agree... are you trying to avoid giving information away with those samples?
A Taste of Haskell Part I (wanna learn Haskell from one of its creators?)
And if you want nearly everything Oracle has to offer at a fraction of the price, consider EnterpriseDB.
Just a quick thought: does YC provide any presentation coaching before DD? I can't think of one topic that sends people into fits faster than public speaking! IMO, it's a skill that should be practiced as much as possible, but real opportunities are rare...
If this person actually had a good college education they'd understand the concept of opportunity cost. The more well educated you are, the higher your opportunity cost.

Having a top college in your pocket can also help build your network if you use it right. The author also misinterprets causation and correlation. Just because X% of the richest people in America are dropouts is meaningless. What % of the total population has a college degree? Probably something like 30%. That just shows this guy's article is poorly thought out.

It's a nice sensational headline but it falls flat on its face in terms of logic.
Out of the gate, I would recommend Postgres.

However, choosing which database to use should come after you establish a few of the parameters that matter to you.

There is little reason to use a for-pay database unless you are doing something special with the features. Oracle for instance has some interesting text-search stuff builtin to the DB. But if you know you need that, then you are already starting to narrow the list of candidates.
Don't listen to the people recommending SQLite. Use SQLite when you're developing or when you want a database for a desktop application. Don't use it for a production web application.
Fluuuuush.