skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
True, and that's definitely one of our ideas. But mynameishere's right -- it's very hard to make ends meet with just interest on funds held. Unless you happen to get really popular really fast. But in that case you'll probably need more staff or resources, and then you're back to square one.

As far as people paying that price, our thoughts are that we're a "collaborative funding" service, not just a bank, so people will be okay with paying a small cut for the service. (Except for open source: there our philosophy is "you're helping the world, so we'll help you".) We'll find out soon enough if they aren't, I guess. :-)
I could be putting words into markus's mouth,

but I think what he is getting at, is that to be successful in a start-up you don't really need vc money. there are plenty of other ways to do it. Start-ups are too obsessed with funding. You hear about start-ups building products no way as complicated as loopt and yet they are getting 5 million. What are they spending it on!?! The fact of the matter is, many start-ups will not be profitable even with a seemingly good idea and vc money to propel them. I get the sense that a lot of the funding craze is an attempt to stave off bankruptcy, nothing more.
Working with Widgets
This is the sort of unsexy startup more hackers ought to think of starting.
$600 + ($60 x 24) = $2,040

(including minimum two year contract)

So you misunderestimated the actual price.
The hole will be shaped something like this:

http://www.johnlewis.com/jl_assets/product/230404933.jpg
You'll bend any rule? Does that apply to the "must move to the Bay area" rule? (Yes, I am a genius.)

If it weren't for that rule, I'd seriously consider applying -- but if I wanted to move to Silicon Valley, I'd work for Google.
The TV commercials gave me the impression that Google maps works. That's about as advanced as javascript gets.
Welcome to the club. :) You'd get an email if you were on the official blacklist, though.
We once funded a company that didn't move. It didn't work very well. A startup would have to be really good to convince us. And if we did agree it would hurt them, relative to what they might have done if they'd moved.
Silicon Valley Star face-off: Kevin Rose vs. Jason Calacanis vs. Guy
Really nice execution on an idea so boring and obvious that everybody goes "of course there's a site that does that", which is probably the very best kind of idea. Great intro video, too. Everybody on the internet likes cute girls talking to them.

If you manage to get some traction before a dozen imitators spring up, you'll be golden.
My own perception would be also to rank Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Benchmark as top 3, but to put KP half-a-step above the other two, and Sequoia marginally above Benchmark. Especiaually during the last bubble KP really had a reputation of a golden touch in SV, and their startups had an advantage when recruiting. I suspect that people PG surveyed formed their brand perception over longer time than I have.
LT git
The YCombinator list does not include Union Square Ventures whose portfolio includes:

Del.icio.us, FeedBurner, Wesabe, Outside.in, and Indeed

Just a thought.
Geni: 5 million Profiles In 5 Months
Supposedly Kevin Rose has much more than 10% of Digg, same with Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook. Didn't the Google guys maintain a lot of equity as well? I think some people use VC as a crutch and other's use it as a tool. The ones that do the latter seem to do pretty well.
Those are impressively bad odds for being accepted.
It is a bad data point. It's an SEO site that managed to become a destination, almost purely by accident. Sort of like AdultFriendFinder, which makes hundreds of millions doing a similar thing.
it's not the browser based gmaps. it's a "native" app.
I have an app (Fast Friends -- originally Top Nine) with 125,000 users and absolutely no problems hosting -- I'm actually running two apps off the same server. I'm sure if I had won the user war against Slide I'd need a dedicated server ;)

Unless you have a media intensive application (ex: video, music, etc...), hosting isn't really that bad. I would venture to guess apps like "X Me" and "SuperPoke" would do with a single powerful dedicated server, since theres really not much going on. Also, Facebook hosts the images on any profile, so any bandwidth there is only needed until their proxy server picks up the image.
Why Startups cause Economic Inequality - and Why that's Good
A startup is going to compete for the attention of users against many thousands of other companies. Competing against a few hundred, most of which are probably hopeless, doesn't seem that scary to me.
This is just our experience interviewing last season. We applied with two ideas, both with prototypes. The discussion was pretty much exclusively about the idea - how new it is, how easy it is, how interesting it is, whether or not it's porn/music related (either category is probably not a good idea btw).

We had a good response to both our prototypes, but ultimately we were told our idea didn't seem different enough. The impression I got from our interview was that the idea is actually pretty important.

It kind of makes sense, since you're competing against other amazing hackers with good ideas. It doesn't matter as much if you're good -they all were-, you really do need a great idea to go with your team.
The previous comments are valid, but there is also something to be said about the tangent industry you'll be working in. Obviously, you are into web 2.0 and the culture but it really helps to be interested in more than that.

For instance, if you are deciding between last.fm (music) and pumpone.com (fitness), all else being equal you should choose the industry you're more interested in. Being able to relate to the users is ALWAYS beneficial.
I'm using Slicehost. So far so good, although my app is small fry in the traffic stakes.
This just in, the blog people reject social networking. What, a website where you talk to your friends, not an audience? Madness!

Now, the vast majority of people who only wanted a blog to keep their friends and family updated on their life are a different story. They've all hit Facebook by now, or should have.

You know what I'm saying -- we're talking two different lifestyles here. "Well-known blogger" can be accurately used in a newspaper, but "famously prolific Facebook user" is still a phrase that could only come straight from The Onion.
Amazing that this idea was sitting unimplemented right under everyone's noses for so long. There are almost certainly more.
A VPS at the moment, while it's still being developed.
+ Video player for my commute and travel ($250+).

+ WiFi device for remote admin/reading news ($300+).

+ A good phone that doesn't crash ($200+).

It's the best available option in the three categories I actually want. It's a good deal if you use its features and probably a bad deal otherwise.
I was wondering when these super conservative groups, such as the Heritage Foundation, would start using the "inequality is good" argument. There's a lot to like about an utopian society based solely on meritocracy. But the truth is there are large numbers of people who cannot compete on equal footing due to circumstances that are/were out of their control. It's like taking a Chinese class with a bunch of Chinese students and you're the only one who doesn't know the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese.

Using the Google founders as the example of "inequality being good" is ridiculous. Most people don't have a problem with rewarding innovative work; people have problems with not providing a baseline for those who can't. In a pure pay for performance society, those who can't perform, won't get paid. Is this fair? On the surface, well yes, maybe. But what if the REASON for their non-performance is based on systematic oppression and lingering effects thereof? Is a pure pay for performance system still fair?

What about the handicapped, depressed, and otherwise ill affected?

The pay for performance (or inequality is good) argument is fine when no one gets hurt, when the low performers, say, will get a 1% instead of 10% bonus. But when we're talking about the lower levels of society, where people can literally go homeless or die of untreated disease, then it's not so easy to come up with these fantasy theories.
Why cheating is good for human computation games
After reading about Luis' new game for identifying beautiful images, it occurred to me that cheating would enhance human computation games.

The reason being is that cheating adds a new dimension to these games, namely strategy.

So in the game for identifying beautiful images, you can try to get into your partner's head based on the results of previous image pairs. This adds a new dimension to the game that is missing in the ESP Game.

So instead of combating cheating, why not encourage it explicitly by providing features to help players cheat? For example, in this beautiful image game, one can show the results of past image pairs while the game is in progress.

Even in the presence of such cheating, one may still get lots of useful data for subjective problems. In fact, one may get more as the games would have a new dimension to them.
Has anyone here looked into David Allen's "Getting Things Done" ideas? (Mentioned in the article with a link: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/07/01/100117066/index.htm

A good friend of mine has been bugging me about how great this is for a couple years.
I'm thinking about starting a Web assassination market. What do you think about my idea?
We have a VERY distributed team. Is it ok if only 1 of us move to the Bay area?
You're inventing straw men. The writer isn't advocating that people only get whatever wealth they produce. That would mean leaving the severely ill to starve.
If this person is the CEO, and he/she's 1 of 2, that would be ok. If it's 1 out of 4 who's not the CEO, that's not.
I do wonder what the revshare AT&T - Apple might be. What percentage of the total $2040 price is Apple getting?
They're made to look bad by how easy it is to apply. If you make a website offering people money if they fill out a form, a lot of people will fill it out. But the odds for a good team are not as bad as they might seem. At least a third of the applications are egregiously broken: 13 year old founders, people who want to "telecommute" from India, people who want us to fund their plumbing supply store, etc...
Thanks for that clarification - the odds are getting a bit better :) . I'm curious: how many teams were interviewed in person to arrive at the final 20?
"It's like taking a Chinese class with a bunch of Chinese students and you're the only one who doesn't know the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese."

But the answer to that isn't to give you all the same grade regardless of how good your Chinese is, is it. The best thing to do is to grade you accordingly, and for you to find some other class to study.
You're right. I extrapolated to where I sense the Heritage Foundation was hinting at. Word for word, if it came from an apolitical source, there would be nothing to argue against.
Really Bad Procrastination: Creating Customer Evangelists
To carry the analogy further, it'll be if we're only rewarding on mastery of Chinese. For those who are not on equal footing, what other "class" can they take?

"Good inequality", that is, inequality resulting from differing levels of productivity, is only relevant when everyone starts at roughly the same level.

When current inequalities already exist, isolating the productivity variable is very difficult without a social and historical context.
Just a review I did on a book that has five stars on Amazon and a foreword by Guy Kawasaki, but is really bad. Instead of startup-relevant insights about an extremely interesting topic, just badness.
I think the ycombinator ranking is focused on internet companies. What about the VCs that invest in (yes I know yuck) enterprise software?
"To carry the analogy further, it'll be if we're only rewarding on mastery of Chinese. For those who are not on equal footing, what other "class" can they take?"

Whatever class they like (Math, science, etc.). Preferably one they are better at than Chinese.

""Good inequality", that is, inequality resulting from differing levels of productivity, is only relevant when everyone starts at roughly the same level."

So you're saying that since people are born with differing abilities then they should all get paid the same?

You understand that one of the chief ways to motivate people to be more productive is to pay them for it. Who would be willing to work start up hours if you only got paid the same as someone who worked 40 hours a week?
What about co-founders who are H1B's and would face legal consequences for quiting their company?
Jeremy Liew: "Four factors determine how much a Facebook app is worth"
The merit of an argument is independent of its source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
An H1-B doesn't prevent you from switching jobs, no?
Maybe if you're a computer or participating in high school debate. The source matters a lot, because it indicates intent.
Ok, I committed another fallacy in the first sentence. Ignore that and just read the second.
it does for my potential co-founder. He's been working here for over 6 years with no GC. apparently you can't renew your H1B after X years, only stay with the same company.
Curing the Founder's Syndrome
I would like the ability to save stories in situ. But, most of all I would like for all of our comments to be saved. Unless I missed the next button, I noticed that only relatively recent comments are stored.
I don't seem to understand what you're getting at. Strategy still exists in games where no cheating occurs. Are you saying that with cheating, harder strategies have to be formed by the players?

Games usually have a measure of accomplishment. Cheating is usually considered a way of increasing the measure of accomplishment (leveling up) without being subject to the cost of regular rules of the game (fighting monsters to gain exp)--either by finding a combination of rules that negate the intended cost (some type of exploit in game, like selling things for higher than you brought them in an RPG), or by neglect of the rules (cheats)

I'm not sure I see how that adds a new dimension to game playing. Nor do I see how that adds to human computation of problems. Since by cheating, players obtain their reward without having to solve the problem.
"...who wouldn't want to swap paychecks with them..."

I wouldn't want to. They have very low salaries :-)
VC through the ages
My only worry would be that once you create your family tree, you have no reason to return to the site.
I'm thinking this is an old article he wrote years ago and updated to meet a deadline. heh. I actually checked the date of the article to see if it was written in the Before Gmail Era. I have wonder if he's ever really tried using Gmail seriously. It addresses most of his complaints pretty well.

He also says "If you're like me", but how many people are like him or a VC? He's a journalist with a hugely popular blog. Thousands of people want to take a bite out of him. I barely get nibbled at, like most people. I can't personally relate to what he's saying at all.
There is one Kratom supplier in the world. I have the cheapest Kratom on the internet. How do I promote it?
All of the world's Kratom comes from www.wholesaleshamanicherbs.com. There is an unofficial supplier enforced price floor of $9/ounce and no Kratom vendor goes below this price.

So I have the cheapest kratom on the internet. The google adwords aren't saturated so maybe I can get users for $0.10/click, which would be profitable for me. I've also heard that Google charges low page ranked sites more for Adwords and I suspect my pageranking is low enough that Google might punish me.

Because of how I interpret the laws in the USA, I can sell Kratom only for the purposes of incense. A quick google search will review much use for Kratom beyond this but it makes marketing more difficult. I can't market Kratom as a wonder drug that makes you happy and productive that also might help you lose weight.

-

My friends think the website looks like a scam because there is a buy button on the first page. But from an information architecture perspective, I can't justify moving the buy links to a separate page with nothing else on it.

Is your first impression of my site that it must be a scam? Is there anyway I can do to make my site look more reliable?
Thanks Ivan! And yes, your thread prompted this :)
I think they're basically the same firms.
My company loaned servers to one of the top 10 Facebook apps for a few weeks as their app grew to over 3.5MM users.

The hardware: Two modestly equipped boxes from ServerBeach.com -- and it ran super smooth.
45-50
I honestly don't know. We wouldn't want to do anything that would get someone kicked out of the country. I know some visa problems can be fixed with varying amounts of hassle and money, whereas others are truly hard, and I don't know which category this falls into.
FT: Advertising outlook weakens in US
They're all stored. More button for comments coming soon.
Getting rich by doing a startup seems to be atypical. I don't see why that data point shouldn't count. My impression so far is that "doing what you want to do" is among the most promising strategies for success.
We don't know yet that it doesn't crash, or do we? Here's waiting for Rev 2.0...
But like OS X, the iPhone will still only have a minority share, optimizing for other devices might make more sense. Although the iPhone people might be a special demographics (especially prone to use web applications over the phone).
I think people might buy the iPhone rather because they WANT to believe that it is magic and wonderful than because it really is. Still, it is an achievement if you manage to bank on that desire.

I for one look forward to Harry Potter VII for my dose of magic - much cheaper, and probably much better than the iPhone, too.
Ummm, grow the pie. Make it your life's mission to educate people on Kratom. If more people want it, and they only have two sources for it, then you're in great shape.
Like all things, though, some moderation is probably a good idea. Even if this argument makes perfect logical sense, it makes apes unhappy to see other apes getting way more bananas than they are, and if you start to talk politics rather than simply economics, this has practical consequences. Better to balance things out a little bit before things get out of hand and the apes with few bananas vote in someone with truly bad ideas about redistributing wealth.

I once saw a not-really-serious idea by a center-left economist that having money is good and just, as the article says, but perhaps what should be taxed are the very visible bananas (fancy cars, "bling") that the better off apes use to flaunt their wealth.
Google officially buys GrandCentral
definitely - ideas are cheap and plentiful, no matter how cool they are.

Just remember that implementation/execution (no matter how 'simple' an idea is) is a bitch

... and initial ideas aren't often that special - they often change and evolve.

I'd get more excited about finding the people who u can trust, work well with, and who also have the craziness to either jump off the corporate/college safety net or to work their nights and weekends towards completing something worthwhile
Thanks, I really appreciate your advice.

I put the site up without doing a lot of consideration to the marketing, which is a challange. I put it up because Kratom is an extraordinarily profitable product for sellers.

The supplier enforced price floor means that I am not operating on a razor thin price margin. It's close to 100% profit margin. I need not fear someone undercutting me.

Kratom is not an incense, though it can be smoked. I recognize it is confusing, but the current vendors of Kratom claim it is an incense and sold for those purposes only. Kratom is an opiate comparable in strength to hydrocodone. In smaller doses it is stimulating, providing a mental boost similar to caffeine but without the jittery side effects. The main medical uses would be opiate withdrawal, chronic pain management, and treatment of ADHD. Traditionally, workers would chew the leaves of Kratom but now is usually boiled into a tea. If you add a lot of sweetener, it even tastes good. It is high in antioxidants, containing much more than brewed green tea.

The active alkaloid, 6-hydroxy-mitragynine is 30 times more powerful than morphine by weight.

However, I can't tell people that kratom is a drug on my site because it is probably illegal to say so. If I told people that 10 grams of kratom leaf is comparable to 20 miligrams of hydrocodone, I would be selling a drug without FDA approval. Paypal would also ban my account because they want no part of this business. There have been Kratom vendors that made claims about Kratom's use as an opiate on their website that had shipments of Kratom seized by customs. I have spoken to one of the larger retail vendors of Kratom who strongly recommended only referring to Kratom as an incense.

If I was legally allowed to market Kratom as a drug, I would. It's a potent painkiller that doesn't make you tired or slow you down. There is certainly a commercial market for a new, natural opiate but I'm not allowed to bring something like that to market in the USA.

It's a bit of a catch-22 -- if I tell people it's a drug, everyone will want it but I can't tell people it's actually a drug. What I really need here is legal advice telling me exactly what I can and can't say about Kratom, but without legal advice I'm afraid to do any more than give people the tools to find the information for themselves. Does anyone know a lawyer that could offer a qualified view on my business?

I am competing on price and only able to sell to those that already know what Kratom is, unless there's an angle I'm missing here. I've been selling on eBay for a while and a website was the logical way to increase volume. I have some passionate customers, including one who advocated for me on a chronic pain management support group. Most of my customers just email me requesting a PayPal invoice for their Kratom. If I could pull some SEO magic and be highly rated for kratom keywords, this business would be profitable.

Until then, I'm just going to advertise online. Where should I advertise besides Google Adwords?
Email me (in profile) if you want a free sample of Kratom, I will give samples to 5 people. You must be 18 or older.
yeah, if hosting is a big problem for you, and you're legitimately optimized right, then email about anyone in the valley -- you can get a bridge loan (convertible note) for $20k - $50k in no time (less than 5 days). if you don't know anybody, email me. go to any investor and say "I need money because my site is growing too fast!" and you're solid. end result: hosting is not actually a problem (even though it looks like one), but making a popular app is much more of a problem.
I agree cglee. im all for capitalism but cannot stand it when privileged conservatives use few remarkable examples of immigrant success to gloss over the inequalities of opportunity that are entrenched in and still plague American society.
My headline is a little misleading. There are many different sites selling kratom at the retail level. There is only one site selling wholesale kratom. Out of all the retail vendors, I have the cheapest price.

If a new wholesale vendor were to enter the market, that wholesaler would be able to make a great deal of money very quickly.
What inequalities of opportunity are entrenched in America? I'm not American so I am genuinely interested to know.
I don't see contact information for you in your profile, so I'm going to write here. Would you be willing to summarize the book for Squeezed Books, at http://www.squeezedbooks.com ?

Thanks!
Have you consulted a lawyer about this? Sometimes it can be quite surprising to see the solutions lawyers can cook up (with the appropriate fees of course).