skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
TextPayMe was from Winter 06, though, while the hush-hush acquisition is from the first batch. My bet is on ClickFacts, because it's the only one of the first batch other than Loopt and Reddit/Infogami left standing, it's in a business that an acquirer would keep silent, and the website looks like a post-acquisition company.
Raganwald on Meanies
This experiment is interesting, but it needs a control. He should buy books with mundane covers and see how often he likes them.

Whether we like it or not, most of us do judge by appearances. Paul Buchheit's recent essay on this topic also showed how naturally we rationalize our decisions, making ourselves think we had deeper reasons.

http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/08/first-thing-that-yo...
"I can understand if its a service like Skype but digg..."

I think it can be a big deal when Digg is down. While a lot of the content is junk, they do have some gems. Check out this link from this morning:

http://www.danielmorin.com/blog/2007/08/27/another-indicatio... (disclosure: my blog)
This post was originally titled "rejected YC company Bandsintown at it again" are there rules here forbidding us from saying that? The title was edited a few minutes after i posted it. I know i have an interest in all the companies that are both YC funded as well as ones who were not. And i know i have read posts from others curious about rejected YC companies and how they were doing now. I think I saw one as early as last week.
I'm not sure I understand how you would use unlisted URLs. Could you explain that more?
Labeling A company as YC rejected? Not OK?
Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?

We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.
Ask PG: How many submissions yet?
PG, How many applications yet for the next season of YC funding?
Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?

We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.
We don't disagree where he thinks we do. He thinks the world is divided into hackers and business people, and that I despise the latter. Actually I think there are people who can hack and people who can do business, and there is substantial overlap, as in the classic Venn diagram. The best founders are in the lenticular region in the middle. The people who can only hack can migrate to it more easily than the people who can only do business.

IBM's rule that each group has to have both hackers and business people reflects their belief that the world is partitioned between them. It only makes sense if you believe there is zero overlap in the Venn diagram. That's where we really disagree.
That is a very lame way to label yourself though. Rejected by YC, rejected by VCs, rejected by your peers, whatever. ALL startups experience some sort of failure one time or another. Its getting back up when you get knocked down (EVERY time) that leads to success.

Bandsintown is an excellent web application and in my opinion the founders should be looking forward rather than dwelling on a past YC rejection.
I am one of the founders. I do not consider it dwelling on the fact that we were rejected. It doesnt actually bother me at all as you can see from most of my previous posts I have been labeling ourselves that way to help motivate others to keep pushing forward. The second reason i label it this way is because i think on HackerNews people are naturally curious about all the Ycombinator applicants a little bit more than just any startup. I may be wrong though but this is my reasoning for highlighting the fact that we were indeed rejected but continue to move forward.
eBay's Mistakes & What You Can Learn From Them
Why Everyone Hates To Love Technorati But Still Does
We're not going to quote the number any more. The reason is that we now have competitors, and we don't want to get in an application number war. It's easy to get massive numbers of applications by encouraging applications from people you know you won't accept: for example, undergrads who don't really want to drop out of school. We don't want to tempt anyone to do that.
Naw, I don't mind. Editors probably feel a bit protective of YC though, maybe that's why the title got edited, because the word 'reject' has some negative connotations.
China is communist today?

I learn something new every day.
You give your friends-only blog a link like

http://example.com/unlisted/9vaekw03/

Pass this link to your friends. They subscribe to its RSS feed, etc. They don't have to register with example.com. The tradeoff is that they can easily pass the link along, just as they could pass along an unlisted phone number.
Yeah I agree. With so many startups launching it just seemed logical to highlight YC applicants here.
Google Phone An Attempt To Take On $100 PC?
There was a rash of startups doing this to get attention a few months ago. After the first couple we started deleting such descriptions. It's an edge case, but probably abuse, especially considering the motive.

Which incidentally is probably also a large part of the motive for this post. If you were really just interested in the abstract question, you could have avoided the appearance of an ulterior motive by making this a straight question instead of linking to your original post. Want me to change that for you?
Maybe in the future companies could just use "YC funded company" or "YC applicant" if they felt the need to highlight it.
Brainshark's Software-as-a-Service Presentation Capabilities Ease Communication
I learn something new everyday too ;)
That does make sense, and I think it is natural for a Ycombinator applicant to try and highlight their startups here. I do not mind if you change the URL as well. I think the suggestion to use "YCombinator Applicant" would solve it in the future for anyone else. Cool?
KickApps Gets iPhone-Friendly with Video, Formatting
Don't Be This Girl
Seems punily human-centric. How about the number of states in the biggest possible brain?
What next new big thing? As has been said before, 37signals re-hashes old ideas. Backpack, Basecamp and Highrise contain many of the same features and barely contain new innovative things.

They need to do something radically different.
I see. That solution doesn't seem private enough to me.

I may not want people to pass the link along without my say so, people could discover the URL by accident...
> the suggestion to use "YCombinator Applicant" would solve it

It would obviously mean exactly the same thing.

Just describe what your startup is, not what it isn't.
yeah I like that. Just makes it an easy way to check out the companies that have some kind of relationship with hackernews and YC.
Computational Capacity of the Universe [PDF]
Yeah, I was just testing this out with my housemates. There's three of us, so this eliminated one check but causes me to write a huge check that I don't have the money for. Interesting nonetheless.
Non-PDF homepage = http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110141, where you have a choice between PostScript/PDF/DVI/TeX source.
Labelling a company as having been rejected by YC is misleading, because it implies a value judgement which wasn't made. Probably 90% of the people who visit your website leave without signing up; equally, my understanding is that most startups (even successful ones) find that 90% of angels and VCs turn them down. Do you label yourself with the names of all the potential users who "rejected" you?

As Paul has pointed out in the past, there are many reasons why a company might not receive funding, and most of them have nothing to do with the merits of the company itself. Being not accepted by YC doesn't mean that they necessarily think there's anything wrong with you -- in this case, "not accepted" is not a synonym for "rejected".
How about the number of connections between all objects that obey gravitation?
can you imagine trying to get through US customs with what looks like a hollywood bomb on your wrist!
Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a truthful description? I think making a title that catches the attention of news.yc readers is only abuse if it does not truthfully describe the link it points to.

If there is some other reason why you don't like "YC reject" in titles (unhealthy us vs them mentality?), why not comment on the submitted article asking the submitter to edit the title? I'm not affiliated with knewjax, but it looks to me from his comments that he would be happy to comply. I think most, if not all, previously-rejected applicants who post here would do the same.
Ok. Let me ask you another question. Any interesting applications?
Whether or not password protection is more secure depends on how good your friends and family are at choosing and guarding passwords.

If you're concerned about the one-in-a-trillion chance that a typo could lead to someone discovering your URL by accident, you could just make the random string longer.
Creative Visualization: A Tool for Business and Innovation Success
This seems nauseatingly reddit-like.
funny, yes, but cleary an edge case, right?
Do you think the answer could possibly be No?
"We have no idea if it will work." Those are always the most exciting ventures.
"The world's most advanced online photo editor."

Not quite...
How to Create a Killer Sticky Website
Vator.tv - the idea exchange ("venue for innovators to showcase their ideas")
What kind of relationship?
You're being silly and it makes me think you have nothing else worth talking about. There were 400+ apps to the most recent YC program...I don't want to know if you were one of them. It's relatively interesting when a company is a YC company, but is distinctly uninteresting that you took 20 minutes out of your day to fill out the application. That just tells us you had 20 minutes to spare.
Let me phrase this better.

I know its early but how is this season comparing with the ones in the past? Do you see any interesting trends?
How To Write A Press Release For Your Services
Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a truthful description?

It is truthful, but it is not a description.
There should be a special logo for YCombinator rejects to display. I humbly offer http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1169/1251010963_4787666411_m....
Ha i like that.
If the site linked to was submitted in a YC application and was not accepted, then "YC reject" is truthfully an attribute of the linked site. It is as descriptive as, say, the color scheme the site uses. You may see it as an uninteresting attribute; others may find it interesting. Voting answers the interesting/uninteresting question. What the editors do is to answer the appropriate/inappropriate question.
I think I agree with your main point, but I object to your reasoning. Did you really spend only 20 minutes on your app? I'm skeptical that it's possible to literally spend that little time on it and still get accepted to the program. The app even says, "We look at online demos only for the most promising applications, so don't skimp on the application because you're relying on a good demo."

Spread out over a few weeks, we probably spent 24 hours on the app (this estimate includes tasks like market research, for example, to answer the "who are your competitors" question). Maybe this seems like a long time, but I think it takes a long time to come up with well-written, concise prose.

Now, we didn't get accepted, but we did make it to the interview.
You are right, I would comply and in my opinion the wording doesn't really matter that much. I think the readers are smart enough to understand that "Rejected YCombinator company" is the same thing as "Not Accepted Ycombinator Company" "or "YCombinator Applicant" and I do not mean any negativity with the title. It is mearly meant to highlight the fact that we are a company who submitted an application and the decision was made not to fund our company, and hopefully gain some attention from hackernews readers who might relate to that more than they would another random startup. YCombinators decision might turn out to be a good one for all I know, of course I would hope to prove otherwise by building a successful business.

At the same time I can respect PG decision to edit the title. After all one of the goals in titling my post with "YCombinator Rejected Company" is to gather more attention for our site. Can you fault me?
i installed it, i'm excited
15 employees vs fauxto's 2

someone sense's bloat here.
Fo' Sho'
He didn't literally mean 20 minutes. Even if he did, that's not the point he was trying to make.
Blogfight: Mark Cuban vs. Fred Wilson, a classic blog battle
You are missing something, but so is the article. Not only is the conclusion misleading as stated, but the math is incorrect as well.

Here's where the conclusion is unclear : it says "The cost ... was a mere $400,000." However, according to the article's math, that's the cost -per factory-. The policy for the entire company would cost $800,000.

However, that's not quite right either. In order to return $10M total, you'd only have to buy about $334,000 of insurance on each factory (I'm rounding the numbers for convenience). Since the example operates under the assumption that you can always use the proceeds from one policy to pay for the other -- ie, there's never a perfectly simultaneous event at both locations -- I'll take that as a given.

Let's say that Factory A gets hit first (California or Japan, it doesn't matter). We collect our insurance payment of $1,670,000 ($334,000 5) and spend the total amount on additional insurance for Factory B. When Factory B gets hit, we receive $8,350,000 ($1,670,000 5) from that supplementary purchase. So where does the missing $1,650,000 come from? Remember that we couldn't know which factory would be hit first, so we initially bought $334,000 policies on -both- factories ... and that policy is still in effect on Factory B. It returns $1,670,000, which brings our total to just over the $10M target (remember, I'm rounding for clarity). So the total that we need to spend on insurance is ($334,000 * 2 =) $668,000 per year.
Internets is srs bsns.
Do the HackerNews Readers have any constructive critism for us? anything is good. We still have a long ways to go but the more input we have the better. Thanks for the help in advance.
I was wondering when this would get posted. I assumed the video wouldn't make it to the front page, but apparently all it takes is a 'startup' twist.

On an unrelated note, has anyone noticed that Ron Paul's campaign is just like a startup? He's even making something people want!
A more interesting question: Do you think any of your applicants are also applying with you competitors?

For the applicants: are you applying to more than just Yc?
If all atoms in the universe would form a single brain...
Shopify?
They've done a lot of cool things, and are very talented. However, I think that they "jumped the shark" when they charged $20... twenty dollars... for a PDF version of their book (that isn't really a book... no ISBN), and had the gall to tell Tim O'Reilly that in addition to everything else, they were going to reinvent publishing:

http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/2006_04.html

His links are all broken, though... and I can't find the back and forth with O'Reilly, but basically he come across as very presumptuous - something I'd be willing to accept because he's right about certain fields (web programming, for instance), but something I'd look at with a more critical eye when he's talking about something he really doesn't know 100%.
Don't worry, there are lots of good "Top X" lists being posted to make up for it :p
That's the plot of the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, it's about a Singularity where a Strong AI gains control over all matter and energy.

http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/index.html

It's free.
Teenage Girl's MySpace Layouts Worth Millions, Drops Out Of High School
Fair enough. I guess I was objecting to the fact that his under-exaggeration was something like 2 orders of magnitude off, by my estimates.
that book is hardly part of their core business, and should be regarded as such
Oh man, you know that moderation is going a bit too far when something like this happens...
"Learn from my experience: if there is no intellectual benefit to be had from a discussion, walk away."

sigh yet another thing <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html">I wish I'd known</a> earlier
Exactly - that's why it felt like such a money grab. They raked it in for a few months, and then just let it go, free, on the web. How would you feel if you'd paid $20 for a PDF that was then let loose for free? $20 for a nice paperback might be ok, but a PDF?

(FYI, I didn't buy it, but it just didn't strike me as the most upstanding way of doing business)
You've got a really slick implementation... the site works great.

I think one thing worth looking into is how often people go to music shows; these can be somewhat expensive right? If the average show-goer only goes once a month, traffic may not be high enough to sustain the site. But I don't know; there could be enough people in the niche of repeat show-goers to meet your traffic needs.

As for the social networking features, you might also want to find out how many music fans are "hardcore" enough to want to talk about music on forums, in addition to just listening to MP3s.

You're on the right track, and just need to figure out what the killer application is for improving the music listening experience, on top of merely listening to songs. Try coming up with dozens of other concepts besides easy access to upcoming shows and profiles, etc... maybe the right answer is radically different from what's out there already.
Insanely great. Reminds of that post about K->12 students doing startups a while ago... maybe they can do it, after all.
Yes i agree, there nothing better than a Eureka moment, when all of a sudden you see clearly and the solution just seems to show itself to you.
Google's friend-to-friend ad network
She's 17 years old, and she declined a 1.6$M offer.
MySpace reportedly may allow member ads
"Intelligence is fundamentally an information processing function."

You can certainly define "intelligence" this way. But does it make sense to say "the human brain is an information processing function"? It's a non-sequitur. A brain can process information. A machine can process information. Does that make the brain and an information processing machine QUALITATIVELY the same thing?

"Here's the real question: When you run a simulation of a Turing machine, does any computation happen?"

If a simulation of a human brain receives a simulated stimulation of the appearance of his beloved, does the simulation's heart beat faster? Does the simulation maybe start sweating a little? Does the simulation experience all the little physiological changes that the non-simulated human experiences?

A human brain is part of an organism, and I don't think it's a useful metaphor to call a human being a computation engine.

I suppose you could theoretically simulate everything about the world in which real human beings exist and then at that point claim the simulation is qualitatively the same as what is simulated. But just how exact does your simulation have to be to make that claim? Down to the quantum level? Will even the singularity produce that kind of computing power in the near future? Even then, are the things in the simulation qualitatively the same as the things in our world?

Notice all the question marks? Searle is engaging in philosophy, and I think many quantitative types have a hard time accepting that there may be questions that do not have easy quantitative answers. Which is my point. I don't have the answers, but find Searle's objections worth pondering.
yes, but i think it's a logical leap to propose that you can teach it at that level. i'm not entirely convinced it can be "taught" at any level.
I am NOT a SW guy per say - I do ASIC/System level emulation - my way. It is a task that requires HW, different pieces of SW, scripting and work in the lab - but boy'o'boy - did U hit the nail RIGHT on the head. I worked for 4 years in a small but fiery start up and developed all the necessary pieces to emulate our system of 40M gates for about 1/10 of the $$ of commercial solutions - exactly the way U described it - in my head and in the (scarce) off hours....
Anyway, the startup didn't make it for the same lame reasons hundreds don't make it - abysmal (mis)management decisions that no technology can defeat :(
Now for a year I live in the quiet HELL of a bigger (and BIGGER) company where I HAVE to push the 2 buttons that I am assigned to and constantly reminded to shut up and watch the buttons I am assigned to push....
You touched a RAW nerve!
vess
Leave it to news.ycombinator to post the answer to my rhetorical question before I finished typing it:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0110/0110141v1.pdf

Answering:

"But just how exact does your simulation have to be to make that claim? Down to the quantum level? Will even the singularity produce that kind of computing power in the near future? Even then, are the things in the simulation qualitatively the same as the things in our world?"
Internet Makes Young People Happy
Competitors? Like, in the same style as YC? Or just regular VC's aiming lower, in the small investment / seed stage direction?
What do you install after a Windows re-format?
I have become a minimalist in many ways, so this was a good chance to do some housekeeping and only install the minimums (which ended up being pretty significant). I detailed this process and I am sharing it with you here. It would be interesting to find out what applications you consider essential when doing a complete re-format.
Nice. Short and sweet.
Actually, in my case I did literally mean 20 minutes. Apologies to folks who spent significantly longer (and I'm not disparaging you for doing so). It was merely lack of knowledge on my part that led to me filling it out so quickly.

I didn't even know about the program until the afternoon on which applications were due--I had seen the Boston one come and go, but would have never considered a move from Austin to Boston...by the time I realized there was one in CA, it was close to too late. I submitted it within hours of the deadline, and had dozens of other things going on at the same time. I looked back over it later (before going for the interview in Boston), and it was pretty bad, except in a few spots where deep knowledge of our field and code overwhelmed the slapdash nature of the thing as a whole.

If it makes you feel better, we just scraped by, on the obvious difficulty of the problems that we had already solved when we arrived for the interview (and even then pg was not on board with what we were doing...I'm pretty certain we owe our acceptance entirely to Trevor and rtm, who have done system administration and recognized the pain that our product takes away, while pg seemingly couldn't figure out why we would even want to address those problems).

But, you're absolutely right: It's not the point I was trying to make.

s/20 minutes/2 fortnights/g and the intent is the same.
GPhone Rumor "Confirmed"....Again
Isn't that the change from "Startup News" to "Hacker News" was meant for? To have more news that was off-topic and non-startup to brake up all the same posts?
Another confirmation from a different source at CrunchGear:
http://crunchgear.com/2007/08/27/cg-exclusive-htc-insider-co...
Yes. But there's still a certain aversion to having truly mainstream news on this site. For now, it's not a problem because the mainstream news is pretty rare.
It's awesome to see not just a young person succeeding on their startup, but a female as well. Clearly female hackers are more rare than their male counterparts, so bravo to Ashley for blazing her own trail.