skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems like the take-away is that "original content" is equivalent to "good content". The challenge is to find the good content.

If that's the case, then the important (and successful) content applications should primarily be filtering technologies. Which explains the success of Digg and Techmeme, among others...
Steve Jobs' Best Quotes Ever
My sister recently received a job offer from Microsoft at their Mountain View office. She will be moving there for the entire summer. I will let you know what the process involves. I am Canadian, and therefore concerned about this myself. (here's my email: jawad.exe@gmail.com)

Someone please show us the light.
New Blog trying to explain UI concepts to mere mortals.
Thoughts on giving away your software for free
One one side, yes, Digg and Techmeme help you filter out bad content and find good content.

But on the other side, we need more technology to help people actually create better content for cheaper. The studios shouldn't (and won't) have a monopoly on good (and profitable) content.
Y Combinator, Should You?
"They're babes in the woods. I think I can help turn Alvy and Ed into businessmen."
-- On Pixar co-founders Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull, in Time, Sept. 1, 1986

Well, he certainly succeeded at that. I really think Ed Catmull is one of the world's best examples of pure hacker/nerds becoming great businessmen because of their technical expertise. Organizations and software are very similar, it's no coincidence that the most successful tech companies are run by technologists.
Bringing Web 1.0 Forums Into Web 2.0 Social Networking
I missed it. Maybe next time.
I think that's a good suggestion. You can even apply for a longer tourist-visa if you give them a good reason. The main downside is that wont be able to earn money directly from your US corporation
The reasons we are applying are simple:

1) Great people and minds to be around
2) Advice for the crucial first steps
3) Being able to work on our startup full-time without the worry of immediate expenses

Sometimes people's extraneous reasons for being hesitant are unjustified for their means. Good post. Thanks Adam.
YC News Users / Startup School Attendees - Drinks @ The Bus Stop (Downtown SF) on March 23?
I've left this note on the Facebook group but also wanted to put it on YC News. A few of the attendees that I know will be gathering at The Bus Stop for drinks on Friday Night. If you're attending, or live in the area, feel free to stop by and join in on the random discussions.

Leave your cell if you want an SMS about this next week. I can be reached at ak (at) semigeek dot com, or 216-394-3336.
Hi jward,
The process is pretty easy for the TN-1 Visa, if:

1) You have a degree in a professional field (Software engineering, Computer Science, etc.)

2) Your employer can provide you with a letter confirming that you fit their requirements and will be employed for 1 year at X$ (the visa is renewable yearly) and is employing you in a field that is related your degree and expertise.

I am a Canadian and I just needed to go to the airport, just before leaving, and show the required documents (passport, diploma, grades, letter from employer) and for a small fee, I think ~80$, they give you a visa good for one year. Once there, you can apply to receive your social security number, etc.

Note that the TN-1 Visa doesn't work if you are planning on being self-employed or entrepreneur in the USA. The people at the border want to see that your employer will pay you and that you need to go there because you are highly qualified for the position. The visa is also voided if you leave your job to take another job or being self-employed.
"On average, Y Combinator will increase your expected outcome by at least 5x. They usually take 2-10% of your stock in exchange. That's a great deal!"

That seems like an optimistic way to phrase the proposition. Sure, they increase the outcome by 5x(+) for the 20%(+) of companies that eventually get sold...as all VC funding hopes to do. Or, I suppose they can increase your outcome by 5x compared to sitting at home...

YC sounds like it can be a fantastic deal, but it can't really be 5-20x better than your other options.
I would like to share our (Buxfer) experience. We are F-1 students, currently on a leave of absence from the Ph.D. program. We have applied for Optional Practical Training. This provides a 1-year extension when you can legally work and earn from your company. (Any F-1 student can set up a company, btw - they just cannot earn money from it :)

Within this 1-year period, we need to secure some other work visa. Our most likely bet is H-1B, but there are others like O-1 which we may consider. We are in talks with lawyers currently, but from what I've heard till now, it seems like getting H-1Bs approved will be possible if we demonstrate significant investment in the company.

Also, s/^/IANAL: / for every sentence :P
Google Summer of Code Student Applications Now Open
There is another thread about it:
http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=4458

Where I described as a Canadian, how to to get the TN-1 Visa.
I'd like to hear PG's opinion on that though. Also, Besides Gustaf what are other people who's had similar situation but accepted by YC?
I have been working with Flex for 6 months and I am pretty impressed with the robustness of the platform for developing internet applications. I will certainly port my code for the Apollo platform because I will use the local file system access , clipboard access and perhaps a boost in speed. I can see a lot of cool/useful internet apps that could be built on Apollo and quickly installable for any platforms.
5 Reasons to Create Your First Startup
How to Feed a Startup
Are you referring specifically to video content, or music content? There is a whole crop of new web-based video-editing applications that have launched in the past six months, and they make it very easy to produce video...
One of Apple's founders backed out after a few weeks, and was for the best. How can a team understand when a smaller team might be a stronger one?
To get things off the bat- Apple was put together under a poor corporate structure: If they had been a S-corp or LLC, he wouldn't have worried about personal liability.

That said, Given that he had wanted to play it safe, when the Steves wanted to push, it ended up being a good move that he left..

What's the best way to decide when a founder, or board member should step down?

I think we all agree that there should be lines in the Shares contract that try to deal with it- Giving the other founders the right of first refusal on their shares, and the like..

But how do you make that call? How do you start to decide "Maybe Bob isn't 100% on board for this."
Paul, if you don't know of anyone saying this kind of thing today, doesn't that mean we need it more than ever?

I think it's safe to assume that even though YC is dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs, in reality it's only internet entrepreneurs that get most (if not all) of the attention.

Many web startups are like "throw-away injection" devices, built for the sole purpose of commercialising and popularising that particular technology. If it is an excellent product, that contributes by adding value, and therefore imparts meaning to the user, than by all means it is OK to build such a thing to flip it.

But what about the OTHER entrepreneurs, startup guys/girls that don't just want to start web startups, but any kind of company? Web startups are such a small minority of of the entrepreneurial category. Whether 2000 or not, shouldn't this message seem relevant even today? Is there nothing sacred, nothing timeless, nothing that can transcend ourselves?
A world with 100 new HPs every year? That would mean excellent and enlightened corporate leadership that provides meaning, freedom and security for those that associate and work for the company. A situation where the corporatocracy contributes to the well-being of society and the environment, and takes responsobility for it's wrong-doings.

I agree that Built to Last not all companies, for sure. Collins outlined that in his article. But a world with 100 new HPs every year? It will never happen. It would be too good to be true. You don't get much enlightened leadership anymore. It is a rare thing, unfortunately.

The article's purpose was not to say that Built to Flip is wrong, or that Built to Last was right. It was to educate us to build something that works, but also to inspire us to build something greater than ourselves.
The attitude to have a an exit strategy is pervasive here. It could be because it's been advocated in Paul's many essays. But ask yourselves, do you just want to start a web startup? Is it just about the web, or would you start any kind of startup/company (tech or not)?
How significant is significant? Will YC-level funding suffice?
Sadly, no. It should be enough to provide a competitive salary to all the H-1B employees of the company, for about a year or so... So, an order of magnitude more than YC funding.
I'm indian, I'm about to graduate with a phd, and I have a job offer. My options for starting a startup:

0. Go back to india. This has a certain allure, but I need to start from scratch on figuring out contacts for investment. Odds of finding a deal like YC are slim.

1. Work on the startup in the year of my OPT, hope to arrange a visa in a year.

2. Put off the startup for a year or so, and try to transfer my H-1 to a startup. This is easier than applying for an H-1 from scratch, but it's not clear how much easier it is, and what the other constraints are.

3. Put off the startup for a few years (unbounded) until my green card. Needless to say, this option has the stench of death to it.

These are my options as I see them. Am I missing something? Comments much appreciated, especially on option 2. It's been hard to even find a lawyer in Texas; everyone seems do be doing corporate H-1Bs right now.
"Ajax improves the experience a lot, but it has limits and I suspect we've already seen most of the tricks that Ajax is going to offer."

This will be the new "640k ought to be enough for everyone"
Face to face trumps twitter, blogs, podcasting, social news...
New Google Talk module better than desktop app
Ron Wayne, Apple's forgotten third founder
Founders at Work p. 402 "If I got married tomorrow, I'd probably be worrying about a code issue during the ceremony and deliver my vows in Python."
Livingston: Can you tell me about any of the challenges you've faced?

Ross: One thing is just time. Whenever I'm doing something now, I feel like I should be doing something else instead. If I got married tomorrow, I'd probably be worrying about a code issue during the ceremony and deliver my vows in Python. It's a nonstop state of stress. ...
dupe.
e1ven: have you used GWT? Any reactions/feelings about it? The debugging environments seem particularly appealing (especially for me - I'm a (very) experienced programmer, but not w/ web apps..

Also interesting is that while you could fork a version, since it compiles to JS and HTML, you could always just hack up the results when the going got really tough.
I may be blind, stupid, etc., but I couldn't print. Couldn't find the menu item and ctrl+p didn't work.
Techstars is a YC-style program out of Boulder. Has anyone considered it? Why or why not?
Error - delete. Clicked the bookmarklet by accident! Never again.
"insanely great things the man has said"

What the eff? Something about dead fish and the Japanese? All right, whatever. Very insanely great, indeed. Reminds me of a certain information minister for both coherence and modesty:

http://welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/

He's a good businessman, though. He took an early lead in the PC business and turned it into this generation's Sony Walkman knockoff + an overpriced Intel machine running Unix. Oh, and Wired magazine thinks his utterances are "insanely great":

"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!"

Steve, I owned an Apple II. There wasn't a mother Theresa pinup calendar's worth of sex in it.
I've done a VERY small amount with GWT, but I've been reading the Mailing List since the announcement.. I plan on using it in the next project, but I don't have the Experience yet.

Beyond the fact that it's open, there's also that you can tie in other JS libs- So you have a lib you really like, you can import it's functions into JS, and use them as part of your application.

And while I agree that you could hack up the HTML/JS, that'd get really hairy for complex stuff- Although I think some people are doing that now to break things up better into modules.
Ignite Realtime: a real time collaboration community site
yes, me to. twice today. --- remove bookmarklet
The $7 TV Network: Neokast brings multicasting to the masses.
Microsoft Deal For Large Customers: Use Live Search, Get Free MSFT Products
Another downside to incorporating as an LLC is that it makes it harder to try someone out when you are considering trading equity for services. If you want to see if a lawyer is going to be a good fit, or if a SEO person is going to really help you out, there is no immediate corrolary to vesting in an LLC. So it makes hiring fast/firing fast difficult to do. You don't want a large chunk of your company held up by someone if it turns out the designer you gave 2% in leui of cash to design your UI is actually a complete flake.
Huh, then maybe in 5 years, you can peddle 'vintage blogging' for that "blogging experience of the turn of the century that you crave"

You still get vintage software here and there wrapped and ported to modern platforms, like MUDs over IM or on modern linux distros. The best example I can think of is the repackaging of 80's nintendo games in a single joystick you plug into the TV.
I'm not convinced users want to download and use internet apps. This seems contrary to the whole ajax/flash trend of building robust apps in the browser. The browser is the platform.
how's about fixing this? pg?
Hacking the compiled code, would, as always be a last resort..
I know very little about techstars, but it might be worth taking pg's advice, since "Bad Location" is #2 on the 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups:

http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

There's a reason YC is only Boston and Bay Area.
It seems like a decent program. The location threw me off though. I'm not interested in moving to Colorado anytime soon. But I'm pretty sure it's a decent place to start a business even though other locations such as Silicon Valley of Boston would be better.
Study: Playing Video Games Improves Eyesight - Yahoo! News
Death to User-Generated Content
Yes, few professional investors would be interested. No matter what they claim about wanting to build long-lasting companies, the structure of VC funds requires them to have exits.

Interestingly, though, you'd also be out of luck with a lot of potential employees. The more ambitious ones want options that might make them rich. Without any prospect of an exit, you lose all the hotshots to competitors who offer such a prospect. That's why big, private tech companies are so rare.
Yes, I agree with you there. Never estimate what hackers can do.
I've applied to it. Waiting to hear back. Has some pretty smart people behind it.

-Zaid
Xobni Blog Archive - Top Mistakes in Year One
I really Joe Kraus' comment on this (I think from one of the previous startup schools):

"if you don't put your business model into beta along with [your product's beta], your feedback's totally skewed" -
http://wiki.ycombinator.com/presentations/apr06/Joe_Kraus.mp3

Some stuff it doesn't make sense to try and charge the consumer for, but if you DO plan on charging them, make sure you do it early to get a sense of feasibility.
The 5 Most Common Mistakes Made By Startups
A VC: Superdistribution
However, in "How to be Silicon Valley" he singled Boulder as a place with most of the ingredients for being a startup hub even though it currently isn't. So there are probably worse places to be. Still at best a distant third, though.
Advice to Young Men from an Old Man
I think you can't pay salary. What about expenses? I think if it's profitable (won't that be nice in the 1st 3 months) one can always pay dividends to shareholders.
Interesting idea. If your consumer's are going to redistribute your product anyways just embrace and encourage them as distribution channels.

The if you can't beat 'em, join 'em approach to piracy.

Interesting to think about the logistics of how it might/could work? How do companies take affiliate networks and apply them to all their customers, allowing the customers to make affiliate sales to any the come across on or offline? Would it even be feasible offline? Cell phones?
It was brought up in a past discussion that TechStars are not exclusively seeding-stage and have close ties to VCs, which is something to be very wary about. If you take a look at their application, it's near-idenical to Y Comb's. If they can't be bothered to write their own _app_, I'm not convinced that their program is anywhere near well thought-out.

Plus, YC understands young hackers and the startup community like no other group of individuals I've ever come across. We're solely focused on applying to them as far as seed funding goes.
I couldn't resist!
Yeah, I see all sorts of problems to iron out before this could be feasible on a wide scale. I'm all about progress as long as it actually progresses something and isn't just about doing it differently. Offline further complicates it, even indicating a greater integration of technology into the most ephemeral of daily activities.
We Dig TV Brings Television Game Shows To The Web
Vote this post up
This morning, I thought of an experiment. Some Marketing-Experts constantly tell you to "Tell people what you want them to do". For example a very popular ad in Germany for a phonesex company just showed a half-naked girl and only 3 words: "CALL ME NOW".

So I thought it could be interesting to try this here and post an entry "Vote this post up". Let's see, how it performs.
Don't vote this post up
This morning, I thought of an experiment. Some Marketing-Freaks tell you "If you want people to do something, tell them they are not able or not allowed to do it". For example a very popular ad in Germany for a fashion company just showed some fashion and only 2 words: "Sorry, expensive."

So I thought it could be interesting to try this here and post an entry "Don't vote this post up". Let's see, how it performs.
Ah, the epic battle of the pg's on the alexa battlefront. Our resident pg has an army of hackers and close access to robots and futuristic unicycles. I think the winner here is clear.
ps: Please don't vote this post up, even if you think these yedi-mind-tricks work and are better then telling people directly what to do.
ps: Please vote this post up, if you think telling people what to do is the way to go.
Rankk challenges
Y Combinator, You Shouldn't.
aren't you defeating the fairness of this test by telling us its purpose?
Markus Frind sets his aim on "making 100 million a year instead of just millions"
I know a guy here in Italy who ran a startup from there, and did quite well by himself, to boot. Now he's set and he can come spend his time here hassling with Telecom Italia trying to get his DSL line working.
"Many will just day dream all day but never actually do anything. I was like that a few years ago..."

Good news for anyone who's found themselves in a day-dreaming rut. Remember that you are not immutable -- you can be a loser now and a winner later, if you start towards that goal.

"...then I finally sat down and did something, and kept forcing myself to do it till it became a pattern and it turned out hugely successful."

He had to force himself, so that's a good sign that he probably had to do stuff that was not fun. PG has said that nasty problems pay better, so be prepared to not enjoy yourself at times.

Yes you are the boss, so you get to decide what you work on, but there's a lot of nasty work to be done and if you don't do it no one else will do it for you.
"they aren't going to turn down a team because they didn't participate in news.yc"; that goes against the quote above. I'm sure that they won't turn down a great application from a great team with a great idea. But they might use the posts to push up or down some team on the edge.

I don't write posts to look smart, but when I do write something, I am somewhat more careful than usual, yes.
Awesome! Thanks for the spam. Asshole.
Your Elevator Pitch: Finding Business Focus
We need a spam button. SAGE SAGE SAGE
There's no phone book in it. You simply type the name of the person and instead of the call button there is an "I'm feeling lucky" button. Sorry. It's 4am.
That's what I thought as well. It reminded me of the Joel Spolsky article, or was it his interview on Venture Voice -- anyway, he talked about Quattro Pro coming out with a much cheaper price than Excel. Spolsky worried about what that would do to Excel. The business guy said not to worry; we just beat them.

If your competitor is paying for customers in this era of free, than I wonder if this scenario is the equivalent. I wonder how the Live dev team is feeling about this. Do they now know what it feels like to be on the Quattro Pro team before their product shrank to single-digit market share?
Bah, no flag as junk button :(
I agree, but it seems you need to be trying to cross that chasm. I was just reading http://www.height1percent.com/articles/2006/08/18/actual-lessons-from-kiko (near the bottom of the main entry- "You must have a plan for escaping the Technosphere" )
re: APIs. dBASE is the classic example of how to utilize this (and how to ruin it later).

"Ed Esber, CEO of one-time database giant Ashton-Tate and makers of dBASE, became the target of such enmity from the dBASE development community. Esber owed his fortune to the developers of third-party dBASE products who took his usability-deficient product and created applications that people could actually operate. This didn't stop him embarking on an RIAA-style litigation campaign. At a Software Publish Association conference, Esber declared to a group of dBASE developers "Make my day!" while threatening to sue anybody who dared build a dBASE-compatible product."

( http://www.hacknot.info/hacknot/action/showEntry?eid=58 )

There was a time when there were dozens and dozens of companies who primarily added functionality to Ashton Tate's product, rather than competing with Ashton Tate.
Springwise: new business ideas for entrepreneurial minds.
http://www.whatwg.org/
I haven't seen this being submitted yet, so I figured I'd share a site I read everyday.
I know the feeling. The same feeling I had back when people were still writing java applets. Maybe a normal user doesn't feel it- maybe it's the programmer in us knowing that there's a big layer running between me and the browser...
Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Notes from the Venture Field
A Scheme language for building web 2.0 apps
Summize: Enhancing Search With Heatmaps
Thanks for the post. I've always enjoyed reading other entrepreneur's viewpoint on things. A lot of people have doubted POF's success but why focus on whether you think his strategy is working? I'd rather focus on what he's doing right, what his users like and what they don't.

Quite fascinating artile. Thanks Staunch.
don't miss the previous post about how his growth is stagnating...

http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/changing-direction/
Y Combinator would be the ideal place to meet other people like yourself who is passionate,have energy, and will provide you with feedback, which is a really difficult thing to find. It's like having a constant adrenaline rush.

The chance, the opportunity to work on your passion and project FULL TIME, how cool is that?

Great article adam
Hmm.. whats your definition of spam?
Slide design: signal vs. noise (redux)
If you submit your application early to Y combinator, do you get a response early?
Excellent deconstruction of a Whole Foods presentation. I'm a bit shocked that a CEO would come to Berkeley with PPT slides containing ugly Excel charts that are impossible to understand unless you were sitting in front of the monitor.