skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Check out Paul Buchheit's article titled "Looking for a co-founder." http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/looking-for-co-founder-try-attending.html
I'm not buying the telecocooning thing. Sounds like more of a catch phrase more than anything else. I can put up an away message that says whatever I'm doing much like a "presence poke". Or I can just blast a text to my friends letting them know what meaningless task I'm involved in at the moment.

I can see how it can show how you care or are thinking of them but if telecocooning lowers the barrier doesn't that trivialize a message? It's like giving a myspace bulletin to your whole friends list but telling them something less important than what is usually sent around.

I do like that you can use it to meet up with friends. That's a cool feature.
sorry - clicked bookmarlet by mistake
haha yeah this conversation went sour. We're all right!
Slingshot or Apollo?
PlanHQ: Manage your business plan online
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Live Speaker Notes Feed From Startup School 2007!
Free PC 2 Phone Calls Worldwide
VC investments in Web 2.0 start-ups increased 108% in 2006!
Tell your Startup School story to a person who wasn't fortunate to attend
I thought I'd open up a discussion around Startup School. I wasn't able to be there but I'd love to hear(and I'm sure everyone else not able to attend) about stories. Maybe you met a possible co-founder, got inspiration from a particular speaker, thought of a great new company idea, etc. Let us know!
I believe telecocooning comes from Mizuko Ito's research, but Howard Rheingold cites it in Smart Mobs as well.

I think lowering the barriers does trivialize the message in some ways. For example, it would build less of a bond between any two individuals. However, I think it builds a tighter bond between the individual and their group of friends as a whole.
Are others able to get PG's presentation to appear?
Thanks for posting the notes.
I wonder if other attendees can flesh out the notes. Perhaps in a wiki?
Paul Buchheit's talk - cant figure out from the notes why he veers off into databases. But it is refreshing to hear him say - redefine success.
Looked quickly at your link - could be mistaken but it seemed to be the public submitting ideas to one company to implement. The idea on my blog, is match-making the many teams to solutions or untapped idea opportunities from the public.
WSJ interview with Zuckerberg, Newsfeed to be new way to consume information
At startup school?  Join us for SHDH after!
Artificial Intelligence, With Help From the Humans
Starbucks - How to Dilute a Brand
Someone asked about innovation, education, and systematic encouragement at Startup School?  Meet Sir Ken Robinson at TED.
AJAX Lockdown: A new concept of data privacy and security for AJAX-based Web applications using client-side data encryption
Maybe it's for the best. It'll probably be better to read it when it's (presumably) edited into essay form.
Featuritis vs. the Happy User
Admittedly I'm guilty of this...adding too many features to any app be it web or desktop. Just goes to show you that the KISS principle is still alive and kicking.
Dunno but I think your on to something here. Only one way to find out if your idea works though...
Interesting app but I have no idea who these people are and hosting our extremely sensitive data on an unknown site like that is not something I will do.
I am looking for a co-founder
Joshwa...thanks for putting this up.
I am looking for a co-founder

Qualities:

-ability to get things done.

-integrity. honest and fair, but also being able to recognize the truth/reality (critical for business success, I believe).

-determination to dig out of a hole; perseverance but not stubbornness.

-humility; accepting the possibility you could be wrong even when you think you are right. willing to learn from others and situations

-admit responsibility when you screw up.

Skills:

Either business skills or the stuff I am deficient in: flash (seems like cool demos cant exist without them), javascript (to manipulate different media players), and able to design nice web pages.

If you are a developer, I expect you to be very competent.

I have an application that IMHO is different. It is close to beta, and I wrote it in Swing, Java.
However, people say it is not user friendly. I have also lost a lot of time (in part, because I am cautious and also had bad advice. I should have released it long ago).

I am willing to give you a one hour online demo/presentation. However I would need some kind of assurance from you
that the ideas will not be copied nor given or divulged to potential competitors.

Please email me and tell me more about yourself and if you think there might be a good match.

thanks,

Anil Philip

anil@juwo.com

http://juwo-works.blogspot.com/

http://juwo.com
when people wantonly sprinkle the F word around (as she does all over her blog), I lose respect for them.
Yes! I've recently learned not to be overcritical about my ideas. They really are worthless. Execution is where it's at.
What Should I Say?
Blockbuster and NetFlix: "...one frustrated Blockbuster customer invented a smarter way and accelerated the evolution of its business model"
What can I contribute to help you out?
I am always pondering the difference between serial founders and folks working high up in corporates. Both are smart people and it is stupid to try and quantify smartness levels of two.

But I think one key difference between founders and non-founders is that founders find it difficult to work on stuff they don't already have a context to.

For example, you hear all the time of a top VP at a corporate being put in charge of another dept. to rescue it almost as a robot. Whereas a serial founder would find it difficult to just drop everything he has been doing until today and move to something else because folks higher up said so.

Going back to NetFlix and Blockbuster, I think it just shows that the future isn't so much in coming out with scientifically earth shattering ideas but rather bettering something that already exists.
Love the diverse nature of questions:)
So, how did the recruiting go?
They need to talk to Outlook, so it's probably the best they can do. The better .NET languages like F# don't seem to be mature enough yet for production use.
Well of course it did, "Web 2.0" didn't hardly exist in 2005. Tim O'Reilly's summary of Web 2.0 was written on the last day of September, and pg's essay was in November. The Web 2.0 concepts were out there earlier, of course, but there wasn't really an idea of a "Web 2.0 startup" for most of 2005.
Youtube for Mobile
He was talking about scaling and how you have to think of things in new ways.
Are all the slides and presentations from today startup school available somewhere?
My first but hopefully not last SHDH. Had a good time.
It's Still Very Early, But Scribd Looks Like A Winner
My notes from startup school
My notes here: http://blog.ryanjunee.com/2007/03/startup-school/

Also met lots of great people. You could feel the entrepreneurial energy in the room.
My notes here: http://blog.ryanjunee.com/2007/03/startup-school/
Interesting. Just a point of reference:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=4796
This repository is invaluable for those who were not able to make it to Startup School. Many thanks for putting it up!

Does anyone have pictures/videos from the event?
A 4-fold increase is no small thing to pull off! You'd be betting on some real shrewd money management and investments.
Paul Graham's Talk at Startup School 2007
200Mb download
No02: Too inexperienced

No03: 08:16: Not determined enough

No04: 08:52: Not smart enough

No05: 10:08: Don't understand business

No06: 12:12: No co-founder

No07: 13:01: You have no idea

No08: 15:07: No room for more startups ( A fallacy)

No09: 16:06: Family to support

No10: 17:35: Need for structure

No13: 18:45: Fear and uncertain

No14: 19:24 You don't realize what you are waiting

No15: 21:17: You parents...

No16: 23:16: Job the default thing to do

thanks too!
I've been using Tumblr for a few weeks now (http://extantproject.tumblr.com). I think it's great for those quick tidbits that aren't substantial enough to post to a blog but that are more substantial than just a link.
Great speech. My only comment is on the idea that we will look back on professionals as being like serfs. As Paul mentioned earlier, what is driving people into the service of others is a combination of social status, risk avoidance, and the need for "structure."

I don't think risk avoidance and need for structure will ever change. The real question is whether our conceptions of social status will change. So I've been writing a lot recently about how organizations and institutions exploit people's need for social status in order to secure cheap labor and make money.

The most obvious example is how WoW literally allows you to "level up." Even though objectively you are just spending 12 hours a day clicking on pictures of digital rats on a computer screen, qualitatively it's designed to make you feel like a hero. Everyone wants to be a hero in real life, but most people are just too lazy or untalented or risk adverse. It's not fair, but that's the way it is. Organizations have figured out how to tap into people's need to "be the hero" while extracting cheap labor (or purchases) from them.

A good example is when I was learning to play the trumpet. Learning to play a musical instrument is a very slow and continuous process. If my trumpet teacher were to have said, "ok, today you are level one trumpet. ok, now you're level two trumpet. etc." I think most people could figure out it's a scam. Improving at trumpet is a continuous function, not something that happens in levels.

The thing is, when people say, "ok, you're level one at education, you're level three at business." then no one realizes they are being exploited. In general, reality is very continuous. Whenever someone tries to represent a phenomena as something you can "level up" in, chances are they are trying to fuck you, take your money, or both.

Until people realize this is happening, professionalism will never go away. Instead people are obsessed with "climbing the ladder." Thing is, climbing the ladder benefits the people at the top, not the bottom. The average person doesn't even realize this.

I think in order for this mentality to end, two things are needed:

1) People currently view social status as a function of what people with money and power think of you. People need to instead view social status a function of your ability to MSPW.

2) We need new forms of social signaling that take this into account. Currently people identify themselves through college credentials, brand name clothes, etc. I think social signaling DOES have an important economic role to play, however, we need new forms of social signaling based around MSPW.
Is Amazon catching the eBay disease? Whats the future for big marketplaces
They're selling a highly addictive substance and have millions of addicts. I think they can dilute their brand -- they just better not dilute their coffee.
or "What Probably Scales Most"!
James Hong: A question to ponder: should big companies even try to innovate internally?
I didn't like Scribd the first time I saw it, but it's starting to grow on me. The recommendation engine not only works but is brilliant, and I love the fact that I can download whole eBooks for free. My only gripe is the site design.

A quick look at the National Adult Literacy Survey shows the potential market is smaller than that of YouTube, but in some ways the stickiness of the eyeballs you do have is more important than the total eyeballs.
Also, I'm not sure how thrilled the seduction community and NLP community will be that all of their books are now online. I don't normally advocate piracy, but I think this is a really unique opportunity for grokking Net Natives circa 2007.

(Net Natives as used by Fred Wilson: http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/06/net_natives.html)

update: When I say it's a unique opportunity for grokking net natives, I mean this in the same sense as when Paul Kedrosky blogged that the Amazon top 100 products list is more telling than the Ph.D. dissertation of the average would-be historian.

http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/12/27/top_sellers_at.html
i tend to agree with the premise that their key skill is now to spot the right start-up. making a large company run well is tough too - customer service, billing, shareholders etc are all tough problems. i think a large company is at its heart a billing engine, an optimisation engine for a particular niche of the market - and that's OK. Their big problem is figuring out when they're niche is going the way of the dodo, or when they aren't as good at their niche as they thought they were. different companies doing their niche best, it's an optimisation of roles.
Thoughts on Mitch Kapor vs. Mark Zuckerberg at Startup School
I agree with this guy. Mitch's talk was well put together and thoughtful. I think building a diverse team (assuming everybody is highly capable of course) wins most of the time.
Anil, you forgot to mention where you are geographically located. To be successful it would probably need to be someone who is close to you.
Mitch's talk was one of the ones I got the most out of. He seems like an all-round great guy - I have no doubt it'd be a hugely enjoyable experience to work with him.
"If you are a developer, I expect you to be very competent."

You don't expect other people you work with to be equally competent?

Maybe you wrote it this way because you find other competencies harder to evaluate. If that's the case, try the "animal test": http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
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I may be older than your target audience but I think except for the police raid it was rather lame. But then I don't understand the appeal of American Idol or Survivor either
wiki notes: http://wiki.startupschool.org/doku.php?id=notes
If working for a company is so bad, how can you possibly convince people to work for your startup? Isn't this deception?
(a) Most people either don't have the energy to start a startup, or don't want the stress. For them jobs are right.

(b) For the earliest employees, it's more like being a founder than having a normal job.
Unrewarding work can result in stress and lack of energy.
"what is driving people into the service of others is a combination of ..."

Capital has historically been a big factor in that equation as well. A factory worker couldn't very well take his machine around to different factories, whereas a mechanic probably has his own set of tools. Those of us in the computer field are fortunate that, at this point in time, capital requirements are very, very low. In other fields, though, large amounts of money are needed to be able to get off the ground. Who knows what the future will bring... less capital needs or more?

Incidentally, as much as I would have liked to see it, I couldn't take watching a bouncy image of some guy's ear next to a tiny Paul Graham. It would be great if they provided video of the whole thing for those of us not able to be there.
I think what Mark is trying to avoid is the "Curse of Knowledge" (To borrow the Heath brothers phrase - check out Made to Stick, great book) Facebook is all about innovation, I think they purposefully avoid old ideas. (preferring young people = fresh ideas) Thats not to say they aren't young experienced smart people.
There is definitely video of all of the speeches. As a matter of fact, there are videos of _everything_, including random lunch conversations, given that justin.tv was there. This video was taken on my digital camera, hence the crappy quality. The useful part is the audio.
Amazon blocks Statsaholic
justin.tv's audio was pretty useless...

I do wish that the organizers had an 'official' video guy, with a tap into the house audio system, and uploaded the videos afterwards. maybe next year?
I knew Mark's would be drawing some fast criticism. There were some things he said that raised my eyebrows, sure. Super arrogant, absolutely. I sure as hell got something out of it though. He just gets what he's doing. He sees how critical it is to keep technical people behind the company. And while his blanket statement about youthfulness made some eyes roll, it holds true for most of us and especially facebook. No matter what you might think of the guy, it'd be a really good idea to buy facebook stock when they eventually go public.
What a stupid argument to be honest. Arguments such as this always get a laughter out of me.

Why does it have to be one way or the other? It is quite understandable that FB has a leaning for the young as much of FB feeds off of young folks. I canât imagine too many 50+ guys brainstorming next generation of FB features. At the same time I canât imagine too many grades in early 20s coming up with next set of Lotus features.

May be the whole thing was missing a big disclaimer: USE WHAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU:)

-Zaid
"Update: It seems like Statsaholic wants to switch to other traffic data providers. Compete.com and Quantcast.com have already shown interest in providing their data."

Paul, you were very right about Amazon and their inability to foster, well, anything. They could have found a way to embrace this since Alexa's interface sucks (their data sucks too but that's something else). Now Compete and Quantcast will easily become the more popular metric.
Paul uses presentation slides for once so it's a shame it doesn't show up in the video. One of the better moments was him losing an expected slide and blaming the Zenter guys. Okay, the rest of the slides were just text on blank backgrounds, but still.
aka "limited life experience + overgeneralization = advice"
There is at least an order-of-magnitude difference in startup-stress vs. normal-job-stress. Same holds for the energy needed to overcome it.
they guy who draw Google's daily frontpage logos, sold some of his stock in 2004 for half million dollars. And he joined Google in 2000...
avi version:

http://tinyurl.com/ytdw3m

(215 MB)
Exactly. There is no point in expecting cofounder to be competent in same areas. What is more important for cofounder is share same passion as you do. Technical stuff can be learned. Languages and technology comes and goes.
This probably depends on the person. Working for someone with the loss of control that this entails can be an absolutely devastating experience.
True, I forgot about that. I'm assuming you're familiar with Toffler and Drucker, but recently Yochai Benkler has added a lot to this theory. In the intro to The Wealth of Networks, he says that the declining cost of capital has three effects:

1) People can do more by themselves.

2) People can do more in loose association with others.

3) People can do more in informal organizations that operate outside the market sphere.

The idea being that if you get 100m in investment to start a steel mill, you need to earn 100m back just to break even so you need these very rigid systems in place to maximize profit. However, when you're business only costs 10,000 to start you can harness the power of informal systems and volunteers and crowd wisdom, etc. The perfect example of this would be Wikipedia. Because it costs so little to run, it can be run by informally organized volunteers and is free to operate as a non-profit.

Anyway it's definitely not a beach read, but it's one of those books where if you take a year or two to fully grok the ideas within then you'll be in a stronger position to MSPW.
Working for a company doesn't have to be bad. For many people, a good job at a startup can be very attractive. First and foremost is the feeling that you are working on something that's never been done before. That's exciting and creates a powerful sense of community and adventure.

Sometimes a founder has the HR gift and can intuitively put together a team that really runs like clockwork and everyone feels it and wants to be part of it.

You can find that different companies can be geared toward people at different stages of their lives. If someone has young children, a startup can provide flexibility and insurance. Same thing if someone has already retired or is changing careers. That can be especially juicy because you're getting someone with experience who can spot problems before they get bad and let you know about them.

What can you offer your employees? A healthy safe environment where their talents are recognized and rewarded? Options? Community? A place to learn new skills and grow?

Startups are good places for people with multiple skillsets. Someone who can wear sales, marketing and backup code hats would never get the opportunity to exercise all of his or her skillsets in a large company where with a small startup would find themselves particularly valued and valuable.

You can definitely engineer your hiring so that everyone winds up a winner. I'd be concerned about working for you if you were convinced that working for a company would have to suck. What kind of environment would you create? How fast would your turnover be? What kind of people do you want to hire and how do you intend to retain them?
So, what was their financial business model again?
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I don't know about that. I'm perhaps a bit unrepresentative since my normal job is also at a (later-stage, profitable) startup, but I found my day job is far more stressful than the startup.

When you work for someone else, there are a large number of factors that you cannot control. You can't pick your technologies: you generally have to go along with what the rest of the team is already using. You can't pick your company culture: it's already been established. You can't pick your market (okay, you can't really either with your own startup). You're stuck with the existing codebase.

All this is fine if you also pick up your employer's values and expectations. But I don't know any startup founder that's like this. Usually, if you're interested in starting a company, it's because you have some internal standards for the quality that you'd like your code to live up to and the ease with which users can use it. So if you're working for someone else, you can easily get stuck with your own standards and your employer's tools, and the two may not match.

This is really, really stressful.

When I'm working on my startup, at least I know that any problems I'm having are my fault. And I can fix them. If I don't like the quality of the code I'm putting out, I can make the call to postpone feature X and fix bug Y instead. If I find that a framework is becoming more of a hassle than a help, I can rip it out and replace it with my own code without my boss vetoing it.

There's a whole other level of stress that comes from mixing both day job and startup. Right now, the most stressful thing in my life is wondering whether I should quit the day job to work full time on the startup. It's stressful because there is pitiably little information and yet it's an incredibly important decision. I won't know whether the reduced time available has caused me to miss my market opportunity until I've actually missed the market opportunity, at which point it's too late. Similarly, I won't know whether the added time pressure has made me mortgage the startup's codebase until it becomes impossible to work with, at which point it's generally too late to fix.
It went really well. The people who attend are the best part of startup school, for sure.