skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
haha, great (tragicomic) headline. but i think this is an important lesson. api/platform providers and the startups that build on top don't really have aligned interests when it comes to building companies. mashup makers (e.g. frappr/platial) are basically free R&D for the platform (google), and if a startup creates a mashup with a lot of value, it's unlikely the startup will be able to capture it -- or conversely it's doubtful that google will be able to keep its hands out of the cookie jar and sit back while the profits go to the startup (yes, google could acquire the startup but it certainly isn't obligated to.)

microsoft left dozens if not hundreds of startups in its wake this way (cherry picking good ideas and bundling them with the next version of office/windows/visual studio), and i'm sure there are more contemporary examples in the making (amazon could do this with S3/EC2, e.g. by selling an "s3drive" or other value-added services.)

it's too bad to see this though; it's a big disincentive to innovate on top of these platforms.
The fact that comments may be viewed during the YC app process probably has something to do with creating a focussed audience. But, how much?
More Buxfer you. Mor Buxfer me. More Buxfer everybody!
If these products are ultimately just about creating your own maps, it's merciful that Google kills them off. If they are something significantly more, then they've gotten plenty of a head start from their create-your-own-map functionality.
PG: Who's hiring? Is this going to be restricted to YC applicants?
anyone placing bets on how long it will take for news.yc to devolve into digg territory?

(danw, remember I asked this about justin.tv, and the answer turned out to be about 18 hours after I asked...)
If "big hard problems" without "nasty little problems" is what you want, you should go to grad school. Even companies that look like they're dealing with the "big and hard" are actually mostly dealing with the "nasty and little". Trust me, I've spent 5 years at such a place.
Other than using this as an example in C.S courses, would this be applicable or useful for anything?
No, but it's pretty cool.

"The formula itself is a general purpose method of decoding a bitmap stored in the constant n"
My favorite approach was detailed here: "Growing Languages with Metamorphic Syntax Macros" http://www.brics.dk/RS/00/24/

Monty
Sweet jesus thats nasty.

I suppose if you go step by step its not that hard. Better to have it all ready and leave them looking for stuff to ask for instead of trying to get it all really fast in a panic.
3 Rules to Follow for Effective Meetings
oh it's definitely cool. I'm just thinking about ways I can make this useful.
Staying focused is key when moonlighting a startup - this is my new browser start page :)
Karma definitely matters. Hey- at least yours was moving.
I totally missed that. I just know he was interviewed for this past winter session, and it came up that he was a single founder. I sure hope he gets in, because it shows that you don't always need a team if you can invision, design, draw, code, and test your idea yourself. Too many cooks can spoil the broth, sometimes. Plus, I believe when leading a product that you need to have one leader, not a committee. And, the other thing I believe is that a leader must be willing to do, by himself, anything he asks of others.
One word: awful.
I'm upvoting anyway ;)
This is true, and yet - how the hell do you stay on target with that page blaring at you?
I don't think it will. PG has no reason to let news.yc devolve into the current reddit situation, so presumably if it starts to then it will be corrected.
I'm sorry, but I win here. I had a project that kinda accidentally turned into a company. Never did ANY name research-- just grabbed the first thing that popped into my head... "Jobby" ( http://www.gojobby.com ). Turns out that Jobby (in Scotland), means "poop".

Nonetheless, we were able to sell the company after about 6 months. :-)
Website Launch Flowchart
I listed Scribd more for the fact that their usability is really on point. I especially like the upload box on the front page. I'm glad to see more hacker types are putting time into making the user experience really good.

Also, I'd seen Particle Tree before. Definitely well-designed.
How about this YC site? Who does this UI? I mean its slick with vibrant orange. Just a curiosity thats all
Zenter is hiring - http://www.zenter.com. You can email us at jobs@zenter.com
Although you need to tweak the constants (that 17) depending on the height.
I think the flowchart is of value more as awareness of all the elements that could be involved in a successful launch.

You don't actually have to get bogged down at each step like an agency doing 3rd party work might. Nevertheless I personally have a two step plan after learning from my
"failures":

1. build a great product

2. build as real of a marketing plan as possible especially for week one of your launch

"Great" in this case is about my gut instinct; I think we all know at some level when we've made something just average, good or great.
I hope no one has epilepsy. TOFP - Too Obnoxious For People.
That is terrible, it seems like someone took the source code for "ELIZA" and turned it into a Web app.
I'd appreciate the page title including the caption for the news story you're viewing. When I've got a bunch of tabs open, it would be nice to know which story is on which tab beyond "Y Combinator Startup News."
yes, that is truly awful, there should be a disclaimer: viewing this page may result in founders jumping out of windows.
Congratulations; this is the first submission to be killed for being offtopic, rather than spam. Sorry, but this has to happen or news.yc will drift toward the usual fate of all the top links being gags.
If you want to see "birth of the dot come era" business plans, check out http://www.businessplanarchive.org/
Well, no, obviously they don't have access to all data.

They only have traffic data for:
What you search for, and in which sites you click on in the search results, everything about sites that use Google Analytics, and everything about every page that displays AdWords.

Not quite the same as Alexa, but I stand by my point.
It's just like a quine that uses stores some sort of numerical representation of itself as a byte array in the code.
Its funny how PG's bussiness is creating and selling businesses. I guess I can't sell YC tough or can he?
Now I feel like a jerk for upvoting.
Yahoo Fumbles Continue Unabated
Video online advertising is a small segment of total online advertising but has one of the rosiest futures. $378 million for 2006 which will rise to $1.3 billion in 2011. I will bet the ranch I don't have (not much of a bet, is it?) that this $1.3 billion will look like a laughably small estimate by 2011. Another market to watch is the local online ad market, which grew a remarkable 32% in 2006 to total 7.7 billion. It is supposed to double by 2021.
'In five years, local online video advertising will surpass $5 billion, representing more than one-third of all local online advertising. Where will most of that money go? Not to the purveyors of traditional "word from our sponsor" commercials, but to those who can offer long-form video information that their Web site visitors actually choose to see."
Borrell Associates, Local Online Video forecast
That's true, but I've found that it is much easier to have friends who will give you different opinions than to find someone committed enough to be a co founder. Surround yourself with people you respect and trust and you'll get the different viewpoints you need.
Anyone find apartment setting not ideal for start-up work?
I know sitting in the apartment coding all day, eating cookies while watching the Daily Show sounds like a dream moment. But it was one of the first lessons I learned when I entered college: it doesn't work for me.

I like to take each morning as a new work day--shower, hit the library, make calls, hit a class or two, continue work on start-up.

I'm assuming YComb doesn't provide office space. So I'm curious if there have been YC companies that came together to get some space to create a collective work environment away from their apartment?
Contract programmer at $27 per hour for a 3 month project.
That's what it is.
indeed:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=9339
How a VC says "no" to a company seeking funding
couple of clarifications :)

1) i have other people working with me on this. i did prototype it alone, but i don't intend to be a single founder. i won't belabor it here, but it's really a good idea to get other people on board and the reasons yc and everyone have for not encouraging single founders are valid. your odds are much worse, and playing superman gets old after a while when you're trying to do everything -- and it's more fun to have more people involved and excited about the idea anyway.

2) re: applying: i am applying for this round, but actually didn't apply for funding for the last wfp. however, i did apply 2 years ago (with a cofounder) with another idea and wasn't selected.
Not all ideas, no matter how world-changing, can be turned into a full company with just one founder and roughly zero cash. For young founders, 15k, partners and a basic support system can make a world of a difference.

edit: The real deciding factor for me though will be his equity equation.
Take heart! There's life without YC! Our Plan B. What's yours?
Actually the way most VCs say no is either by not returning your phone calls, or by saying "looks interesting; let's keep in touch," while not actually giving you a termsheet.

Things change fast in the startup world, so VCs always want to leave the door open in case you suddenly take off. (Taking off can mean becoming popular with users, or just other VCs.) As a rule they reject you in ways that can be claimed later not to be a rejection.
Agree - excellent site! Been lurking, first post. (Too busy coding to post, not too busy to read.) I work 12 48-minute bursts every day using an egg timer. The last 12 minutes of every hour: bathroom, snack, email, reddit, news.ycombinator.com, pet cat, back to work. My project keeps me busy; you guys keep me motivated. Thank you! (Oops, it's 4:02 already, I guess I'll have to work until 4:50.)
read my post (in the url).
what do you think? can you come up with a plan B to bootstrap if you are rejected?

if you are rejected, dont get dejected!

:)
I don't think a lone founder needs to be an artist at all. I am planning to hire someone to make my site shine once I have the functionality where I want it to be. That probably also applies for selling. If you have a good idea, and enough drive, why not just hire people instead of giving away equity?
Its not good to put it this way, Now a days no one gives a damn, let alone offering you something in return for some money, i would rather appreciate the helping hand offered by this guy.
Don't forget the other YC founders. PG gets all the fame, but IMHO RTM has accomplished more. And I wouldn't mind working with Trevor or Jessica either...
Invisible Hands
The Business Wisdom of Charlie Munger -- A Speech To USC Business School
I think the author is missing part of the point. YCombinator is simply a way to make something that's very very hard to do just that much easier. Nobody should bank everything on getting accepted (I know I'm not). Just because you shouldn't bank on something doesn't mean it's not a valuable thing.

The author is right in that you should plan on doing it without YC help. My point is that you should still try to get YC's help. It'll be worth it.
Sour grapes? I dont know why people think it as though YC will spoon feed and get u stand up on your feet and will teach you walking and running. I see YC as a way of catalyst which nurtures, get you connections and give valuable advice. Again this is my perspective, i may be wrong but i really dont agree with the write up on scribd.com.
The ultimate point of that list (which is really very short) seems to be keep a file folder and at least two copies of everything, one set aside for the lawyers. I mean, if you look at the list, everything on that list is something that you should already have as a mark of good organization.
http://juwo-works.blogspot.com/2007/04/our-plan-b.html
Lightspeed Summer Grants are announced tomorrow. Anyone optimistic? [pdf]
I am... I applied with a three person team. We're from Pittsburgh and I'm not sure if that helps us or hurts us. Lightspeed has marketed the program at Berkeley and Stanford. I'm hoping they want a token team from outside of California.
Premise is right, headline is wrong. If you look at the businesses that made people billionaires, the other point they have in common is that the owners aggressively pursued opportunities. So yes, Bill Gates slaved away for 6 years, with a variety of other products, before IBM came knocking. However, if he had turned them away, or been out of the office flying his plane like Gary Kildall, we'd be talking about the "Digital Research Monopoly" instead.

My startup initially wasn't going to apply to yCombinator. We have a solid team, a product that I really want to see exist, and we're making steady progress implementing it. But I figured that if we have a decent chance of success without yCombinator, we'll have an even better chance of success with yCombinator. So why not spend 4 days or so putting together an application and see if they accept us?

If they turn us down, fine, we go back to our original plan and keep working on the product. But if they don't, great! It's advice, connections, a set timetable for when I leave my day job and work full-time on the startup (for me, this is a question of when, not if: yCombinator would just make the decision for me), and a cool hacker environment where you get to bounce ideas off other equally-smart people.
(took out the first paragraph I had here. I should have read the full article!)

People that are applying for YC definitely are just seeing this as another possibility and not an end all to their idea. I'm sure that a very small amount of people are going to give up their business if rejected.
We believe so too and PG keeps deleting all links that point to sites that are not his own

http://www.teenwag.com
Funny. And stupid.
I think the music parallel was right on, actually. You need users to tell you what they think of your product at least as much as VCs or execs. If users don't like your product, trying to pitch it to VCs is a waste of time.
(Back to where it was) The author unfairly compared Paul to a young musician's experience, said Paul speaks Bull, and that the YC is a waste of time. He also insults the reader. The author should apologize.
I took it that he meant that the artist wasn't willing to work at his music enough to gain traction and wanted a quick track to success by signing to a big record label. With that being said, I think that the majority of YC submissions aren't looking towards this as an only alternative but one of many routes that could be taken.
Good luck. I'd love to hear how you feel after you've launched.
Provoking my thoughts to start a Start-Up again (I already failed twice). I will.

- Prabu
Also, the "Permanent Redirect Not Found" section only lists my www. domain and not the main domain.

(some of the inbound links may point to www.hotdailymotion.com and others to ) there's a blank where it should say "hotdailymotion.com"

note: safe is Not Safe For Work.
I think the author is missing a lot of things.
He does make one valid point - if you're spending all day contributing to this news section you're probably not working hard enough on your project.

Also, I don't believe he was comparing Paul to a 15-year-old musician, but rather screwed up and switched the name of his cousin from Steve to Paul. A freudian comparison perhaps, but not intentional. He failed to communicate his point effectively.
He said, "I read that thing that Paul wrote saying that anybody who contributes regularly is going to fare better. That's shit from a bull."

Of course he was insulting Paul, and us later on.
Did anyone find this article helpful? I thought it was... a waste of time.
I don't think anyone is applying for the money. After all most people are in their 20's with little to no responsibility. Just living in the Cambridge area for the summer will eat up a chunk of money. If you have a great idea and must have 3 months to concentrate on it or you'll never get it done, just move in with the folks for 3 months.

I think most people are applying for the mentoring and collaborative environment.I found a great partner in the process. That has to be worth taking the time to apply.
Can you stop editing your posts every 30 seconds? It makes it impossible to discuss anything with you.
It lacks a certain, uh, human-ness, in my opinion.
Well, if he can point to his success then I might be inclined to take his advise, otherwise ...
There is some meaning within this rambling.

Here's a startup idea Mr PG: I will pay $50 for basic feedback on a very early startup idea and give you 1% equity.

What are the alternatives? Is there any way to get feedback on startup plans from half competent people without broadcasting your ideas all over forums?
Faces of Start-up Founders
"...schools with big resources don't do as much to create experts as they do to attract them."

You said a mouthful! Just imagine all our schools did just the opposite? Where they focused on helping people become experts and where recruiting was a foreign concept. How different would things be? It's a compelling idea.
Why am I not hearing about these until they are over? A lot of good it will do me now. Spending too much time at the console I guess..
I know he didn't compare Paul to the musician. I was talking about the quote above.
Dude, you're a liar. You've edited or deleted half of your posts after I replied to them. Maybe you'll pull the wool over the eyes of someone that stumbles into the thread now, but your initial comment said that the author should apologize for comparing Paul to the musician.
Some of the stuff he says isn't so bad. It's good to just go out and create something. Too many people do seem to rely on YC.

However, the money YC gives is really insignificant. I doubt many people even applied for the money at all. Its really more about the network and mesh of people you get with it. Anybody can work and save up 6k, its not that hard.

I didn't apply because I want to be in the San Fran. network isntead of the cambridge area. If this round was in the bay area, then I would have applied, and been accepted :).
I've found that too. Sometimes it's hard to get into the flow while 'working from home.' An office that is seperated somehow can really make it easier to work.
Right, but it's usually possible to find another, simpler idea - even if it's just consulting - that will generate $15k and bring you in contact with potential cofounders or customers.
YC's money isn't the most important thing they offer, but in my case (I'm finishing undergrad this month) it probably does make the difference between being able to go full-time right away versus needing to either spend a year saving or moonlight it.
If YC is for losers, then Robert and Trevor and I are losers ourselves, because we modelled it on how we started Viaweb. We took $10k in seed funding from our friend Julian, who (since he was a lawyer) also set us up as a company.

For us, Julian's help was both a necessary and sufficient condition of getting launched. Nothing has changed since then about life in the seed stage. Sure, maybe you can get to the next stage on $200k instead of a $2m series A round like in the Bubble, but initially you still need at least a few months' living expenses.

I only skimmed that [what should I call it? article?], but I did notice one other thing that's mistaken. We don't judge people by their karma on news.yc, but by the quality of their comments and submissions. Surely that is a reasonable test.
"2. Secure server software ($5000). This does not seem to be an absolute necessity; there are a lot of sites on the web where you can send your credit card number unencrypted, and to date there have been no reports of the numbers being stolen. But catalog companies may believe that a secure link is necessary, and spending this $5000 would give Webgen a much more professional look."

When you feel like you've missed the gravy train for web startups, quotes like this remind you of all the good things about starting one in 2007.
Some of us contribute to yCombinator because we have day jobs and can't work on our startup while on company time. And yet we have bosses that tell us to hold up because they aren't done with the requirements yet. Time is fungible; might as well use our bored-time at work on something semi-productive and free up the time at home for working on the startup.

Of course, you could argue that if one really wants their startup to succeed, they shouldn't have a day job. I'd probably even agree with you. But "when to quit" is a complicated question, particularly if you're gaining (or hopefully soon will be getting - damn boss!) valuable experience in addition to cash.
Same here. I already left my job a few months ago to work on my project, but my cofounder is still employed at his. We were moving along great and decided to apply for YC the day before the app was due. Why? Well, seriously because it just sounded like fun. We are doing our project regardless, but to be involved in a fun team like what we imagine the YC SFP will be, just sounds like a blast. Sure we'll be working our tails off, but we're doing that now anyways. If we get accepted we'll have the network of the other SFP founders which is priceless. Really, it can be challenging to find other hackers that are fun, not jaded, smart, and humble enough to actively seek feedback and correction. Not that all the SFP founders will necessarily fall into that category, but probably most of them will if Paul and Jessica are vetting them.

For more on the money aspect of the decision - see my post on 'Outside Money and Irritable Bowel Syndrome' at http://blog.nanobeepers.com
Just register a few likely typos and it shouldn't be too bad. I'd aim for at least one fewer syllable though.
Yes, and at the end of the day a decision has to be made.

This is where companies get in trouble- the founders have different opinions. I've seen two companies struggle because founders differed... and I've known one company where the founder knew what was going on and was clearly in charge (which there were some founding employees, there was no question of who made the decisions)... that company succeeded until the VC forced a new CEO who couldn't make a decision to save his life on us....

More people to spread out the early work is good. Multiple founders can be ok.

But one needs to be in charge.
As to 'When to quit?', I was initially aiming for a savings of $15k, but my savings rate is too slow. I'll be taking the plunge at $10k.
Everyone trying to copy YC by following same sort of model of helping startups grow.On the whole, its good for budding nerds but sad that no one started all these before but are hell bent on copying this concept from YC
Business and VC funding are not American Idol. There's almost always a chance to keep a door open to future prospects, upon failure, thus gaining an ever growing list of contacts and resources. This is part of "follow up". Unless the entrepreneur is dead or in jail, the door can be open.
Man, I feel silly now. I have several times more than $15K saved up. At grad-school living expenses, perhaps 3 years of runway.

I'm not really sticking with the day job for financial reasons though. I want to see the product I've been working on ship. Get it into the hands of actual paying customers. Because I figure then I'll get to see a whole bunch of other problems that will likely impact the startup too. Much better to make the initial mistakes on someone else's dime.

Problem is, my day job seems to move at a glacial pace. So despite having a 6 month handicap and about 1/5 the number of man-hours available, my startup may launch first. If that happens, I'll probably quit the day job whether it's done or not, because it's just a drag on the startup.