skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your thesis is based on the idea that Microsoft is dead because nobody fears them anymore. I think this is the wrong way to look at it. Does fear = relevance? It can, but how many people fear IBM? I doubt many. IBM is not dead. It's come back from the ashes of the late 1980s. They used to be feared, but I don't think that's the case anymore. Probably the only company that does fear them is Sun.

I think one reason people are less afraid of Microsoft is they're doing things that are less scary. I agree with one commenter that customers might fear them more than entreprenuers do. They're gradually making their client technologies more cross-platform, not Windows specific. Customer requests were probably a big part of that, but it may reflect a change of consciousness on the part of Microsoft's workforce, too.

I think Microsoft will remain relevant, just less scary.

I think Google's gotten a little scary with the deal they made to censor search results in China. They found an exception to their "don't be evil" motto.
From what I gather "YES!", but I hope Loopt can change that behavior for the better.
seed (angel) funding in 1996: I wrote UNIX. I got rich enough to fly my jet to visit you. Here's $200K, I want 10% of the company.

seed (angel) funding in 2006: We wrote a web store. We got rich enough to fly you in a jet to visit us. Here's $10K, we want 20% of the company.

seed (angel) funding in 2007 and beyond: We hired some guys in india to make a web site. We got rich enough to buy a jetta. We can't tell you how much money we will give you, we want all of the company. (but only if it all works out in a couple of months.)
I think in some ways, I'm more interested in the "mere mortals" in that they seem more realistic, more attainable somehow.
My wife's post doc. I tried to send you some email, but didn't see an answer. I'm at davidw -[at]- dedasys.com
RSS of best list, not only new. Thanks.
The reception this gets from the market will be an interesting indicator for all you bubble watchers out there (ok, so it's the LSE, but it should still tell us something).

Blinkx looks like it has revenues, though, so even if the market reception is positive, it doesn't mean you can slap a "Web 2.0" label on something and IPO it (yet).
Steve Jobs - is he not being investigated because everyone loves him?
On the flip side, it keeps you up on what your competition is working on.
I hope we don't start seeing long threads about people checking their email every minute, wondering what to do if they don't get accepted, etc.

;)
Agreed. This has been already submitted guys: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=6668
There was a story in NY magazine a few months ago analyzing the option back-dating scandal at Apple.

The author of the piece concluded that because Jobs was so important to the company's worth (the estimate was that if Jobs had to leave the CEO post b/c of legal trouble, the stock price would lose up to half its value in one day), he was not going to be prosecuted, and other executives would take the fall instead.
You're right, by removing Jobs the SEC would be punishing the very people they claim to protect - the shareholders. However, the SEC doesn't seem to have a problem with this. After all, the massive fines they levy against companies (reducing future shareholder returns) accomplish the same thing.

Regardless, just because Jobs is valuable to the company shouldn't mean he's above the law. It's my understanding that CEOs convicted of securities fraud can still serve their post, assuming their not in jail.
Looks like TheBusinessExperiment.com is currently down. Can you tell us please what was that about?
Me too! ;-)
"Startups" seem to have that Get Big Fast mentality, where you're either the next YouTube in 18 months, or you're a failure. But it doesn't have to be that way...

That's exactly the point I was trying to make; well said.
Sounds good; remember to announce when it's up and running.
If you want to call it WhyCombinator, you're going to have to buy the domain off me ;-)

Ha!
Dupe... delete please!  Thanks
A Brave New Revenue Sharing World
Paul Kedrosky: VC Investing Factoids from Q1
Thanks for posting. Interesting stats.
What's most interesting is they ask what your revenue goals are. Does that mean in addition to spamming your site with traffic they'll click on some ads too?

Sounds like a disaster if you ask me.
Microsoft feels secure because of its momentum. How many complacent companies have lost their markets to more agile and inventive competitors?

Microsoft is not a technology inventor; it notices a growing market and comes in late. This worked in the past because its operating system and office systems lived on virtually every desk top and because it could undercut competitor prices.

Now they are facing a competitor that is also on every desktop and offers its products for free. Hard to undercut that. Even worse, this competitor is very inventive and is a comparable size.

"Take away their oxygen" is the phrase Bill Gates once described as the way of handling competitors. Whose oxygen is going to be taken away this time?
Eharmony & Match.com for  Co-founders.
Can someone build a match.com for people looking for co-founders. We are having a hell of hard time finding one. Please don't tell me craigslist.
I've been lamenting about this for a long while. I think the openness of the mobile platform is starting to gain momentum, although it's a trickle right now.
ThemBid.com - Make Companies Bid For Your Business
Ha, I'll apply with a fake paid membership site. At $25/yr, the 100,000 registrations they guarantee will make me an instant millionaire!
Someone from the communications world. Chips, systems, etc.

Maybe the founders of cisco, qualcomm, juniper... The value and impact of these companies is significant, revolutionary.
Yea... the numbers are pretty interesting. I wonder if the figures are just US based or for VCs across the globe. I figure the bio tech industry will keep getting more and more of the VC attention as the green wave rolls on.
Skype founders. Someone from India (Reliance or Infosys). Just a couple to see the experience outside of the US as well.
TheStreet.com acquires Stockpickr
"FogBugz is written in Wasabi, a very advanced, functional-programming dialect of Basic with closures and lambdas and Rails-like active records that can be compiled down to VBScript, JavaScript, PHP4 or PHP5. Wasabi is a private, in-house language written by one of our best developers that is optimized specifically for developing FogBugz; the Wasabi compiler itself is written in C#."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html
Anyone want to collaborate on juwo? Looking for a good hacker.
Please visit http://juwo.com
news.YC, Thanks for your website feedback! Mostly implemented here. Looking to make juwo more intuitive and easier to use.
Is it me or have the TechCrunch comments gotten worse over the last month or two?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/25/scribd-rocking-along-rumored-financing/#comment-1351566
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/25/scribd-rocking-along-rumored-financing/#comment-1351732

Congratulations Scribd! You're popular and awesome enough to have haters :D
Mozy goes Mac--First really useful Mac Backup solution
16 year old college student's dream: exit with $1billion before 25
I've been looking for a good backup solution, so this is cool. I'd looked at Carbonite before but it had a Windows version only.
Advice needed: "friend" stole my idea...what to do?
Has your credit card been STOLEN on the Internet? [PIC] Hilarious :)
I didn't read all 411 comments, but I think saying that the desktop was dead in a general sense (due to AJAX) and cite Apple with OS X (core asset besides the iPod is OS X as desktop!) as a nail in Microsoft's coffin seems somewhat contradictory to me.

Btw.: I don't think that desktop apps are really dead. System file assets/album/playlist integration (iLife suite) or the comfort of a desktop UI (e.g. better shortcut integration - which pro doesn't work with time-saving Photoshop shortcuts) will be hard to mimick in an AJAX, browser-based setting.
She seems to dig making money, "I was running C's in school, but I didn't think much of it because I was making more than my teachers were."
Youtube prepares to serve ads
If your idea was so simple that a friend could steal AND execute as YOU envisioned, your friend isn't he problem--your idea is.
how about partnering with your friend, seeing as you are the originator of the idea. Does he need you to execute upon this idea?

Has he launched yet?
depends on what he told the friend. Having a long drawn out chat over several weeks could be possible. But i guess its the idea itself which is to be questioned
Back in Jan I went to a person well respected in the startup community (PG knows her) in BOS. She was a friend of a friend, I've known her for years..she previously had a high profile startup that crashed in the dotcom era. I wanted to bounce the idea off her and get her feedback. So I sent a presentation (marked confidential) and followed up with an hour long chat, which was helpful. She moved to the west coast the day after we talked and 2 weeks later I find that she taken my 90% of my idea, mixed it up with social network and gotten seed funding from a small west coast VC. I've been developing this idea on a shoestring and on the side for 6 months. I've got a lot invested in this. She's hired a indian development firm and been spamming blogs with her site name to get registrations. I've applied for a patent, but not sure it can be of any help right now. What action should I be taking? (besides wanting to run her over)
sorry...read the story below
Hmm... nothing about revenue sharing that I can see in the article.
This is really silly stuff. Microsoft is successful because they deal with all the messy stuff around a platform - 3rd party vendors, APIs, integration, training, blah blah blah...Just take a look at Google's online software and you will see that it sorely lacks competitive features. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Google says "I give up" when it comes to providing a platform for the proliferation of devices that will not end soon. Add to it the scattershot nature of their search engine (still based on text search, unable to find stuff such as "middle aged female authors from the 13th century") and you see Google for what it is - a company that has made a huge amount of money from advertising - period. Do they have some cool technology - yes. So did Ashton Tate - does anyone remember the company that was the worlds largest software vendor in 1990? Not really...
Brainstorming Ways to Get Attention Online - Funny
Doesn't help much, but one thing you can do is feel good that you have good ideas. The second thing you can do is launch a competitor immediately. If she's using an outsourcing firm and isn't actually doing the development herself you've got a huge advantage. Use it.

I'd be willing to bet that since it was your idea, you have a much better understanding of the problem and how you're solving it than she does. Use that too. See where she falls down in her offering and exploit it.

Just my two cents.
C# is so much better than Java it's not funny - sorry - I guess you would have to try it out to know...
Wow. Planning to hit the Forbes billion list within a decade. Even Brin and Page wouldn't have had the balls to claim that in 1998. Respect for the ambition, but a bad role model nonetheless.
Well...

1. Partner with her if possible.

2. Get a lawyer's opinion. There may be legal actions you can take, but I can't provide any advice on this.

3. Build faster and launch faster than her.
Did she take your presentation too?
Yes, it's still sitting in her gmail account. :-(
I'd go straight to #3. #1 won't work because he trusts her much less than before. #2 isn't bad, but lawyers = $$$ right? and that $$$ and time could be spent doing #3 no?
Your navigation links are broken. They still have the 8080 port reference from your development code.
While i think the principle is great, the key to building successful marketplaces is in building liquidity. Seeding the site with a restricted type of service e.g. automotive repair while asking many people in that sector to come and bid for business would have been a sensible way to seed it.

Thats very important to make this idea work.
y2's a joke? I feel its getting close to getting acquired. Patrick - $10?
Do you have a working prototype? If not got one out there ASAP, otherwise your startup might die before it starts.

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html
8. Slowness in Launching
What the heck does she even do?
I guess, at the very least, more YC clones means more business for Heysan.
11 Almost Perfect Business Layouts | Smashing Magazine
At what point do you share your idea/prototye with others?
Still too much text. Someone should be able to figure out what juwo is within a few seconds.
Ideas are easy. Execution matters.

You can either do the idea better than she does, or you can start working on another idea. Given that she's outsourcing the development, either one should be feasible.

Suing over ideas is just a waste of effort; the only people who come out ahead in the end are the lawyers.
Lets say you release a working prototype in 3 months. If its a great idea and you don't have all the features implemented yet you might start seeing clones of your idea.

If you wait too long and someone is working on a similar idea, you might lose early customers.
pg's essays are pretty much open source. You can even submit patches!

The point of Scribd using Flash is that it doesn't launch a separate program and window which breaks your flow on the web.
Manage Internet Business Projects
Yeah, you only have 1 product, that's the first thing the user should see. I just see text on your page and have no desire to read it. Solution: Make a little flash demo of your application (www.loopt.com ) and display it on the front page.

It took me like 5 clicks to get to your d/l site, d/l should be first and easiest thing to do.

Your top banner sucks. I don't care about the date, it fills up 1/4 of the screen and contains no information, drop it. Go to each of the y.combinator funded companies, they have decent sites: http://www.ycombinator.com/faq.html

I'm on a mac, so I can't actually use your software.
And #4: ideas are worthless.
I think you should launch your idea ASAP to compete with hers. Since she's using an off-shore dev team you might be more nimble in execution than she is. It's harder to explain to a bunch of guys over the phone exactly what you need done. I wouldn't advice partnering with her. You wouldn't want such a close business relationship with someone you can't trust.
Leverage the 53,651 meme to your advantage: contact all the Web 2.0 startup sites (Techcrunch, GigaOm, Webware, etc.) and tell them that her service is a rip-off of your idea.
Hey, this isn't reddit ;)

Actually, I thought of posting it here, too, but I wasn't sure it was the right forum (I'd hate to see this become another slashdot or digg).
Lots of people say that, but I don't think it's true. Just because an idea is simple doesn't mean it's a bad or unprofitable idea.

MySpace was a really simple idea, most of which had been done before, just not all on the same site. The reason they were successful wasn't because of the strength of the idea, it was because they got their site out there when the only real competition was Friendster, and since their site relies on network effects for much of its usefulness, it has been difficult for others with the same idea to be successful.

She screwed you over, but I doubt there's much you can do about it except try to beat her. Also, people who do things like that should have to pay with their reputation, but if your idea is too obvious, people will just think you're lame when you tell the story.
Anil, I wish you all the best with juwo, but I really think you need to reconsider your feedback claim (i.e., "All feedback will become the property of juwo LLC.").

That's not the way to encourage constructive feedback, especially when you've cut and pasted all of it from here.
They look like crap. And they are too focused on business to be interesting.
I agree: launch a competitor immediately.
Everything that's said about ideas being worthless is true most of the time, but not always unfortunately. So... next time don't reveal everything to a potential partner/VC. Keep some important bit of your idea secret. Something that isn't obvious, isn't on the surface, yet important for the implementation.
"Isn't the top one percent kind of a large number?"

It is. They want less than the bottom tenth of that. This is what would happen if JS were to interview anyone further to the right on the Bell curve.

JS: How would you fit in here?

Candidate: I would simulate the internalization of the values of the corporate workplace.

JS: When can you start?
Launch immediately. It's your idea so you have a better understanding and the ability to innovate much faster than she ever could.

Who cares if she was 'first' to do it...just make one that is better.

Someone mentioned partnering up with her - don't do it. "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me"

What a shame, a friend messing up another friend. This industry is definitely more cutt-throat than I thought.
Under US law, it is first to invent, not first to file.
Read David Pressman's book on Patent It Yourself.

The fact that you emailed her the presentation, IF any ideas are patentable, is proof enough.

This also proves those wrong who say that "Ideas are worthless".
Good comment. I'm kind of tired of this "ideas are worthless" "meme" myself. They may not have much value compared to well executed products, but the reason there is no market is because they aren't excludable goods:

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless
MySpace succeeded because of great execution. Simple ideas once executed well become great ideas.OP should forget this and continue concentrating on releasing a great product.
Ok, how do I prevent someone saying, "You implemented this suggestion of mine, it has helped make juwo popular, so now I own X% of juwo"?

Of course, this would likely happen only if juwo were to make money.

I am very willing to share revenues with those who help me actually implement.
That might give her more attention than she'll probably ever get.
From the day you get the idea. Though in earlier stages I control who I share it with--ie. it less likely I'll share it with someone who is desperate to do a start-up. I will share it with a friend at uni to pick his thoughts.
Maybe, but it won't be the kind she'd want.

Also, there's a possibility those site editors simply avoid mentioning her site at all, which would be just as good for the O.P.
Simply making a suggestion doesn't entitle anyone to claim ownership.
Why We Are So Bullish on Service Based Small Businesses as a Target Market
Are you pissed because you know that this woman has the contacts and industry experience to execute on the idea better then you?

A presentation and an hour talk surely hasn't given her much of an advantage. Go off and build your idea into a successful company. The day after it hits Techcrunch you'll have 50 competitors anyway.
Revealed: The Social Network Most Likely to Get You Laid
If the original poster has his service out when he does this, it could end up being both very bad PR for her and very good PR for him.

In fact, her ripping off his idea could end up being better publicity than he would've gotten anywhere else.
Well I know its a joke and I put it in the list to extend the joke a bit further.

haha you didnt realized that the author realized that its a joke :)
What was the idea?
Brad Fitzpatrick of LiveJournal

Bob Metcalfe of 3Com

Jamie Zawinski of Lucid and Netscape

One of the Sun founders. Probably Bill Joy, but it might be neat to see Vinod Khosla's POV too.

An early employee of Microsoft. Doesn't have to be Bill Gates, but someone who was there before the IBM deal.

Some founders whose startups failed - both in the early stages, before we've ever heard of them, and those who crashed spectactularly.
She has that X of Y one-liner down: "Our company sets out to be the eBay of services."
Sorry, off topic.
Ten Questions with Dr. Philip Zimbardo (of Stanford Prison Experiment fame)
Yeah, you might as well tell us all now, right?
I found the answer! The web site does not load in FireFox.
Discuss: The secret to making things easy: avoid hard problems
ok, I shall remove it from there - but put it on the feedback form instead - or is there a nicer way to say it?
Paul's original thread erupted into just 2 replies about databases and hard drives, with 30 follow-ups about the same thing.

And, not ONE comment about the point of his article in a general sense.

So, here's a thread for comments that actually relate to the point of the article.
If its any consolation, Google announced plans to emulate a lot of the functionality planned for our new email client, Litepost, days after we started announcing and exploring our ideas with the public and users:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest

I'm not saying they ripped us of course (who could possibly prove that?) but I will say that the timing is awfully coincidental, given that the overall ideas behind our program have been in development for almost a year (and we just started publicizing our ideas recently)!

Personally I take it as a compliment, and am grateful/flattered to have such a large competitor emulating plans we've had in development for a while. (The main thing we heard while pursuing this idea was "How can you possibly improve upon Gmail?" Well now Gmail itself recommends recommendations upon its service.)

All this, however, corresponds directly to what PG says and some of you echo below:

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html 8. Slowness in Launching

(I'm new to this whole arena, so it's taken us a while to a) find the right developers and b) get up to speed before launch.)

If anyone's interested in weighing in, I wonder if open sourcing our project might help it or be of general interest/utility... is anyone interested in "an Open Source Alternative to Gmail that You Can Install and Run on Your Own Servers"? If so, I could use some help.

I am actually interested in ultimately duplicating _and open sourcing_ a lot of the functionality of Google generally, in order to decentralize it (the operation and its power, which after all is only algorithms + horsepower) and nullify the negative privacy implications of Google. What do you think? Any takers?

I think the only possible contender to Google is an open source alternative. Let's Open Source Google!

PS From another news.YC article: "In Silicon Valley, Google-as-the-giant talk is deafening. As others have noted, startups used to get the question "What are you going to do when Microsoft does this?" and today, it's "What are you going to do about Google?"
Source: http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2007/04/google_a_tale_o.html
Well then there's no reason Google can't take it.
I have been thinking of what a short 2 minute video would contain. I think a video is more useful than a screen cast. Since juwo has a dozen things it could be used for, what should I mention? Any thoughts?

If you are good at Javascript, would you like to help get juwo run on Macs? All that is needed AFAIK is to control QT with Javascript. I had issues controlling QT with Javascript. I have some code. (I am weary doing it alone).
I dont have the brains to be able to explain it in a few seconds.