skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I get where you're coming from. I just recently graduated and moved into an apartment complex with fewer college kids which definitely helped as things are quieter. I think whats ideal is to work out of a small house where you can live just with your co-founders. But the issue is cost.. Renting a house is usually considerably more which will increase your burn rate.

I think it is pretty key to work out of the same place where you live though. Separation of living and work is not ideal for a startup, and PG even talks about this some. Your life needs to BE your work; They need to coexist.

As far as distractions go, I think this is another reason why living with a co-founder is so important in the early stages. Its kinda like a checks and balances. You both keep each other in check and on track.
I can't work effectively from home. To many distractions to devote large blocks of time. I'm up in Seattle so I ended up renting out some industrial space from ActivSpace (http://www.activspace.com/) for $250 a month. It's not a large space but it serves my needs nicely. Two desks, couch, fridge, white boards, and we can paint on the walls if we get bored.
You missed his point. Yes, what you are doing is replicating the situation that worked for you. And this program is probably a good one for students who are still in college and want to build a company over the summer.

But anyone who has left college and is working for a living should be able to save up one months living expenses every month. (EG: make 25 an hour, gross $4k, $3.6k after taxes, live on $1,500 a month or so.) Thus if you work for 6 months as a contract programmer (or better yet as an employee for a startup) you will then have 6 months of expenses to build your business. Thus there's no reason that not getting YC funding should be an impediment to strting a business.

The strong impression I get from people who post here, and the people who attented startupschool is that they are focused on getting funding. They want to go to YC, or move to the bay area for connections to funding. Landing a VC deal is seen as the end goal.

This is not an entreprenurial focus. Were you focused on VC funding for viaweb, or were you trying to build a business?

The original poster is right-- build a business-- that should be the focus. Not getting funding. Not worrying about what you're going to do if you don't get into YC. YC should be seen as a possible opportunity, but not critical to success.

And since YC only happens twice a year and is limited in the number accepted... waiting for the next round of YC indicates that building the business or product is not the number one priority.

As an investor, I'd rate highly someone who was living off of their own savings to build their product-- they have shown the gumption and have even more skin in the game.
What's sad though is the majority of these applicants who actually apply and then accept these programs will probably be groups who applied for YC but were then rejected. They get whats left from the YC funding cycle. Not to say there wont be successful startups from these groups, but it kinda puts a damper on morale.

No thanks but I'll pass.. For us its definitely YC or nothing. Actually we'll probably just bootstrap while we build but that just isnt the same...
That's still plenty respectable. Woz designed most of the Apple II in his apartment while working at Hewlett Packard. However, (if my memory serves me correctly) he left HP to put the finishing touches on the design before it launched.

So perhaps it might be best to leave when your product is about 80% to the point of launching, because then you can focus full time on actually getting it out the door, and on the aftermath. If you have a day job, it might never seem like it's ready to launch.

But that's just my hypothesis; I don't have any actual experience with that. :)
PG et al. were not college students when they started ViaWeb. Actually, I think they were significantly older than the median YC-funded founder.

That said, I'm a little curious about the money aspect too. I had no problem saving up more than $15k. I could easily self-fund my startup for a while. I'm far more interested in YC because it brings together smart people from across the world and fosters the sort of environment you'd see in a hacker lab or math competition.
I would take a direct no, but i had had nasty experience when they go on lecturing things like "get traction on what u are doing", "you dont seem to have background in this field", "this wont work becoz of ......". This is more irritating than a simple NO with a reason like we arent interested. Vinod Khosla is bit polite in saying this :D rather than giving a lecture.
In the io programming language you can generate code (message trees) at runtime and then eval them in any context that you want to.

You can also pass messages trees (code) to a method without evaling it, and then modify it however you want beforing evaling it within whatever context you want.
I actually proposed that (1% of startup equity in exchange for being able to ask questions and come to the YC dinners) when I got rejected from SFP2005. They ignored me.

I suspect the problem is that time is their scarcest resource, not money. They want to spend their time mentoring the startups with the greatest chance of success. Until you reach the point where you have a reasonable chance of success, you're stuck with YC News.
See the Io programming language:

"Io is a small, prototype-based programming language. The ideas in Io are mostly inspired by Smalltalk (all values are objects), Self (prototype-based), NewtonScript (differential inheritance), Act1 (actors and futures for concurrency), LISP (code is a runtime inspectable/modifiable tree) and Lua (small, embeddable)."
I need a hacker.
Count me as one of the (apparently) very few who had a terrible time with my startup. The one thing that I really didn't count on his how hard the government makes it. It is a REAL pain in the butt to handle all the paperwork to create an LLC and then it gets worse when tax time comes around. I tried to do it all on my own and I would NEVER do it again without hiring both a lawyer and an accountant. How one-man operations do it, with all the legal and accounting plus doing their actual jobs of running the startup is unfathomable to me.
PG is behind the site. I believe Likebetter's Bryan Kennedy added some style modifications a few weeks back.

Some of the YC companies have design backgrounds, and you can really tell. I'm a big fan of the Wufoo guys' design sense, especially their work for Particle Tree. As pg said in an interview: a hacker with a good sense of design is really dangerous.
I hope they don't actively promote this site. The community is small, insightful, and focused. It should stay this way.
to...?
I don't believe he intends to.
Unlike some of the other derivatives, the Lightspeed program isn't aimed at the same kind of people as YC. I would be surprised if there are many teams well-qualified to apply for both. Further, after meeting with a couple people from Lightspeed, I doubt it's a derivative of Y Combinator. I think they are simply looking for ways to get in early with strong ventures.

(Disclaimer: I'm part of a team that applied for grant funding from Lightspeed.)
for what? Hope not to hack into forbidden stuff and become a fugitive
I agree. It already seems like more people are adding stories creating more noise. When news.ycombinator.com started, I could read all the stories in the list. Now its seems like there are too many.
Why can't we see page 2?
An apartment works well if your co-founders are around (as roommates, or in the living room with a big table)

But it's important to have the right kind of crowd around.
If you are hard at work and all your rommie does is play XBox all day (no fingers at you pranav!) then it gets crazy.

So definitely depends on the roommate situation.

I'm doing this right now ... have a 1 bedroom and getting work done on the dining table! And it works great!
(I searched this site for a better way to post this, but didn't find anything. Please let me know if there is a more appropriate forum for this type of request.)

I'm an Internet business/marketing guy with a prototype. I'm looking for a hacker to be my cofounder.

I first heard about Y Combinator while participating in a similar program called Junto (www.juntopartners.com). As a frequent news.ycombinator reader, I've admired from a distance the work that Y Combinator participants and applicants have done. I'm looking for someone with that kind of skill set to work with me on a niche community site.

Part-time commitment initially, more involvement as we're able to grow the site. With regards to equity, I believe in growing the pie rather than my slice. I want a cofounder, not an employee.

Email me if you're interested: billallred [at] Google mail etc.
As i had posted before, its either YC or we go it alone and jsjenkins168, you also seem to belong to same kind :D Cool Mate...
There are so many failed assumptions made that this doesn't even stand as a valid opinion piece.

A valid point to make would have been: Accepted into the program or not, a good startup will learn from the experience and continue on.

Then stop there; everything else was either superfluous or unfounded.
I agree with you. The lack of parentheses makes that hard to read. I am trying to get head wrapped around lisp (maybe thats it, I am _looking_ for the parentheses :)).
I was 30 when we started Viaweb, and I needed the money.

Viaweb raised a total of $2.5 million during its life. Some of the time I was focused on funding. Investors like you to be, when you're asking for that much.

It's ridiculous to suggest that one has a choice of focusing on funding or building a business. Pretty nearly 100% of successful startups take outside funding, from Google on down.
The very point of this article is an argument in favor of applying to YC and not against it.

Like it or not, all successful web companies have at some point taken on funding. It is an inevitable part of building a company.

Raising funding is a resource and time drain. The author argues that we should all be spending time building our products. I completely agree and that's why I applied to YC. It's the equivalent of outsourcing your "distractions". Being a YC company dramatically reduces the amount of time you have to spend finding PR and investment (things you will have to do at some point). These things will find you.

The real power of YC is not the money. It's their ability to take away most of the distractions that cause startups to fail and let you concentrate on what really matters - building your product.

The author shouldn't be so short sighted and should take a longer term view of building a business.
A classic. Munger is a classic as well - not making many like him these days.
Wow, you guys are fast. You responded before I even finished typing the details!
I believe Microsoft never took funding. There might be a few others. Anybody know? Apple? That wouldn't make sense. I can't recall the numbers off the top of my head.
He he, good find.

It's like when grown children think it's cute to talk baby-talk. Sure it's cute when babies do it, but after a certain age - it's just, well, embarrassing - and a bit nauseating. You know they know better, but they're so desperate to maintain the cuteness they had as a baby that they just can't move on and think of something original and clever. Just embarrassing. Poor guy - he must not be getting enough attention at home.
Creative companies shouldn't aim for boring- The Apple III
At such an early stage, I think an apartment works quite well. My cofounder and I share an apartment (with a couple other friends) and things get done. Integrate your startup with your life because the startup is your life if you're serious. But it really depends on you as a person. If it's just that you're somebody that needs to be supervised/forced in a specific environment to be productive, then you might reevaluate your ambitions in starting a company.
Um, are you saying that these companies never raised money from investors? You know that they're both public companies, right?
I would only personally take funding from YC or certain other angels I know, but I'm glad to see other options popping up. I'm pretty sure PG and Jessica are too. I imagine it would take some of the pressure off of them being the only game in town.

Also, the YC model isn't for everyone obviously. It's basic Econ101 - these seed-funders are striving to meet a market demand that is far from being even close to being met given all those who are not accepted. I imagine and hope that even more will spring up so more guys can get the leg-up they may need.

Not everyone can be a Stanford or Harvard - but that doesn't mean there aren't other very good schools that are a better fit for many students.
I know I found (during my Summer of Code work last year) that I had to get out of the house to get any real work done. It's well-known advice to have a separate "work" area of the house if you want to succeed at working from home, and I'd have done that if I had a spare room.
Microsoft took funding before their IPO. I've never understood why; it has the smell of a bribe; but they did. Apple took a lot of funding.
Wow. Great article.

I'm so glad he mentioned this - my eyes glaze over every time I hear stats like "yeah, we're awesome, we're in a X billion dollar market":

"[Don't] claim that you're in a multi-billion dollar market. Isn't every company in a multi-billion market according to some study? At least every company that's ever pitched a venture capitalist."
Wow, comprehensive. Good post -- commenting so I can easily find this later.

I've been making personal notes on design principles I observe while viewing or using sites. I made note of what works, how good things could be improved, and most importantly, what should absolutely be avoided. It wasn't as organized as this, but I'll put mine online if I ever get around to tidying it up.
I don't use it myself; I just had it in my bookmarks.

I am also not very familiar with Lisp's macros. You may find something of interest in the more complete documentation.

Sorry.
Anyone else find it ironic that this document is hosted by a YC startup?
Lightspeed is also free money. They give $10,000 per person without taking any equity. Other than the requirement to primarily work out of lightspeed, the programs aren't mutually exclusive. So you could get away with working out of Lightspeed's office and flying to Boston weekly for the YC dinner. With funding from both you could even afford to pull it off.

I really don't understand this "YC or nothing" mentality. The funding to live comfortably really helps out, plus the free legal work. The legal work is what really kills you when you're bootstrapping.
Domain Name Prices To Increase 7%; Verisign To Make $27 million More Per Year
Late may through late August. Good?
Sure - where do you have in mind?
I'll keep you posted.
The most amazing theoretical result in computer science (you will find it hard to believe!)
Good points. I agree that there are important lessons to learn, but I wouldn't say that there is a big disincentive just yet. A powerful (open) platform is attractive because it brings to light new opportunities. The lesson would be not to sit idle afterwards. A successful mashup/product proves that there exists a market; a starutp with foresight will develop themselves fully enough as to not fully rely on the API. As you said, it's R&D for the platform companies, and they can dominate the startup's space if the startup doesn't keep iterating.

Even though YouTube was not built on a Google platform, there're some parallels to be drawn. Google had a video service; YouTube was better. With their advantage in size and resources, Google could have put out something better, but YouTube had such a lead already. True, YouTube didn't have to rely on Google's API, but even Statsaholic is continuing on without Amazon's Alexa.
Yes, but I meant to imply that they never raised money at the startup stage (and up until IPO...). Microsoft was almost entirely self-funding before going public, except for the money they received that PG mentions, which I never knew about.
There's a grain of truth here, in that YC won't guarantee a successful startup, and that rejection from YC doesn't mean your idea will fail, but did anyone really think otherwise?

To call YC "a waste of time", however, seems to me nothing but attention grabbing... if anything, YC is the opposite of a waste of time - for a student like me, YC funding means _not_ wasting my time at a summer job for food/rent while working on an idea, and _not_ wasting my time on searching for business advice/legalese if the idea makes it off the ground.

How the heck did this make it to the #1 story? Is it because people anxious about being rejected by YC, or is it just the rebellious headline?
I watched too much TV as a child and now I have a really short attention span. Could you summarize this, please?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25200/nature06

scribd link, via slurping (www.scribd.com/slurp?url=...)
From what I read, Microsoft took a mezzanine round before IPO because VCs have connections to investment bankers, and Microsoft needed investment bankers to make the IPO process run smoothly. So yeah, it basically was a bribe.
"This will be the last time we disclose application numbers though. Now that we have competitors (or at least imitators), we don't want to get into a number-of-applicants contest." -pg

It's not really a contest unless you think of it as one... why is YC not be more public about their funding, in general? More info would encourage more people to submit an application, I think. Personally, I would have found examples of successful applications very useful/interesting - partially because I'm curious how reddit looked in the minds of the founders, but also to answer little questions - like how informal of a tone it's OK to use, or if it's OK to be hesitant on your tools of choise, etc.
"...imagine you wake up one morning with your
head full of a complete proof of the Riemann
hypothesis. (This is arguably the greatest
open problem in mathematics, and is a deep
statement about the distribution of the prime
numbers, the atoms of arithmetic.) Giddy with
anticipation of certain fame, you leap out of
bed and type up the proof, in its full 500-page
glory. That done, you are seized by doubt. How
wise is it to inflict the full brunt of your genius
on your colleagues? Will anyone even listen, or
be prepared to check your proof?

What you can do is re-format your write-up
into a (somewhat longer) PCP proof. Anyone
now wishing to verify your argument need only
pick a handful of words at random, and follow a
set list of instructions to conclude whether it is
correct or not. An error might have slipped in
on account of faulty working, buggy reformatting,
or outright cheating. No matter, it will be
caught with overwhelming probability. What
the reformatting step does is smear any error
all over the proof, making it easier to spot. In
much the same way, a diligent sandwich maker
will smear a smidgen of jam evenly over his
bread, rather than leaving it concentrated
in one corner, and so make the whole more
savoury.

...In its full splendour, PCP asserts that
any statement S whose validity can be ascertained
by a proof P written over n bits also
admits an alternative proof, Q. This proof Q
has two appealing features: it can be derived
from P in a number of steps proportional to
n^c, where c is some constant; and P can be verified
by examining only three bits of Q picked
at random. If S is true, a correct P will satisfy
the verifier with a probability of 99%. If it is not
true, any alleged proof P will trigger a rejection
from Q with a probability higher than 50%
(ref. 4). Not impressed with this error rate?
Then all you have to do is pick, instead of three
bits of Q, as many bits as are contained in this
line of text. The error probability will drop to
one in a billion."
As usual, people see only the money. Y Combinator is also about the networking, and based on some things I've heard, that's the more important part. "Never Eat Alone."
Here's a deal for a venture capitalist: the VC funds the development of the internet. As an inducement, the VC is told that the return on his investment is that the internet will be handed over to some unrelated corporation, after which the VC will have access to the internet as a paying consumer. Now substitute "taxpayer" for "VC".
Twitter's apparent success baffles me beyond words... can anyone explain to me what makes this more exciting than constantly changing your AIM away message?
I don't see it as black and white. Everyone has their conditions under which they work at their optimal level.

Identifying those conditions and finding a way to make it work I think is more important than forcing yourself to work under difficult conditions SIMPLY because you are a start-up. There is a huge misconception that just because you are a start-up you HAVE to make your life difficult. It already will be difficult; if you can find ways to make it easier you absolutely should!
I find it curious that you think that's what it is.

Candidly, I'm not naive enough to think that I'm going to attract anyone worth attracting if that's all it was.
I would disagree with your thesis that 99% of the experience is based on pursuing your idea. Many entrepreneurs start companies for reasons other than pursuing their own idea. Some simply like the control, autonomy and culture of a startup.

I'd also posit that when finding co-founders, you are in a sense finding someone that will help you execute your idea (and that makes them no less of an entrepreneur).
I can see pg's point about making startup your life. But I think you can still have startup as your life even while you work out of your office until 11pm, come to the apt, grab some food over some TV and work few more hours before hitting bed.

That's how it is for me anyway and it has been more productive than staying in apartment all day.

Again this is something that must vary from person to person. So I'm not necessarily out to do a philosophical debate about whether one is better than the other.
The slurping is very cool. But flash isn't any less annoying than a pdf viewer.
Awesome idea, too bad most of the heavy lifting is done by encoding the image in a big constant... if the constant itself was in the formula the awesomeness would be higher.

From the WP entry: "The formula itself is a general purpose method of decoding a bitmap stored in the constant n, so it could actually be used to draw any other image, and does not in fact contain any reference to itself. This is not the case with Tupper's later self-referential equation whose plot describes only itself."

What's this "Tupper's later self-referential equation"?
You are correct that this presents a very good, easy-to-install piece of functionality for Windows users. The Windows shortcomings that you point out are certainly problems, and I think that your software does a good job of overcoming that.

The part about efficient background sync is a good point, too. I have noticed some minor lagging using curlftpfs in Linux, and that might be something that would make for a better solution in the Linux world, so thanks for that idea.

Your use-case described in #2 does make sense, but I still agree with others' comments here that claiming that it replaces USB drives is a bad idea in general. All of your feedback was well-thought-out and appreciated; I only hope that I was able to give you a sneak preview of some of the potential criticisms you may receive. Best of luck to you!
The wikipedia article on Network Neutrality has some of the accusations (dearaol). I believe the ISP trying to blackmail Google was on Slashdot at some point. I didn't provide links before as I didn't have the time to check them for accuracy.
I'd also love to see how you answered the "Whom do you fear the most" and "What makes this hard to replicate" questions on the app...
MegaData