skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think YC was bound to attract clones, although I don't think it was bound to attract clones quite this clonelike. YC has created a new investment stage, and a new niche for investment companies (which is to say, the seed-funding-plus-advice niche), and I don't think it's particularly surprising that there are more companies entering that market. I would bet that YC is going to be a bit like the Sequoia of seed/advice firms, and that most other such firms will enter the market because they see YC's success, fail to make money, but continue to operate, much like most VCs don't make money.
Even as someone that rejects intellectual property as invalid, I suppose I can understand why you are displeased.

However, as for your example, why would anyone buy such a book unless it explored new stories or otherwise filled a void in the market?
That's a bit biased in my opinion.
Simplicity in software
personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable telling my ideas to people who copy others so obviously.
maybe they hoped nobody would see?! or make it easy for those submitting to YC?

but news.YC is building a community and others seems to missed the train on that..
Daring Fireball: Initiative
How to beat Google, part I
What Kind of Genius Are You? (See why age discrimination is a bad idea for more creative endeavors such as startups.)
It's neat, but even though I am colorblind I couldn't make it look like it does to me.
whoops, typo. You control the brightness/luminance with the radius.
heh heh!
now do you see why I have been scared of people copying my software?
Like Second Life for Your Phone
In 1992 Adobe Co-Founder Was Kidnapped at Gunpoint And Held For Ransom
You can save the URL of the color scheme by clicking the "sphere" link on the right hand side of the webpage. Is this the save feature you were looking for? Or something else?
Yes. I didn't want to just dismiss these guys, it looks like they are new, going through some growing pains, and trying something interesting. However, the mix of Y Combinator hacker talk with bright flashy graphics is just disconcerting. That quote was the most over the top part of the site.

I look forward to seeing in the future to see if they can evolve into a niche besides YC or decide to directly compete.
Is there something you like particularly about his web log or other reason you have been following it?

For reference here is where he introduces TechStars:
http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/002136.html

Does anyone know what programs besides YC he is talking about?
Visual ideas deployment
Startup School 2007 - Audio Recordings
At the same time, if your customers are people with families and complicated lives, you're in a better position to understand your customers when you're in their shoes.
Geez, I really didn't mean that to sound as hostile as it came out. I'm nicer in person, really.
Go Jackets!
six!
The Psychology of Human Misjudgement by Charlie Munger
Startup Age Of Success Stats For People in Founders At Work
I did some seriously unscientific and extremely dirty stats on the "age of success" for people in Founder's At Work. In a couple cases I guessed DOBs based on university graduation. I freely admit this is a very lazy attempt and it's flawed, but I didn't see anything like it. Anyone know of a good list?

#################### (Blake Ross/20)

########################## (David Heinemeier Hansson/26)

########################### (Mena Trott/27)

########################### (Max Levchin/27)

############################ (Sabeer Bhatia/28)

############################ (Joe Kraus/28)

############################# (Steve Wozniak/29)

############################## (Dan Bricklin/30)

############################### (Evan Williams/31)

############################### (Joshua Schachter/31)

################################## (Paul Graham/34)

################################### (Mitch Kapor/35)

#################################### (Philip Greenspun/36)

#################################### (Caterina Fake/36)

##################################### (Joel Spolsky/37)

###################################### (Mike Lazaridis/38)

####################################### (Ray Ozzie/39)

########################################### (Charles Geschke/43)

################################################## (Craig Newmark/50)

Average: 32
Min: 20
Max: 50
Here's the data I used. Mostly based on making up a "date of success" around when they got rich/famous (not when they created what got them there). The DOBs are mostly from Wikipedia or other bio.

David Heinemeier Hansson|Partner, 37signals and creator of Ruby on Rails|1979|2005

Charles Geschke|Founder of Adobe|1939|1982

Ron Gruner|Founder of Alliant Computer and Shareholder.com|?|?

Steve Wozniak|Founder of Apple|1950|1979

Philip Greenspun|Founder of ArsDigita|1963|1999

Evan Williams|Founder of Blogger.com and Odeo|1972|2003

Craig Newmark|Founder of Craigslist|1952|2002

Joshua Schachter|Founder of Del.icio.us|1974|2005

Joe Kraus|Founder of Excite and JotSpot|1971|1999

Blake Ross|Creator of Firefox|1985|2005

Caterina Fake|Founder of Flickr|1969|2005

Joel Spolsky|Founder of Fog Creek Software|1965|2002

Paul Buchheit|Creator of Gmail|?|?

Ray Ozzie|Founder of Groove Networks and Iris Associates|1955|1994

Sabeer Bhatia|Founder of Hotmail|1969|1997

James Hong|Founder of HotorNot|?|2000

Mitch Kapor|Founder of Lotus|1950|1985

Bob Davis|Founder of Lycos|?|1999

Arthur van Hoff|Founder of Marimba|?|?

Mark Fletcher|Founder of ONElist and Bloglines|?|2000

Ann Winblad|Founder of Open Systems and Hummer Winblad|?|?

Max Levchin|Founder of PayPal|1975|2002

Mike Lazaridis|Founder of Research in Motion|1961|1999

Mena Trott|Founder of Six Apart|1977|2004

Dan Bricklin|Founder of Software Arts and creator of VisiCalc|1951|1981

James Currier|Founder of Tickle|?|?

Mike Ramsay|Founder of TiVo|?|?

Steve Kaufer|Founder of TripAdvisor|?|?

Paul Graham|Founder of Viaweb and Y Combinator|1964|1998

Brewster Kahle|Founder of WAIS, Internet Archive and Alexa Internet|?|?

Steve Perlman|Founder of WebTV|?|?

Tim Brady|First employee at Yahoo!|?|?
It's cool that Justin.tv got some news coverage. It's also funny how lame traditional news coverage is. Do they always have to talk in that "newscaster voice?" How do people stand to watch traditional news coverage?

Their chuckles at the end about how Justin.tv is Justin's "job" made me laugh. They seemed kind of small-minded about the potential of what Justin.tv is doing. People might be missing the point of Justin.tv: it's an inexpensive platform for live video broadcast... which is pretty cool!
There was this traditional VC firm that started something modled after YCombinator. But even then, they required a business plan and fund minimum 250,000 so they must be targeting another audience than YCombinator. They were featured in Wall St Journal along with quotes from Paul Graham too if I remember right.

I came across Brad's blog while reading a post where he stresses good UI. Since then I have found to enjoy his insights though at the moment I would say Brad's askthevc.com is a more useful read than feld.com
I would say not enforcing the so-called self righteousness is at least a faster way to market a startup, if not making it more successful. It's the ruthlessness of youtube, not soft porn, made its way through.

I am not sure about the very first motivation of all business around me. However, apart from possibly ruthless objectives those business are trying to achieve, what is really important is that how iterations of those business ideas can fulfill the (other) needs of everybody else (like me).
New Way To Monetize Your Blog - Amazon Context Links Launch Today
Zimbra:  Offline vs. Online
So are we going to go back to the days where startups are judged based on how fast they burn through their cash?

This seems like an extraordinary amount of money.
If somebody comes up with an automatic whitespace chooser then I'll be interested. Color is a relatively easy part of design.
I like the play on words, anyway.
"If you want to found a successful company, you should only hire young people"

"Next challenge is to make the world understand that Facebook isn't just a college thing"

Anybody else see a cause-and-effect relationship between the above quotes?
Heh. I like it.
I agree. Being a few years older than mark, I actually didn't find myself offended by his comments.

Just as PG said that adulthood is a stage, not an age, I took mark's comments (though quite less elegant), to mean that there's a mindset of youth that helps in starting companies: simple life, willingness to take risks, lack of corruption of the complacency of the workplace, etc.

Maybe I give him too much credit.
The Question - What do users want from my website?
Nice work. I tried to get some stats on a previous thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=2260) that considered YC applicants. I think the average there was around 28.
The founder of this site was at startup school. I met him. He was excited about his idea. I lose my phone a lot, so I thought it would be a nice toy.

At risk of starting a lot of crank calling:

http://phonemyphone.com/
Alexis (of Reddit) said he was joking right after he made that comment at his presentation at Startup School. I think the joke was referring to Chris Anderson's earlier talk -- he said that Wired had acquired Reddit and it was done by a couple of guys from MIT using Rails.
That was one of the three questions they didn't copy from ours.
My guess is that we're about to see more YC "copycats" popping up. YC is turning down hundreds of applicants each round, Techstars has at least a couple of hundred applicants for their first round, and those numbers are only going to grow as word spreads about these types of opportunities. Entrepreneurial minds aren't only coming from Boston and the Bay area (and other startup hubs), and they're looking for new opportunities. So, there seems to be a growing market for businesses wanting to help start startups. I think this is pretty exciting.
Charlie Munger is a great example of how all great men have great cofounders (not sure if Munger was an actual cofounder, but he is effectively).
So what does this prove? The ages are so evenly spread-out, I think the only conclusion is that age has no relevance at all.
Advertising Age: The post-advertising age
Some startup ideas
These are some ideas I've been thinking about recently. Any feedback would be great!
Yeah agreed. Not good for his professional reputation. Other than that (and hell, it was entertaining at least) it was an awesome day. Thanks again to the YC folks.
That they feel they need a big message at the bottom saying, "We log all calls and IP addresses" says a lot about the service.
Elfan, perhaps you are referring to Charles River Ventures' $100K Quick Start Program:

http://www.crv.com/AboutCRV/QuickStart.html

In my opinion, nothing comes close to YC's model.
BBC News article on startups: "young, talented web pioneers"
On 'self' posts, have the submitter's own comments always be listed first.
Please don't take the direct approach to finding out (seriously, don't), but I wonder what happens if you tell it to dial 911.
Small Biz 101:How to get started
The Importance of OpenID
The magic of 'presence'
A Plethora of Inspirational Quotes. Any of them describe your outlook?
admittedly im biased based on my own personal experience but even at a general level it is hard to argue that the best startups have not come from the valley and the best people naturally want to be where the best startups are.
Don't worry, this is like being sued by Viacom-- it will only happen if you get really big.
Some Great Resources for Entrepreneurs
younanimous - The social search engine
Are You Sitting on the Next Killer Idea?
Open ID opens new possibilities for Online Games
Man with a Cam: SFGate on Justin
wow. this is a serious amount of [non-blog] press for 9 days out.
Viral Marketing can go too far: How long until people stop trying to care?
QuickBooks Solution: Easily Import Transactions from Your Online Business
Yup, they know what they're doing. This is actually a pretty good writeup, even if it sits on the "He's Asian-American!" angle a little too long.
I'm sure they did a hardcore PR push to coincide with their launch. The real question is how much attention they'll have 60, 90, or 120 days out.
YouTube to launch mobile website soon
More justin.tv blog coverage for today:

http://www.somewhatfrank.com/2007/03/are_you_watchin.html

http://valleywag.com/tech/justin.tv/hes-just-a-camboy-so-why-cant-i-stop-watching-247327.php
The new Silicon Valley: Siberia? (Fortune mag)
Entrepreneurship & Business Planning (Talkcast, Carnegie Mellon)
2400 bugs and counting...
Looks like an ad for a Quickbooks integration product.
I think this tool is a lot more fun for crank calling.

http://popularitydialer.com/
Valleywag on Justin.tv
regis mckenna and the amazing history of macintosh marketing
New Presence and the Voice 2.0 Manifesto
There's a 99.9 percent Chance You Don't Need Venture Capital
Who are the random schleps? Customers?
Facebook continues on...
errands
Always amusing how Markus looks at everything in terms of dating. Facebook doesn't seem optimal for dating, I have been thinking of how you could use the Facebook API to do dating properly but didn't come up with an amazing approach.

It has some interesting facts on fb growth too.
Also I can't wait till Facebook is actually beating Myspace. I just dont get the motivation/mind of myspace users properly, facebook is a lot easier to understand (this is purely on an academic/entrepreneurial level)
It's not hard to imagine facebook as the:

#1 social network
#1 dating site
#1 photo sharing site
#1 news aggregator
#1 job search site
#1 classified ad site
#1 blog site

With that much (voluntarily provided) user data, there are a lot of markets they could dominate. If you could figure out what each of those people was buying, you'd be pretty close to the holy grail of market research.
Citizendium - Wikipedia founder's rival to wikipedia
Seems the same apart from harder to participate. Do you think it has a chance? Here is a blog post about it: http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/362949/rival-to-wikipedia-goes-live.html
are there any plans on putting up the videos for start-up school on the YC site?
What a crock. Sure, 99% of small businesses don't need outside investment. But 99% of small businesses aren't startups. They're hair salons and landscaping companies. This whole article is based on a misunderstanding of the word "startup".
http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=6494

There's also another post about this company.
mistake - wrong bookmarklet
Question for Paul: if you believe that more people will startup in the future, but success requires lots of hands-on help, coaching, etc, surely you need a way to scale YCombinator, right? How?
Saying that people will stop caring about viral marketing is suggesting creativity is finite.

What has happened due to the YouTube revolution is that it is harder to be funny now. Notice it's just HARDER - not impossible. So while in the past year or two folks might have gotten around producing average stuff that became viral, the same level of creativity won't be viral in the future. I think that is the real point the article is trying to make.
why I cancelled my ETech presentations
Cofounder isn't really an accurate term. They gradually merged their thinking and operations until an SEC investigation prompted them to do so formally.

But more generally they are partners who compliment each other other tremendously.
Included this for a discussion on social software, large user groups & their implications: read bullies, abusive users etc. In any place where you get large numbers of people your going to get undesirables. The question is how do you deal with them as developers?.

The link is a post by Kathy Sierra.
Study of facebook messaging patterns by HP Labs
great article paul. i especially love number 7: produce something specific for yourself. this forces you to notice problems and noticing your own problems and overcoming them with technology is a subset of noticing problems of others and using technology to help them, which is the job of startups and companies... so IMHO, noticing and solving your own problems is a fundamental skill people in startups need to have.

that technique works because most of us have been conditioned to ignore the problems that we encounter daily. when faced with a problem we simply side step, avoid the problem and keep marching. the entrepreneurs are the ones who stop, notice the problem (or opportunity) and help us get things done easier.
As I read this I kept thinking of Paul Buchheit's presentation from startup school.

How are any of the authors propositions either A) Fundamentally different or B) an order of magnitude better?
What's amazing to me is how many "reputable" and people "who should know better" and people who "appear smart" were part of this lunacy.... I guess their true colors finally came out.
This is a hilarious article. I liked the bio the best.

"Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. He is not Jewish, but he is a bit Jew-ish."
And here's another post by Ronnie Bennet taking a slightly different view.

'... As far as can be determined from the few facts she relates, the attacks on Kathy were made anonymously. However, she has tried and convicted Chris Locke, Jeneane Sessum, Allen Herrel, Frank Paynter and, to a lesser extent, Doc Searls without a shred of proof that they were involved. As Chris notes in his rebuttal post, ...' [0]

Reference

[0] Ronnie Bennet, Blogher.org, 'The Matter of Kathy Sierra'

http://blogher.org/node/17339
part of the problem is we really don't know yet. The lack of information is the problem. My point was not to pre-judge the named persons but to think how developers write software system deals with these situations.

For example flickr. At the bottom of each page you have a flickr abuse flag. Flickr has extensive reporting and if enough of these flags get tripped they investigate. This example seems to be an external blog which I doubt would have these measures.
The craigslist community is pretty good at dealing w/ inflammatory and abusive behavior. Too many flags, your post gets pulled. Easy enough.
I think a sat program would be great. You could have local incubators that take proposals, pick the teams, and fund them but that also 'plug into' yCombinator for connections and such. That would allow the system to scale and allow people who can't move right away the chance to get started and make the right connections.
Right, all the areas where you previously had to build infrastructure are now free or you can rent them ... and they have become commidtized.

Thus a team of a few can focus just on adding value, making the bootstrapping runway dramatically shorter.

I'm not sure what the benefit of physical networking is (and thus being in the bay area) other than being closer to VCs, and if you don't need VC funding, there's no point.
That's not a reason, that's an assertion of your opinion. You're not alone in that opinion.

The real question is why? This has never been answered, other than "closeness to VCs".

There's no fundamental advantage to the Bay Area over, say Seattle, or other places that has been mentioned here.

All of the resources you could want are either a lot cheaper elsewhere, or the same price (because they are delivered over the net.)

With the exception of venture capital...

So, fundamental ot this idea of relocating to the bay area is the assumption that you must take venture capital. (And I think this assumption no longer holds.)
I have always wondered why it's necessary to beat Big Company X. I recall reading some writings by Eric Raymond when he remarked that competition is good for the consumer, and thus anyone who is trying to quell competition (Miccoughsofcough) is intrinsically hurting the general populace.

That said, the article, in my mind, is actually presenting ways to compete with Google, which is definitely A Good Thing. The title, however, could use a little work. I think it's important for us to avoid the mindset of, "This company is highly profitable, so I want to figure how to beat them and steal their revenue," and instead shift to, "This company is doing a great job, but I can provide a valuable service by improving upon such and such feature." In a market where there are hundreds of options and new ones appearing every day, the most important thing is to provide a new, valuable service. If you can do that, the users will come.
You're arguing that reducing your chances for success is the only way to succeed. You presume that if you aren't about to die, then you must be lazy. You presume that the only model is unprofitability until someone either buys you or you get shut down.

You presume that reducing the number of scenarios by which a founder will become wealthy somehow motivates the founders more.

You say business should be shut down if they don't fit in the model you describe.

This is a very narrow view. Its also a very polarized view-- it seems to be the perspective that either you're trying to be the next youtube or you're opening a farm.

There really is quite a spectrum between them... and far more high tech successes are not youtube type situations. That's an extreme rarity.

You're locked into a mentality that causes you to repeat this perspective, and you don't seem to be responding to what I'm saying, and I just don't see things that way.

So, I don't see much point in continuing this thread.

Good luck if you decide to start a company!
John McCain learns a lesson.
One thing we can't tell since the original websites are down: Were these attacks made in the comments or were they first-class posts?

Bloggers aren't responsible for things said in their comments.
Using twitter to chronicle the experiences of building a web business (both technology and business side to be examined).
Excellent. The essay and talk together produced several surprises. The essay cleared up things things that the video obscured (couldn't see the visuals), like the "not-so-smart" / "enterprise software" connection (I was thinking he just meant the competition was dumb so you'd have the one-eyed man / land of the blind advantage).

The big surprise is that YC hasn't seen an order of magnitude increase in applicants from their first round. You'd think this impossible: Paul announced the first YC program only about a week before its deadline and they got something like 250 applications. Now they are all over the tech news and they still haven't cracked 1000? Maybe PG's new speaking approach (memorize, practice, use visuals) is an effort to get more people fired up?

Paul, regarding this new speaking style: you could make yourself into a Steve Jobs dynamo of a speaker, but I think you shouldn't. Your usual wordsmith style is probably better for attracting nerds.

Question: Paul, it sounds like you've mostly swung in the direction of encouraging people to look at their own lives for problems to solve. Whereas in "Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas" you were saying the opposite, like in the two paragraphs starting with "Reading the Wall Street Journal for a week should give anyone ideas... " Trevor says something similar in the footnotes. But it looks like YC has been placing all its bets on the first sort of ideas. There's a good reason: all the huge software successes come from the "build it for you and your friends" model because those are the problems you fully understand. But it's more common to find software companies making solid profits on products they built for others' problems. Am I overlooking YC companies building products designed for other people? Is the problem that there just aren't enough potential founders like the Octopart guys: people deeply involved in some non-computing world who also happen to be good programmers? If so, maybe the richest source of ideas and cofounders would be cruising web forums for the near-programmers (people who build things like MS Access half-solutions to their companies' problems) to listen to what they would like to build if only they knew how. Maybe YC should be recruiting there, too. Thoughts?