skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not all the founders have to be hackers. You just need at least one person who can hack, and at least one person who can deal with people (including investors and customers).

Three kinds of design ability are needed: product design (what does it do?); software design (how does it do it?); and graphic design (what does the site look like?). Somehow between them the founders have to cover the first two. Graphic designers can be hired, though it's better if the founders can do that too.

The ideal configuration would of course be a group where all the founders had all these skills. Haven't seen that yet, though.
Jobs... Housing... Discussion... Funny posts... Personals... Gigs... I don't know about that.

Making profit may be amoral, but I wouldn't say immoral.
"All else being equal, for new development, Postgres is the better answer..."

That's very thinly disguised dogma. Whatever the question, Postgres is the answer.

It doesn't bother me though, I'm used to seeing people choose one camp over the other. I just wanted to point out that I use both for different things and it's served me very well. The MySQL vs Postgres discussion itself is unbelievably boring.
On the one hand, its very annoying that the Iphone can't be used on the best network. On the other hand, I can understand why Apple wanted so much control over the launch as they want to sell the user a complete experience, not just a gadget.

Letting Verizon handle sales would have been a bad idea - they're not very good at selling phones - I haven't enjoyed having to go and buy them at the Verizon stores in the past.

Letting Verizon handle support would have been less problematic, they've been great with my blackberry support, always overnighting me a new one no questions asked the same day (happened 3 times). Of course having people have to buy them at the Apple store gets people looking at Macs etc,so the motivation for Apple is pretty clear.

The big question is whether running on a lesser network will lose them so many customers that demanding the super deal with AT&T was a mistake. Time will tell once the clones arrive.
What about early employees who join after the Founders Program?
According to http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com... :

"The search engines run on databases of flights, prices, and seat availability, provided electronically over private networks by the 800 or so airlines of the world. The data is not directly available to the general public and access often must be negotiated with individual airlines [...] A large portion of the flight, price and seat availability data, called published data, is used by all the major search engines, but a significant amount of private data is restricted."
There are no dinners after the Founders Program. There are some other invitation-only events like the reception on the night before Startup School, but I assume that employees of YC companies will most of the time be allowed to attend these events. As Paul said in another post, "There's no rule one way or the other. So far there hasn't had to be, because none of them have that many employees. I doubt it will ever be enough of an issue that we have to think about it."
I think the selling idea is good, but first you have to meet the right people. I'd argue that that is the hardest part.

Step one, network, then don't be afraid to be too picky about who you approach to join you.
Finding Co-Founders (Step 1)
circular linkage :D
Should it be a surprise that a salesperson writes a post extolling salespeople?
Anyone else see the toilet advert? Very disturbing...
Authorize.net?
Marc Andreessen: Eleven Lessons Learned About Blogging
Question: link to Amazon's study of HTTP latency vs cart abandonment?
They did an interesting study showing that response time above 200ms led to people spending less money. Basically, they A-B testing and artificially added server latency in small increments and measured how much money people spent. 200ms (or some similar number) was optimal, going lower didn't show benefit, going above lost them money.

Anyway, I can't find a link to this anymore. I think it was on some blogs, probably after a talk Amazon gave. Anybody have it? I don't seem to have enough Google-fu to find it :(
Do it. It is awesome.

Sam from Loopt
I think academia would generally respond that CS is about the concepts not the syntax.

Universities need to do a better job raising street fighters, but I don't think it needs to be through course load. There needs to be more programming competitions, more open ended assignments, more CS related clubs and projects, etc. Sure not everyone will participate, but if they don't, they are never going to be good programmers anyway.

And lets face it, if universities had more ways to allow students to implement fun things like games or robots (or startups), they would certainly be more willing to spend their extra cycles out of class learning implementation.
My use of the word "immoral" is ironic.
This suffers from the common Apple fanboy logical fallacy that hype=success.
Gigya's Big Win With Top Widget Companies
Your use of the word "ironic" is Alanis Morissettic.
What's the difference for the workers comp? are the founders not covered?
Of Startups and Girlfriends
I have and awsome idea for a web site that I really think can be successful. The thing is though, will the fact that I am only a Freshman, Comp Sci student prevent me from being accepted right of the bat?

I really how it won't because I really feel like I have a hit.
Greg Linden writes: "In A/B tests (at Amazon), we tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in revenue."

Google experienced a similar drop off in revenue when page load time increased.

More details on Greg's blog: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20.....
I totally agree. As acgourley said, not everyone will participate, but these sorts of programs would give a solid opportunity to develop more practical skills to people who aren't willing to take initiative to learn it entirely on their own. I'm strongly opposed to the idea that the Algorithms or Theory of Computation class should be traded in for a course on .NET GUI Development, Ruby on Rails, or some other API-du-jour.

University is about learning concepts and theory, not just a few programming languages and APIs. The real problem is that trade schools are unfairly stigmatized, and people who want to learn to be a programmer without wading through all the algorithms and theory have to still go to a University for social reasons when they'd be better served by a trade school.
Building a facebook app?  Advertise it using FBExchange
No. "the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning"

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony

...not that this is worth arguing about.
Rivals respond to Microsoft's CRM plans (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM)
Wall Street, meet MySpace (Social network around stock trading)
Symfony Made Simple
I developed this "cliff notes" style document while working on my first Symfony project ThemBid.com. It will be useful for you to get started quickly with Symfony and serve as a cheat sheet while you are hacking.
A Hacker's Nasdaq (For security vulnerabilities)
You won't find ppl talking about the latest breast implant someone had, at linkedIn :-)
It definitely won't automatically cross your name off the list. I'm sure your application will be treated seriously. Remember that ideas don't go as far with YC as they used to, I believe a link to a screencast is the preferred way to demo your product.
Companies get a pass on worker's comp for their officers.
Venture Voice: Facebook: Crossing the Chasm in Reverse
Dating vs. Startups
http://jtame05.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/dating-vs-startups/

Sorry, I couldn't resist ;)

+1 point for you though, I think we're both seeing each other's POV.
if it isn't the street fighter himself...
This guy seems a bit confused about his own interpersonal skills. An earlier quote:

"If you're the type of person who is insecure with hiring someone you don't know or based only on their portfolio, I'm not the right person for you."

Now:

"Meet 3x in person [...] to present your case"
http://nerdlife.net/2007/07/11/in-defense-of-nerds/

Haha, apparently neither could I.

I'm done though. I think you're entitled to one more blog-based rebuttal if you'd like, but I don't want to burn out the topic :).
I saw the COO of Verizon talking about this on CNBC a few weeks ago. He says that to compete with the iPhone, Verizon has "18 multimedia phones" with picture and messaging packages.

But when you go to a Verizon store, and use the phones, they're all hideous attempts to create cool devices. Why do they even need EIGHTEEN devices? The menu systems are ugly and practically unusable, the buttons on the phones are poorly designed-- I bought my dad a Razr K1m, and the buttons are so small and flat that you have to grow your finger nail to press each individual number. The Verizon devices (that's LG, Motorola, etc) all suffer from a lack of creative design and ingenuity, because they are all pumped out quickly and with contracts, and because the manufacturers have little competition amongst themselves, because they generally operate in different niches, or on different networks.

This is why Apple's strategy is so revolutionary and is going to change the game. They've taken their crazy talent at creating easy and beautiful user interfaces and merged it with lots of leverage on AT&T's network in an attempt to remove all of what is bad about the cellular industry.

I think it's cool; the cell phone industry needs some shakeup now, just like PCs did in the late 90's.
All I think about when I look at those Flickr pictures is: that looks like so much fun.
My comment is NOT about Weebly. Its about the faultiness of voting system Time has implemented.

BTW, congrats to the guys at Weebly for getting in the list.
Working in Facebook
Think Negative!
Google to launch mapplets with API
Rails is slow? Who cares!
You've Built a Great Technology, Now What? (A Dilemma)
I can empathize with this quote: "I'm not Ycombinator material"
The Pirates' Code
Pay-for-blogging site raises questions (Conflict: Googler a board member)
Motorola's internal VC talks about fund's role
Watchdog group flags top pirated films on Google Video
More mashing of Google Maps
JPMorgan now not so sure about an iPhone Nano
Ballmer hints at Microsoft's future in the 'cloud'
Google's Postini acquisition is expected to boost challenge to Microsoft Office
New Analytics for a Web 2.0 World
With Ajax proliferating modern websites, a new method of analytics is needed. Nielson NetRatings is imposing their method, but does it make sense?
How To Rid Debt By Becoming a Cash Money Superstar
Because of my entrepreneurial obsession I had accrued a lot of debt and was still not earning enough to stop the credit card cycle. I decided to take drastic measures. I made the transformation from a typical American Consumer into a Cash Money Superstar. I actually switched everything I did to a cash transaction and to really get myself psyched about using cash only, I closed my checking account!
The Timing of a Press Release Can Make or Break Your Product/Service
Honestly, how the hell does Andreessen raise $40M while writing consistently superb blog posts?
I lived in Japan for about a year and a half, and virtually the entire country is cash only. They also have a huge saving s rate. I think I never handled money better than when it was all in cash during my stay in Japan - so the article here makes a very good point. When you physically see the money you can really appreciate what you've got and the value of it.
Maybe he uses GTD? :)
Airfare Tracker Yapta Raises $2.3M
Stickam Owned By Porn Co Owner
I think he meant to say Quandry as he has multiple options instead of dilemma
Welcome to Day One of your New Startup Job
Pay $20 a month and get Paypal Payment Pro. It will let you integrate the payment collection directly into your site. Paypal will process the authorization in the background (your backend sends something to Paypal and process the response). This way, through out the entire process, the user stays on your site. Paypal acquired Verisign's PayLink and Pay Flow credit processing, and those are available as options too (albeit more expensive)
Haute Secure Launches To Detect Malware
It's probably because he's a good writer and the concepts for the posts themselves were developed long before he started the blog that became the new black.
New Hollywood Studio to Start Making Short Videos for the Web
The Social Graph, Facebook and Virality
"We are in the process today of building out a services platform in the cloud," Ballmer said.

This is a ridiculous statement. No wonder MS is messed up so bad.
Great article on the difference between corporate life and working for a startup...unless you work for a big corporation.
Lesson 2 - Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank
To improve the Alexa Rank, all you need to do is improve your traffic to your site. Following the tips in the above section and in the next lessons should help you to increase traffic, which will, in turn, increase your Alexa Rank.
Thinking lowsrc - How to make sites appear to be available a lot faster
He doesn't actually run Ning. That's the secret ;).
5 business lessons from Costco
Try substituting "item" for the operator name. I think "comment" got renamed to "item" or something, and broke URLs in the process.
I think the idea Ballmer's referring to is the API that salesforce.com has built to let developers use their systems to provide apps. MS wants to get a piece (or should I say the whole pie) of that business.
There's way too much spamming and phishing and scamming on Craigslist. Craig Newmark's business sense got him to a certain level of trust among consumers which helped grow the site, but now he has a responsibility to them now to honor that trust and invest in _protecting_ them.

Otherwise, the Craigslist empire's days are surely numbered.
comments -> item
Credit card processing Many-to-One relationship 
Is there a good way of moving money from many people to one person (who isn't the host of course)?

If the amounts were small and numerous enough, it may make sense to simply direct most of the payments between the parties and siphon off your cut with several payments. But this is an ugly solution.

If the amounts were few and large, this solution is not practical. As far as I can tell, the only alternatives to the small e-businessman are using paypal and being charged twice (once for accepting from one party and another time for pushing to the other), or (somehow) negotiating with a bank to get a merchant account (at great expense I imagine) that charges a little bit less for the same solution.

My goal is to minimize the amount paid to credit card processors while taking a small cut.

Do any of you know anything about this?

Thanks.
Can you give a particular scenario? And is your goal here to make money while at the same time making it simple, or just to make it simple?
My goal is to minimize the amount paid to credit card processors while taking a small cut.
"The costs of using Rails are much smaller than its benefits."

Can we get that stated in a more...numerically convincing way?
I thought the two were mutually exclusive...
Of course, but just taking PPT and porting it to the web feature for feature would be pretty silly. The reason I always thought Zenter was a shoo-in was that there were obvious great, monetizable things they could do with presentations that a desktop app could never hope to do -- and during chats with them, it was quite clear they recognized this.
Well, without knowing too much, here are a few thoughts for you. First, you probably want to hold all the money, i.e. take it from all the people first. The reason for this is you can float it while you hold it. Even if it ends up being only a couple of days, this will add up over time and enable you to take a small cut without seeming like you are taking a small cut. You can turn this into clever UI by having a screen shownig that you are waiting on these people before you can release the final payment or something like that.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure with the right processor you can credit a card for whatever amount you want, even if you haven't charged it, i.e. separate from any transaction. This depends on the processor but I think I have seen this before.

Finally, if the one person is OK with a check, that hardly costs you anything as most of the check processing system is subsidized by the federal government. Similarly, you might be able to get lower rates on incoming payments using EFT. At the same time, you can keep the cut small but you take home a higher portion because you aren't paying the credit card processor most of it.
I'm not sure I agree with this article. As a developer, what I want is autonomy, creativity, and a share of the benefits.

The notion that I'll be happier if you spend $400 on a new monitor or hand it to me as a bonus misses the point. I'd rather be in a position to evaluate the needs of the project and influence where we spend our resources, including money and developer-hours.

Similarly, I don't want to be "given a problem to solve". I want to be involved enough in the decision making to determine what the problems actually are. I also think that's where I can add the most value.

I suspect that a developer who wants you to give him a nice monitor and wants you to give him a task list with problems to solve is probably not a star employee. You may get some nice, predicatable work out of this person, but nothing more.

Sometimes that's what you want. After all, someone needs to write the scripts to batch export the changes in filing status from accounting over to payroll.

But personally, I think that if you're spending a lot of time wondering "how can I motivate my programmers", you've already lost the game. If you've set up your environment correctly, and your programmers are actually in the role where they can give you the maximum benefit, they'll already be motivated.
Which is why your usage of "immoral" is not ironic.
Neither do the professors. As an undergrad I did as many assignments in Lisp as I was allowed to, but I found that to all but two professors (one specialized in AI, the other in PL), Lisp was just "that weird 70's language with all the parens".
What sort of processor do you mean? A bank or a paypal operation or something else?

I cannot find any automatic check processing services, have you heard of any.
Moka5's intriguing virtual computer -- PC on a thumbstick
Segala's Paul Walsh on semantic web
are you doing something similar to fundable.org? What not try the simple method?

Let all the payers transfer the money directly to that one person. Then, you send an invoice to that one person for your commission and trust him to actually honor the invoice.

This is what Ebay does and it seems to be working well enough.
iPhone--In depth Ars Technica review
templatemaker: cool scraping tool
That makes a lot of sense, but I did not think it was easy to transfer the money directly to someone else. When people collect with ebay they are forced to sign up for a paypal account.

This does lower the cost, but it I think it significantly raises the transaction activation energy.

Am I wrong?
I'm surprised that vmware hasn't taken over this market yet.
Although I agree with you, I think Japan's culture has more to do with their savings rate than the "cash money" effect.

It's interesting actually that it's probably not that Japanese are conservative about their savings, but that we North Americans are woefully inept with ours!
Where in Japan were you? In about three weeks I leave to teach english with JET in Gifuken for a year...
Is this just a one time thing--or is this around a business where it is going to be happening all the time?

By processor I mean a credit card processor like Paymentech or Verisign or Cybersource. Paypal offers most processing and bank functions, but you pay for it and are forced into their API. Most of the major processors now have eCheck products, though I haven't used them and am not sure on the pricing, but it should be less than credit cards.

On the backend (you sending the one payment) I meant just doing an electronic bill pay from your bank account where they send out a paper check. This is usually free for you on a small enough scale. And it would further extend the float period.
Yes. Fundable forces users to sign up for a paypal account or pay by check. It does raise the transaction activation energy but i think this is the best way to circumvent the double-fees problem.
The Five Qualities of Successful Leaders
Do blog comments still matter?
Whenever I have cash I have a slightly panicky feeling that it is gradually falling in value (which, of course, it is) and that buying something is the only way of preventing this process. So, I don't keep cash.
LinkedIn - What is the big deal?
Part of how he raised $40M is by writing good blog posts ;)

While Ning is a great platform, and a lot of his success is attributable to earlier success (Netscape/etc), an important part of the whole process is having people know your stuff, know you're thinking intelligently, and be impressed with you.

VC's are human too. If they're reading your blog posts and finding genuine insight, hearing about your material on the radio, and like you, that'll play a factor in valuation. [1]

-Colin

[1] I don't have a source for this handy, but I've read several VCs talking about this process. Basically, it comes down to being Noteworthy. See: Seth Godin.
uprz23@gmail.com

Thanks.
Appaholic, the Alexa of Facebook Apps
no it's not. It's owned by a group run by a man who also happens to run porn companies.
um..what's the difference between this and Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux??

OTOH - nice vision :)
I started out working for an Architecture firm in downtown Osaka. I stayed there for 3 months during which time I found out the firm was run by the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) and quite a strange outfit. I went to work for another firm in Kobe where I stayed until leaving. I had to fake my return to America between jobs as the Yakuza people were tracking me. I flew home, answered the phone when they called to confirm I actually left the country, and then flew back to Japan. Yikes!

My best memories were from Nara and Kyoto - exploring the imperial buildings and gardens. I learned Japanese while I was there and could answer the phone convincingly after 6 months (people actually didn't realize I wasn't Japanese on the phone which was a bit of a problem.) Once I learned the language and understood the culture better, it was very disillusioning. Back then (this is in 1991, and I've heard there's been alot of change since then) people would never tell you what they really meant - they would always talk in a circle around their answer. They would say yes when meaning no, etc. They would gain their esteem from the group they belonged to rather than their own accomplishments, so discussions were like talking office politics. At the first firm, the staff would spend more than 50% of their day schmoozing with their superiors to advance politically, then finally start working in the afternoon and ending up working late and still not finish what a normal person could do during a normal day. Advancement had no relation to ability - it was strictly politics. Sigh.
I fail to see the problem.
I would disagree, but with a remarkably small dataset: my experience. Working in cash only completely changes how you think about money. When you buy something expensive, you have to get all that cash together - it definitely makes one pause before doing it unlike a simple swipe of a credit card.