skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think that would work too well. You'd need to find a few exceptionally talented hackers that would be interested in helping a variety of founders implement their ideas technically for a significant stake (eg 6%) in the company. I'm not sure there's anyone who can code that much.

Realize also that Y Combinator doesn't discriminate against non-technical people, except that the applying company has to have at least one technical founder.
You're saying that you would help the marketing/sales guy outsource the programming, right? So how are you going to defend your product against anyone else that has $15k?
I bet women are asking the same question about guys on their Mika message boards.
Can anyone recommend screen-capture tools? Ideally, I'd like to zoom in on certain areas easily -- and post processing would be the most convenient.

Camtasia seems pretty good.
This reminds me of "I'm going to make an MMORPG, anyone wanna help?"
The problem with startup hiring isn't that you need to think harder about it, it's that it's an inherently low-information situation. The factors that make a good employee often depend as much on what the startup is doing and how that squares with the employee's goals rather than any innate personnel factors.

For example, I'm leaving my day job. My reasons for this are complex and I'm not going to air all of them in a public forum, but they boil down to "It's not a good fit for me anymore." Thing is, there was no possible way we could know that when I was hired, because I was a good fit back then. My job description now is totally different than it was back then - in fact, when I was working with a coworker to come up with a job advertisement for my position, I realized that I would not have applied for my position as it currently exists. I've also grown as a developer - when I took this job, I thought Java was a decent-if-not-great language, I thought dynamic languages were unsuitable for real work, I had only passing familiarity with Haskell, I didn't really know JavaScript (though I listed it on my resume), and I basically didn't know what I wanted out of my career. I even mentioned during my interview that "Yeah, I don't know if this is something I really want to do, but I can't know that until I give it a try - after all, when I took my last programming job, I didn't know if programming was something I wanted to do, and that worked out great." Come to think of it, I still don't know what I want out of my career, I just think that this particular startup I'm working on is more likely to be it than my current job.

In my experience, the best indicator of job success isn't raw programming talent, it's how much the programmer believes in the product. That's why cofounders usually need to be friends before they can work together. Oftentimes, you'll have to take a leap of faith that you're on the right track, and you need to trust your cofounder to do that. I don't see how you can test for that with a third-party service. You can take the absolute best programmer in the world, stick him in a project he thinks is boring, and he'll suck at it.
Are you talking about a screencast of your product or are you talking about video footage cut with other things?

For screencasting: keep it under 5 minutes, use a script, read the FreshView Post: http://www.freshview.com/thoughts/2007/05/how_we_create_walk...

In terms of presentations, you can imagine combining live-action with infographics and a product demo. This is an involved process and requires production and editing knowledge. Fuel for thought--imagine taking Jonathan Harris' presentation of 20 minutes and editing it down to less than 10 with a focus on facial close-ups, infographics, and product demonstrations.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/144
What is a Mika?
Ottawa here.
Apple's first iPhone software update to arrive shortly
then you will fail
http://augustsfnewtech.eventbrite.com/
you are clueless
You haven't launched your startup yet, but in 20 months you will be financially set from its sale?
Does Apple push iPhone updates automatically through iTunes when the phone is synced?
The problem is, sales and marketing people generally don't have good ideas for startups. Because they're not masters of the medium, they don't know what's possible.
I took that as tongue-in-cheek bravado. If he really thinks it's certain that he'll be finally set in 20 months from a not-yet-launched-startup, he perhaps has more pressing things to worry about than what he'll do afterwards. Like launching, perhaps.
Services streaming audio & video to your mobile
Some call it a bore, but wait, if I had access to any online content I wished, through my cellphone with my own playlists, feeds, in real time, at a reasonnable rate, I would like it. And we are not quite there yet, with the current services, are we ?
Startup Required Reading: Top 100 VC Bloggers
Securing venture capital is often an integral part of the success or failure of any startup business, even for those who initially began as bootstrappers. While it's no substitute for professional advice, the Internet can be a great place to research venture capital. These are 100 of the best resources.
I don't care who said it, just what was said. The brainstorming post was just the tonic I needed today.
If it makes you feel any better, no university actually teaches how to start startups, including business schools.
They often do know what's needed, though. Most of the time their ideas won't be feasible, at any level of technology (I think this idea may be an example). But once in a while they might come across something that's just on the edge of possible, if they find someone who knows the tech well enough to know where the edge is.
Is this startupweekend or another thing?
Facebook down...
True. I think it also takes a sense of rebelliousness, in the sense of, "Why should I have to answer to anyone but myself?" That has been my attitude as long as my memory goes back.
Women Build Businesses Their Way
Daring Fireball feed goes free
facebook is down
how much money are they losing per hour? when is the last time google was down?
when was the last time google was down? i know they are shitting bricks as we speak. it's interesting to realize how important something is when you don't have it.
give them a break, they are working on it ;)
Stuff - Paul Graham
Too much stuff is a bad thing. Everything I owned in 2000 would fit in the back of my station wagon. If it wouldn't fit in the wagon, it was out. Now I'm married, and covered up with stuff. When you get married, it's custom for people to give you more stuff. Most of it you don't need. Or want. But you can't just throw it away, after all, it's free stuff. (Sorry if this has already been posted, I didn't see it in the list and can't search....)
For me, it's interesting to realize how UN-important something is when I don't have it :)
Uhhh. I'm trying to build something.

Reading alone on the internet is OK, but there are too many voices to call them all required reading.

Aggregation is key. Which is why I like news.yc
Good one! Some comments:

Moving across the atlantic, or to some other suitably distant locale is a great way of convincing yourself that you don't really need that much crap. The problem gets to be when you move back and forth too much and end up getting paranoid about buying anything at all that you know you're going to throw out. We're contemplating going back to the states again at this point...sigh.

Books... all I can say is "right on!". I'm glad my wife understood when I paid a bunch of money to have mine shipped over here.

In terms of food, after my latest trip back to the US, I think people there are just starting to wake up to the fact that more/bigger is not necessarily better, and it will take them a while to really catch on, and start really aiming for quality. I actually think my best business idea concerns food, but it will have to wait till we go to the states to try and implement it.
So true, so true.. ... I even stopped buying most books. With the public library database, I can order a book for 75c from anywhere in the Peninsula -http://catalog.plsinfo.org/
thanks Paul.
Or maybe you'd have to believe something like "they won't come if you don't build it."
And Truemors is a piece of shit. And Guy is famous.

15K is enough when you have motivated founders who own half the company and are willing to eat ramen and sleep on cots for 3 months to realize their dreams.

It is not enough to hire the equivalent programming talent for 3 months to work on an idea by non technical founders.
Excellent article - and the point about mental overload from stuff is a good one. This is the same point made for stuff in the form of information in GTD.

A great technique for de-stuffing and making $: craigslist.

Best productivity boost I've made: Selling TV on craigslist - it sold in 2 hours. (The extra time has been great for working on the startup)
Common people. Are we gonna get a YCNews post everytime facebook is down?
You posted 24 minutes ago, and they seem to be up now, so I guess we should be calculating how much they lose per minute.
What about sentimental value of things? What about accumulated worth of a box of things after opening it every few years? Little overhead -- it's just a box.

Why save books, besides the memories? Convenience of being able to look things up? I like books, but my wifes parents are book sellers. They have hundreds of thousands of rare books for sale.

She doesn't like to save anything but the most essential books.

The mental load of throwing something away that _might_ have value is pretty high. It might be higher than the integrated attention paid to it in your basement -- unless you move often.
I've been practicing this minimalist form of existence for some time now. For those that have too much stuff, here is how you get rid of stuff:

1. Mark a portion of your basement or apartment for some of your "stuff"

2. After a year or two if you have not had to use something at all from this pile get rid of it - ebay, craigslist, garage sale or donate.

3. You will feel good about less clutter.

4. Repeat till you're left with only stuff you really need.

The only place this hasn't worked for me is electronics "stuff".
Interesting to note that the "Stuff" essay (http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html) is currently ranked at number 1.

Coincidence?
I am going to bookmark this essay with the tag girlfriend.
Did you mean to say "c'mon, people", or are you calling us simple-minded, hoi polloi types?
i hope you're planning on ridding yourself of all those old girlfriends in your basement :-P
"How do you protect yourself from these people? It can't be easy. I'm a fairly skeptical person, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties."

It's much easier to never get in the habit of buying things in the first place. I remember two particular childhood events that dramatically shaped my consumption habits:

In the first, I was 4 years old and in the toy section of Spag's (a discount warehouse near Worcester), and really wanted a new Transformers toy. My mom said "Oh honey, we can't afford it. We can come back next month and get it." And then ran over to take care of my sister, who was throwing a tantrum over not being able to have a My Little Pony doll. I realized I could be the "good child" by never asking for stuff. From then on, my parents and I had a tacit agreement: they would buy me anything I wanted, and in return I wouldn't want much. Lesson learned: sibling rivalry can be a powerful motivator.

For the second - my parents refused to let us watch any TV other than PBS until they'd sat us down and told us about advertisements. And when they did, the conversation was basically: "The commercials are just trying to sell you something. They want to control your behavior, so that you'll go out and buy what they want." I was 5 years old at the time and couldn't bear the idea of anyone controlling my behavior. After all, it was bad enough when my parents told me what to do. The idea that some nefarious marketing guy would reach through the TV and make me spend money was just abhorrent. Lesson learned: make marketers seem like parents, but with only the evil "You have to do this!" parts and not the comforting take-care-of-you parts.

The end result of all this? I'm 26 years old and still using my high school allowance for spending money. Essentially every penny I've ever earned has gone into the bank and stayed there.
The sellers of stuff have convinced us (especially americans) that you can't just USE stuff. You need to OWN stuff. Need some specialized tool? Home Depot will sell it to you, but no one will lend it to you, unless it is large and very expensive.

Worse, these sellers of stuff have realized that they can't sell you durable goods! God Forbid! Durable goods last forever! Instead, they've convinced americans that there is value in disposable stuff! Paper napkins and plates, disposable diapers, disposable tupperware, etc etc. Now they've turned those one time purchases into subscription plans.

More stuff in your house. More stuff in landfills.
Well, I thought it was interesting.

The "internet" doesn't really go down. Build your business on facebook, and you might just lose 12 hours of revenue because someone else's power went out. I'd rather lose revenue because my own power went out.
Completely agree, but even question books. If they are especially valuable, sure, but I recently got rid of most of my books as I felt even they were weighing me down. Still not satisfied though... probably need to get rid of even more stuff.
"In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have."

Why would poor people have more stuff Paul? I see rich people living in McMansions have a lot more stuff than poor people and I am pretty sure Bill G has more stuff than me :).
Putting BeyondVC on the top 10 but excluding RedeyeVC is an awful mistake. Kopelman's writing is way more useful.
I ditched 700+ books the last time I moved. From a purely physical perspective, books have an ownership cost that is as bad as anything else. Once you have more than 100, they become heavy and tedious to move around, require a lot of space, shelving systems, etc.

I wrote a personal wiki type program that hooks up to a barcode scanner and lets me keep track of the books I have read. I just scan the book, it populates an entry, and then I have places I can store quotes and thoughts about the book. (I wrote this before Delicious Library and other such programs were widely available)

I've found keeping track of what I read has made me a more careful reader and alleviates the need for keeping the physical book around. However, I still have a number of old books that I wouldn't bear to part with.
The article mistakes more ideas for better ideas. The benefit of working in a good group is not that you get more ideas, but that you take the ideas that you get, prune the bad ones and combine the good ones to come up with the 'best' idea.

If 'mutual respect' or 'fear of looking stupid' gets in the way of suggesting something while working in a group (as it quite often does) then you need to work on overcoming that fear (individually) and improving your rapport (as a group)

Now if they could repeat the study after having predetermined some criteria to judge the 'best' solution to a problem, my hunch is that they would find that a group with a good rapport (not a bunch of strangers put together) would come up with the better solution (all other things - e.g. familiarity with the problem set, problem solving skills etc being equal between groups). But yeah, it's just a hunch.
Good point. The issue is easily solved by making developera part of the program by choosing whcig projcts they would like to work on the most and why
Finally... I'm not the only one that feels this way! This was a very well articulated essay. I obsessively avoid accumulation of objects because they dilute the actual value (to me, not a dollar amount) of the few things I actually enjoy.
Build a business on facebook, and any revenue you get isn't deserved in the least.
Call me crazy but it feels good to have PG comment. To get back to your comment, I respectfully disagree. that is like putting a limit to the power of thought. Think about manufacturing. How many clothing line make millions of dollars and are highly successful, but the founder can't even use a sewing machine. Same for moms who make millions because they thought of a crazy fork-knife combined and hired a manufacturer to make a prototype. Or how many people own a Italian restaurant and are American and never been to Italy and don't know how to cook.
It all start with what if if I can say that, then I just need to get up and go find someone to make it.
Excuse the typo, suretype is still at its primitive stage.
Books were actually my first hint that I had a problem with too much stuff. (Though it wasn't until I was faced with the prospect of moving to a small room in Boston that I actually forced myself to get rid of stuff). When I got my first job, one of my favorite things to do was visit Barnes and Noble. I bought a bunch of books that I didn't touch for at least 6-12 months, during which time they did nothing but clutter my bedroom.

Someday I hope to have a nice big personal library, but until then I only keep as many books as can fit in a couple of plastic bins under my bed.

Things with sentimental value: I have a folder with printouts of a bunch of code I wrote back in 1997. It was one of the coolest projects I ever worked on, and I keep meaning to go review it to see what sort of stupid mistakes I was making in my ignorance. It's been 10 years and I haven't spent more than 2 minutes looking at it, yet I lug it with me wherever I go. Other examples are pictures, concert tickets, recordings, papers, articles, contacts, etc... I accumulate stuff without having to buy anything.

Like paystubs, bills, insurance paperwork, receipts, and all the other bureaucratic garbage that you never know if you'll ever need or not.

And pennies.

Sometimes I feel like I waste half my life trying to get rid of all the stuff that winds up in my apartment.
On a serious note, I think this was a good essay for guys and girls. The reason we buy so much stuff is everyone inherently wants to be noticed and to feel important. Like Paul said, companies have done a terrific job at making us think stuff makes you important. On my high school senior trip one of the girls brought an entire suitcase just for her shoes. Each of the 14 pairs of shoes made her feel more important. My question is how do we make people think that our web applications will make them as important as their shoes do?
Amp'd CEO explains how he blew it
Gmail seems goes down about every two months...
Not at all. If I make your prototype and help you launch it. If it is a good product then eventually you will be able to add technical cofounders and they can come in and help even more. It also shows that you are good at something other than thinking and you are already trying to make your vision a reality. That alone, my friend, is worth millions. Doubt it let's go to a vc and you got an idea and I got the prototype.
I guess this is what happens when MBAs run a startup, raise a lot of money, and then spend it too fast. Personal helicopters, 100+ porn DVDs, give me a friggin break
Anyone know how to move the text cursor (caret) using javascript in Safari?
Would you like to bet on it
Thank you Paul Buchheit!
I've now officially switched my architecture firm domain to Google Apps, and they are amazing - especially Gmail. A great added collaboration tool (especially the chat and the collaborative calendars!).

No more MS Exchange! No more Outlook! No more enigmatic msg files! No more fighting with the spam filter! What a great day. Liberation.
Rich people can afford finer stuff sold in richer places. If you earned 10X what you earn now and spent it at Bang & Olufsen instead of Walmart, you'd probably buy one tenth as much stuff (in volume and mass) for the same fraction of your disposable income.
That is called being optimistic I believe. It might never make it through the first 25 users. Maybe it will suck to death. Money from s startup or from the lottery, it is totally arbitrary. All I am trying to say is that such a program should exist.
Unless you're a celebrity, how many people have clothing lines can't design clothes? How many people own restaurants and don't know how to cook?

How many people think designing software is as easy as designing a spork?
Anyone here in phoenix, az?
Just curious : )
Automated driving is open government-sponsored competition.

Sick-sticks are just a different form of tazer.

Eye transplants require better surgical techniques for the optic nerve to last.

Reading the future is impossible.

People are actively working on cognitive enhancers without side effects. They won't be stealthy once they work.

Keeping people in stasis requires a better understanding of brains.

Electronic Ink is getting better, but video on a reasonable display will take some time.

Gestural interfaces work fairly well, but the only deployed systems are for games (EyeToy for PS2). This has room for growth. But the large screen would probably be better used for teleconferencing as remote teams need better tools than we have today. But Wii and Multi-Touch IPhone are almost there.

The spider robots must have had an incredible amount of computation and powerful sensors in order to map a room, detect people, and locomote. The mobility platform wouldn't be that hard to build, but would be fragile compared with the treads you find in today's military robots.

Seeing people through walls is done with radar by the military today.
How to Not Suck at Facebook Apps, Part I: Why It Matters
I'm collecting my thoughts on the Facebook platform as a series of three articles on a guest blog.
When our kids play room is filled with a mess of toys, they mostly ignore all of them and act bored.

If those toys are put into storage in the basement and just a select few toys are chosen to leave out, they show a lot more interest in those toys.

We have also decided to hold an annual yard sale with other families on our street to get rid of as much stuff as possible every year.
"My question is how do we make people think that our web applications will make them as important as their shoes do?"

The standard answer is to make the application that would be your homepage if someone else had made it by now.
"The average 25 year old is no match for companies that have spent years figuring out how to get you to spend money on stuff. They make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that "shopping" becomes a leisure activity."

Vance Packard's 'The Hidden Persuaders' was one of the earliest books to deal with this topic in depth. It's scary how they understand us better than ourselves. Book URL:http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Persuaders-Vance-Packard/dp/067...
Facebook users able to access others' private information?
I don't think poor people have more stuff, so much as it is that poorer people tend to be less able to organize it effectively.

Rich people have whole rooms or houses full of stuff that hardly ever gets used, but since it's indexed appropriately (eg "Summer Home" or "Ballroom" or "Gallery") and maintained that way by hired help, it doesn't bother anyone.
Dude. If we move our thinking process from this is not going to work to how are we going to make it work then a solution will emerge. I mean common, we are at ycnews where people challenge the Impossible.
Procrastination works well for me. Instead of not buying stuff, I just put it off until later, repeatedly.

In some ways, having money actually makes it easier to not accumulate stuff, because you don't feel as pressured by "good deals".
What kind of heuristics do you use, besides "Buy it if you know who will be happy to inherit it"?