skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
some reading list material for entrepreneurs, designers and rails web app devs
dicey dance, I suppose. But I disagree.
you are essentially talking of "everyone loves a winner..."
I have been doing what you have in mind, with juwo.
Go In-n-Out!

"In-N-Out Burger, which is privately held, has maintained a cult following, in large part because it has insisted on not turning burgers into an industrial process, all while expanding gingerly in California, Arizona and Nevada. As a result, it remains a destination, a privilege, a brand that is owned by the minority of Americans who have regular access to it."
The Ethic of the Peddler Class (Startups 19th Century Style)
I'm 31; tinkered with technology from a young age, did the University thing, backpacked around the world, now married with a kid. I think the age depends on what you want your startup to give you...fulfillment, enlightenment - its not just about acquisitions or IPOs. I think a rounded view on life would help some of the very guys not to end up like software's answer to Britney Spears!?
Last Friday - The day internet music died
Mark Cuban's take on it: http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/03/05/say-goodbye-to-webcasting/
here's a document at Unimedia
Using Games to Generate Useful Data (two new games mentioned for natural language processing)
You, Inc.: How to Be the CFO of Your Own Life
Just the data: Cragslist survived because it was not *greedy*. The founders recognised that community matters and only charge small fees for placement. CL as a team are also pretty smart because they cannibalised newspaper listings. CL saw the market before the newspapers & seized it.

From memory CL currently runs on about USD20 Million / year gained form paid adverts. No fancy designs, just the data.
First important question is ---Do you really need a cofounder?---

I am founding this company http://www.onista.com (A Social Marketplace) and so far I am doing it all by myself. Didn't have any issues yet and I am very well on the course to launch it in Summer. It is true that it is taking me little longer time than what I could have done with one cofounder.

But again, why should I expect a stranger to take risks with his/her career, make sacrifices and be passionate about my idea.
After launching http://www.onista.com if people like it, then I am sure I will get cofounders.
I haven't read that the webserver is in Arc. But Paul said on Reddit that the current implementation of Arc translates it to PLT Scheme. PLT has its own Tomcat/Webrick-ish HTTP server, so they probably use that.
GeoSign Raises $160 Million For Content Acquisitions
Google Answers to Rise From Dead?
I wonder how much 'internationalization' you really need to apply to your site to get traction in places like Germany, Italy, France... That would actually be a fairly interesting service - I'm guessing its already out there, someone who will essentially translate your site.
Papers from the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab (relevant to web 2.0)
This has nothing to do with YouTUBE. This is just a pirate's heaven that will be taken down by some angry publisher.
Why getting a mentor is important
Successful startup trends: visual content is great but visual interfaces are not?
It seems to me that startups with visual content (e.g., videos, images) have an advantage, but those with visual interfaces (e.g., visualizing search results) are actually worse off than ones with plain text interfaces. Is that so?
A review of 5 internet television startups
The problem is that it would be difficult to get funding initially if you have no cofounder. So this means you will need to get lots of users all by yourself and maybe then some funding will come your way. But even that doesn't always happen.
I'm talking from personal experiences of my own so there is no point of disagreement;)

That said, you're right: people love "winners." The trick is you don't have to have sold a big startup to make a reputation. Even before my startup went live, I started getting emails from people across the campus about their ideas and working with them. That's when I realized a lot of attracting folks to work with you is about PR - backed by a real plan and intelligence.
Your second sentence made it even more analogous to YouTube.

When YouTube was younger, its popular use was to facilitate the spread of copyrighted content. Now there's a whole slew of user-generated videos out there.

There will inevitably be pirated material on Scribd, sure. But surely you can see further than that. Sharing group documents? Helping some self-"publish"? Spread works in the public domain? Share academic and/or research papers?
Failures without partners: over 5

Hits without partners: 0

Hits with partner: 1

Potential hits with partner(currently): 1

There is nothing like having someone else think and work 20hr days WITH you when you are starting up.
New forms of advertising are hard
The article is meant to be taken as a general guide. The author does suggest that we use a pre-programmed crawler rather than code one ourselves. Refer to this passage:

"Crawler. If you don't use an open source crawler, my advice is a super-simple multistep crawler. This is very important advice that will cut months off your development time, so if you ignore everything else, don't ignore this."
Ever heard of HTML/XML? How about CSS? How about Prince? http://www.princexml.com/ Why would anyone wanna publish through Flashpaper?! Oh, that;'s right... only if you have a scanned book. But even then, Google Books' AJAX reader is so much nicer than Flashpaper.

YouTube solved the problem of not having a codec or a media player installed. Scribd is solving a non-existing problem. No one wants to read a book in some tiny window.

There's a huge difference from writing books and making videos in front of a camera. I'll let you figure out the difference in magnitude of work required to do each.

Also, most of the people don't read that much.

Sorry to rain on the parade but Scribd is NOTHING like YouTube! It's just a "clever" marketing gimmick.
I'm not sure you can separate it into those distinct categories. It's a balancing act; the point will go to the startup with some aesthetics along with intuitive simplicity.

There are certain weights you place on each factor depending on the target of your site and what it is offering.
There is more to reading than physical books.

There are MSWord documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoints, etc. These are documents that someone might want to simply embed in a blog post. A user might want to embed a PowerPoint presentation on their MySpace profile. Getting videos online was not an impossible task before YouTube. YouTube made it easier, as you mentioned, by enabling users to view without worry of player or codec. With Scribd's flash viewer, people are able to view through their browser regardless of document type.

I'm no fierce advocate of Scribd; in fact I'm not too familiar with them. I just know it's something that would make things easier for me personally. This is reason enough for me to be a believer.
"If I were the CEO of a Web company planning to expand worldwide, I'd hit these countries in this order."

Seems like a poor data analyzing. China's population is vastly greater than the UK -- it should be no surprise that there is a higher number of users online. Does this mean that the UK's demographic is less valuable for a web company? I highly doubt it... unless your product is targeted in such a way.
Google Desktop 5 Released With Even Better Search
One could argue that visual interfaces require a greater mental burden than a simple text interface and so they are less likely to be as successful.
Paul Graham is Today's Prius
This article has given me the idea for the ultimate startup. Creating an online personal ads search engine to find dates for similarly tagged pez dispensers from within their social network.

Seriously though, is there a word for noticing something everywhere you look right after learning about it?
Yes, actually, there is a word for that--sort of. It is essentially a special case of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a concept from cognitive psychology; basically, the human mind heuristically prefers data which support (confirm) its nascent inferences. In this case, the inference being developed is roughly the importance/prevalence of the word.

So, there isn't a word for this precise phenomenon (to my knowledge), but you're welcome to coin one. If there's one thing cognitive psychology loves, it's terminology. (Don't get me wrong, cognitive psych is delightful, but it loves its lingo.)

N.B. Related phenomena are the cocktail party effect, and, in the large, figure-ground phenomena, and selection bias. EDIT: And priming. Thanks to python_kiss. (Wikipedia has decent articles on these things, but if you're really interested, go to the library and get a good psych book.)
Unfortunately, the author largely glosses over what I consider the most difficult part of search--extracting semantic information from unstructured source materials (also refered to as "magicks"). However, the discussion of bandwidth and server allocation - of starting with what you can afford, and spending your effort/money on what matters (i.e. your algorithms) resonates with a lot of the ideas behind YC. When it comes right down to it, anyone who can sweet-talk a VC can get fat pipes and big boxes--the (human) brains behind the (algorithmic) brains are what differentiate Google from Lycos.
There isn't a lot of good theory behind visualizations, so I have been working on creating my own. My thinking, as pertains to this, is that visualizations fall into two categories:

1) Visualizations where the goal is to help the user understand things that are too complicated to grok from raw data. Examples include histograms, line graphs, pie charts, etc.

2) Visualizations where the goal is to help the user actually create more complex thoughts than would otherwise be possible. Examples include mind maps, concept maps, flow charts, etc.

The goal of a visual interface, as opposed to a visualization, is to reduce the cognitive load required to use the software.

I think a lot of reason why we see such garbage is because many people are choosing a visualization from the wrong category to solve their given problem.
"But, as Paul notes, the easiest way to make something that people want is to make something that you want. Yahoo! started out as a directory of Jerry and Dave's favorite links. Movable Type was born out of Mena's need for a better way to talk about herself. Jonathan started Friendster to find a girlfriend. Zuckerberg started FaceBook to find a girlfriend. Joe and Alon started JDate to find Jewish girlfriends. Ted started Dogster to find his dog a date. If you build something you want, chances are pretty good that someone else will want it as well."

Well said! :)
Junior made $6M by selling high school networking site
I have trouble with reverse confirmation bias. I miss actual trends because I pass them off as confirmation bias. For example, "I'm probably just noticing Alex's posts everywhere because I met him at startup school". And then I counted them. "Oh."
+1 for the explanation. "Priming" is another term that describes this phenomenon. From wikipedia: Priming in psychology refers to activating parts of particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task. In a neurological view priming can be seen as the activation of clusters of neurons. An interconnected cluster is surrounded by other clusters that are more or less connected with each other...So when the cluster that represents the concept of "flower" is activated, particular clusters will be more activated then others (i.e. kinds of flowers).
\begin{ego}Welcome to the wonderful world of the learned.\end{ego} Seriously, though, I've had problems like this ever since I started studying psychology--self examination can be risky!

Ultimately, while the human mind is excellent at fuzzy inference, it's not perfect, and augmenting inductive inference with declarative rules often just swings the error to the other side, as you observed: confirmation bias + knowledge of confirmation bias - reverse confirmation bias. If you want /real/ self-examination, do what you did: quantify it!
Thank you! I had the nagging feeling that there was a more precise bit of terminology that I was missing. You've gotten it off the tip of my tongue. As you pointed out, though, priming properly refers immediate-time phenomena. Whereas priming arises from manipulation of operational memory, confirmation bias arises from deeper heuristic phenomena.
Because it's a good idea?

Not that you should start a company with a stranger, though; I would not recommend that.
Anyone know if there is a video/mp3/text version of that talk?

We seriously need a law requiring that all PG talks be televised and made publicly accessible.

This information wants to be free even more than other information.
I'm 32 and my co-founder is the 33 year old mentioned by Paul. We're a YC this year. I didn't particularly feel like age would have played any role in acceptance (though I believe we have the most traditional business model and most traditional product in the bunch, and had Trevor and Robert not been interested it may have triggered a "no" from Paul). There are three PhD candidate founders who are probably much closer to 30 than 20, as well.

Anyway, I didn't notice any particular agenda for picking younger founders...younger folks are the ones that showed up (I met all, or nearly all, of the folks who got to the demo stage in Boston..including the majority that didn't get picked).
The Much Needed Beer Calculator
What are they possibly going to do with $22 mil, after all how much technology, people do you need for a social networking co.?
Is it worth being wise?
'... the author largely glosses over what I consider the most difficult part of search--extracting semantic information from unstructured source materials ...'

This is a hard set of problems. Now the question is how do you think they go about it? My guess is they work from whole to part on a document they find determined by extension/mime type. Then analyse the document in detail for commonly found information (based on statistical info).

I remember reading about how google analysed web authoring statistics ~ http://code.google.com/webstats For instance 'a' links within html pages which reveal links to other documents can be parsed to extract lots of useful information as found here ~ http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/element-a.html

But unstructured data is a different beast. How for instance does google work out that 'cm' (what I mean by centimeter) is both 'Columbus McKinnon' and a unit conversion as highlighted in a returned search? [0]

One way could be using techniques similiar to the 'Normalised Google Distance' algorythm or NGD. Developed by 'Rudi Cilibrasi' and 'Paul Vitany' (National Institute for Maths & Computer Science, Amsterdam). They build a database model of how close words relate to each other & use this to compute word combinations. The closer the word combinations, the closer the association. So my example of 'cm' would have close association with 'Columbus McKinnon' and 'Centimeter' etc as returned by the google search ~ http://www.google.com/search?q=cm

You can read more about this 'Google's search for meaning' [1] and the abstract , 'Automatic Meaning Discovery Using Google' [2].

Reference

[0] Slashdot, ' Deriving Semantic Meaning From Google Results' [Accessed Wednesday, 7 March, 2007]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/1815242

[1] New Scientist, 'Google's search for meaning' [Accessed Wednesday, 7 March, 2007]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6924

[2] arxiv.org,Computer Science, abstract 'Automatic Meaning Discovery Using Google' [Accessed Wednesday, 7 March, 2007]

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/%20cs.CL/0412098
Paul cares about his users. He makes stuff we want. He always replies to emails. His influence reaches far beyond the Americas, across the pacific, to the island continent that I call home. Thanks mate, you changed our worlds!
Something just felt right when I read, "The best possible way to finance your business is from free cash flow. If you can meet your capital needs without selling equity or without taking on personal debt, do it. It's that simple." Clif Bar, Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's come to mind. Not tech, I know, but it's really cool when a young company can maintain it's mojo, it's buzz, far longer than most people could even dream of. If equity is sold, you're answerable to someone, and you lose control over keeping it's mojo. Whatever it takes to do work you love, with people you love, I'm for always.
A great many of us aren't American and would love to make the move, just like the author, Kulveer. I'd love to know exactly what he had to go through to relocate from Oxford to Silicon Valley, and also the name of the investment bank he worked at.
This dilemma has plagued me for a whole summer! I've devoured books about Apple, Google, HP & Co. to learn stories of how founders met. Honestly, I learnt more from doing that (reading about previous founders for inspiration), than this article, but to be fair this article breaks down the four categories very simply. The great founders, and their meetup stories, all fall into one of the four categories. So it is wise to read both the article, and the stories of how our forefathers did it.
Real-world RSS feed of PG? It's a little known fact that about a quarter of this funding session's applicants are developing various software to do just that. ;)
Another Yahoo Loss: Friendster makes Google its ad and search supplier
I'd rather have a Tesla Roadster.
And a lot of other potential big name developments never saw the light of day due to the "corporate" part of corporate R&D. Yes, it is true that corporate R&D produced a long lists of greats; however, some of these faced serious barriers to realization because of the hedging of risks that big companies do.

It's not to say they don't develop great things. What they do, they do well because they pour their resources into it. It's the daring, wild, revolutionary ideas that have become uncommon. The smaller company or group of hackers have become the suppliers of those.
Not a huge surprise, I suppose. Google's ad network is still the market leader. Though, I am very interested to see how much more relevant Yahoo's Search Marketing has gotten with its implementation of Pandora.

So far, AdSense is the most flexible when compared to Yahoo's Publisher Network but there are many more players in this game now.
WordPress announces support for OpenID
Dot-Com CIOs Are Back in Demand :)
yes. if you have $1M to invest in the USA, you can get an automatic - and almost immediately - green card.
(my green card took 4 years and $5K to get).
Thank you for posting this. ReadWrite web is reporting that 37Signals has also joined the bandwagon:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wordpress_37signals_openid.php
I just read that article too. WordPress.com will be acting as an identity provider, similar to AOL.

Any thoughts on OpenID implementation for existing popular networks? Considering that relying sites can filter which providers they allow authentication from, I am overall positive about an increased usage of OpenID.
Many people to whom I have demo'ed, have said that I have a good idea. I also have an almost beta, prototype.
I have approached 16 potential cofounders since May 2006, but they didnt want to take risks with their career, had families to support, had their own career track to pursue and frankly, wondered how it would make money.
Why is there a lack of successful global Aussie web startups?
While I don't use OpenID myself, there are a number of users on my social network asking for its integration. It seems that many users are now beginning to *expect* Web 2.0 startups to provide support for it (just as they did for Firefox). I anticipate that, in the future, when big name startups like Digg and LiveJournal begin supporting OpenID, there will be a huge following by other sites as well. Put simply, crowds follow crowds.
I have read up on OpenID's specifications and what it aims to deliver. If it is labeled a bandwagon, I think it may be a good one to jump onto. There a few provisions one must be wary of regarding security, but for the most part I believe it is a move in a positive direction for managing web identities.
Techcrunch Destroying Sites on Launch Day
Funnily enough, Apple fans don't always check their facts
First of all ideas change but people don't. Finding a cofounder is more a meeting of minds and interests - the ideas one has and are passionate about can be modified accordingly.

Every entrepreneur isn't short of ideas - but every entrepreneur in his/her social circle is a maverick of one sort or another. SO if the local concentration of mavericks isn't high it makes things difficult. Finding a cofounder is pretty hard and only something that can be done by finding someone you agree with - then trying out the relationship over a project.

I met my cofounder accidently - last year i had an idea and approached a couple of people cold and just tried doing a project. One of the guys i met i seemed to work with amazingly well. We sparked ideas, started creating other side projects, had complementary skills, believed in beautiful design and how simple ideas could really impact the world and above all we had the same positive attitude and stamina to make things happen (we both have great stamina and a get things done attitude). Our ideas have changed from the original one. A year later we've worked on so many things - but most importantly we can depend on eachother to make things happen.

Bottom line, cofounders pop up in unexpected places. Be open, talk to people you know, friends, their friends - see if anyone sparks. Its a hard road until then - but trial people out - get them involved in your project. Hidden mavericks do exist in local environments and passion is infectious.
I'm a PhD in infectious disease, with a long term interest in nanotechnology and the interface between biosciences and nanotech - But its going to take too long to be in a pole position to drive that innovation (i'm going to be 35 before anything gets going (12 years!) and i'm impatient. The information age has shaped my life in more ways that i could have ever imagined - i want to change people's live now not later. Thats why i'm into the web and particularly online/offline convergence. I want it now not later!

Plus i'll need a track record to build a kickass, disruptive nanotechnology startup which can impact on medicine - 12 years of the information age is just the fix i need!
To be honest, I was surprised Google reached out to Friendster. Google struck a similar, but much larger, deal with MySpace, so I imagine that this won't go lightly with NewsCorp. Let's not forget that Google also owns two major MySpace competitors, YouTube and Orkut (see Orkut's astonishing growth: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=orkut.com/).

Is Friendster even worth risking a major deal with MySpace?
nice one! Really like the incremental site updates
Looking Failure In The Face
The Problem with Being First
PaulGrahamEatsBreakfast.com?
What entrepreneurial role are you playing?
You may have seen this post before: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

But the reason I submitted this is because of item #6. As an entrepreneur, I'm technically savvy, but I'm by no means a hardcore programmer. I have other team members who do most of the coding. However, I am by far the biggest creative influence and visionary on the team.

With that said, how do all of you fit into your teams, and what skill sets do you have?

Alternatively, what skill sets are you possibly lacking in your team?
This site has an easy-to-fix security problem. Who can I inform?
I noticed it yesterday. I tried to email webmaster@ycombinator, postmaster@ycombinator, and pg@paulgraham. All of them bounced. I mailed pg@ycombinator, got no response. This problem is probably pretty easy to spot from the web logs. If you're an administrator of this site and can fix it, let me know if you need more details.