skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you have to consider buzz and momentum, especially with the developer crowd. It's pretty clear that Facebook is winning there, and may very well be the only game in town. Let's take these stats again in six months and see where we are.

(I say this not even using Facebook very much, but it's pretty clear that the demographics and momentum favor it.)
That's perhaps the most useless and poorly thought out argument I've ever read about anything. I found a anti-evolution propoganda pamphlet in an airport a week ago that was more cogent.
I have some experience with this. My business is http://linebuzz.com/ We wrote the first line of code on April 1 and launched on May 10. We were covered as dot-com of the day on 100shiki.com in Japan and within days we had users in 15 languages on the site with no I18N support out the door.

http://www.100shiki.com/archives/2007/05/linebuzz.html

3 weeks later we launched an I18N release. Our customers stuck through the whole thing and worked closely with us to make LineBuzz work in their languages and charsets. Here's the story if you're interested:

http://markmaunder.com/2007/lessons-from-three-weeks-of-inte...

Many of the I18N issues we solved we only discovered because we had a large group of international users working with us. Things like the shift_jis character set not round-trip mapping to unicode. Not the sort of thing you can anticipate on paper.

If I had to do it again, I'd do it exactly the same way. Next time we may discover that the app is only used by english users and the urgent need is to fix some privacy issues.

Most companies that plan everything out on paper tend to have a large number of non-technical folks. MBA's and the like. When you're building a consumer web business, your business plan is expressed as a piece of technology. So why not just create the technology instead of talking about it. And instead of using english to describe your business, use Ruby or Perl or PHP or Java.

Mark.
ps: Sorry you feel you're getting trolled.
Paul Kedrosky: Do Whatever Gets You Tenure
Second Rotation
Google Gadget Ventures?
It appears that Google is going head to head with seed investors (like Y combinator) with its Google Gadget Ventures:
How the iPhone root password was cracked in three days
If you already know you want a VW Golf, the ad isn't very useful for the advertiser.
Yes it is. If there are 4 cars dealers in my state who have what I am looking for, they can all serve ads to me, then I compare and buy the best car with the best payment option.
I'm reposting my argument from the blog comments:

"Given the screenshot you posted, I wouldn't really buy into your conclusions because you never really adjusted your designs to fit the varying widths. I think I can agree that have a landing page take up 100% of the available width is a bad thing, but it's not because the user is spending time turning their head to read content (that's a pretty poor argument); rather it's because users like to see visual boundaries -- where the content of the site begins and ends. Your widened versions appear to do a poor job of managing the space and as a result look more amateur than the thinner, more condensed versions. There are multiple problems that I can spot right away with your widescreen version -- for example, the user preferred width of a column of text is 3.5", and the right-hand utilities section of the header appears to be disconnected from the rest of the page. Problems such as those, stemming from the design of the page (independent of its width) are probably more than enough to explain the difference in bounce rates.

"Furthermore, are you arguing that the decision made by CNN, Digg, CNet (et al.) to switch to a native 1024x768 design was wrong? I think the conservative argument you make in your post is quite backward -- online store owners would do better to expand their site designs and provide an enhanced experience for customers."
I once worked on a small software project with two other people, and because the requirements and restrictions were so rigid, we didn't have to do much more than work out a UI - the system itself was pretty straightforward to implement. Thus, we figured out what each of us had done before or had a good working knowledge of and started coding.

Currently, I'm working on a much larger project with one other person. Our strategy so far is to try something, figure out why it didn't work, and then try something different. It reminds me of what one of my former math teachers told me: "Whatever you do, don't just stare at the problem. Do something, even if you know it's wrong."
Hi Luke, are you with Adpinion? Can I advertise for http://www.getkratom.com on Adpinion?
The Fall of Pancho Villa (a metaphoric warning for cowboy hackers...)
I see. I assumed the advertiser was VW, but as you point out, there are others who'd still be interested.
To give proceeds to News.YC readers? :-)
IT's Star Turn
To thrive in the 21st century service economy, startups and old-line companies alike must shift their IT geeks to the front lines of innovation.
The most interesting lesson of this story is the purpose of reserves. I feel like ---especially here at YC news--- the attitude is always "charge full strength ahead! Work 80 hours a week and just release something as soon as possible!"

The problem with this tactic is that when you need reserves to seize some unforeseen opportunity, you don't have any. For a startup, "reserves" could be something as simple as extra cash, employees not already committed to an 80 hour crunch, or your own health and morale.
Interesting comments from everyone. A couple I would like to address.

"god damn, that guy has a lot of pictures of himself in that article"

Yes, yes I do. Read my blog and you'll discover that I'm a total narcissist. It's all part of the blog theme.

"Is this really true, when you take into account startups that fight tooth and nail and still don't succeed? Is it better to start with the confidence, money, and connections of other people and then ride the wave of their support, or is it better to start with nothing other than your own belief in yourself and then fight tooth and nail until you get the confidence, money, and connections of others?"

Good point. My point then is that you need all of the above. If you have connections, capital and a good idea - then sorry, you're a carbon copy of thousands of other tech entrepreneurs. What separates you from them? Anyone can always get more capital if you poke around a bit. Anyone can get more connections if you spend more time schmoozing. What you can't simply "get" is an emotional attachment to whatever you are doing. That's something that has to be there from the beginning, I think. That is what I learned from this experience.

"Problem 1: trying to build 3 apps while doing consulting work (no focus)"

Definitely. I absolutely agree. However, we were in no position to argue (much) and as I said in the post, the relationship we had with the supposed investor was flawed.

"Problem 2: the author was a dick to his only employee (wtf? why?)"

Ken wasn't an employee. He was being paid the same as me and provided similar functions, although I naturally took on more of a leadership role, being the more experienced. I'm a dick anyway, but yes, I was hard on Ken because I expected him to help me as much as possible not to fuck up the opportunity I thought we had. But when you are ready to launch and you find that there are lots of basic errors in the HTML or front end code because advice you've given over and over hasn't been taken in, it's hard to remain cool and collected, especially if it's with a mate.

If anything, being in that situation taught me that I am not fit to be a boss and not fit to team lead. I am much better working alone, and my individual work speaks for itself. That is why I am now leaning towards solo consulting as the focus of my career.
Vicerex 72 hours
Thank you Ed for the excellent post!

While it is true CNN, Digg, CNet and others have chosen to switch to 1024x768, these sites target a different profile of users than the target demographics for our study.

SoftwareProjects is in the business of building websites that "sell". And by sell I am referring to the ability to convert an anonymous website visitor who is visiting a new website for the first time, into a qualified lead and then a paying customer.

Users frequenting Digg and CNet are in a completely different mindset, than someone looking to get a mortgage quote, or a user who is surfing the net looking for a new bookshelf.

For these type of websites, promoting a specific product/service, it's been shown you typically have 4 seconds to convince the user to stick around, before they hit the BACK button.

Our research conversion data shows users were more comfortable with buying when presented with a thin website.

If you examine popular retail sites targeting the average Internet user, you'll find they all follow a similar paradigm: Overstock.com, Target.com, BuyOwner.com, WalMart.com etc. - are all designed as "thin" sites, deliberately not utilizing the entire width of the page.
Series A Financing: How Much to Raise?
Don't discount those of us in Arlington!
I used to work for a company that entirely guided their office move by "is it still in Cambridge?". Gotta keep that 02138. Too bad they were an SBIR crackhouse.

But there is no denying the number of brains here. What did PG say? Silicon Valley has the VCs, Cambridge has the brains?
29 percent of visitors are using 800x600 resolution?

Hmm...just over 1 percent of visitors to my site have 800x600. Very different markets, perhaps...
I hate ads. Everyone hates ads. Why would we take what is largely an automated process (extracting information from a site to guide ads), and make humans do it?

With the idea to "make something people want", isn't it a bad idea to make something a minority want and the vast majority will fight against? Especially considering the majority's clicks are all that matter.
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. The haters won't down-vote. They just won't click at all.
Hardware guys buying Software today
Andy Rutledge: Quiet Structure
HedgeStop Wants to be the MySpace of the Financial Community
Learning Curve Before founding HedgeStop, Christopher Carlevato (left) earned a computer engineering degree and Daniel Carroll studied finance and marketing.
I read Business 2.0 - and I want to keep reading!
Hi Mike, welcome to the site!

I feel like this is getting fairly pedantic but the question "what width should your site be?" is flawed -- there is no single correct answer. It's alot like asking the question: "which browser should I develop for?" Clearly, user environments vary. The developing team must take this into consideration and work accordingly.

I think the best answer you can give to someone asking your question is the following:

If you can only design a single layout, use whatever resolution allows you to maximize available screen real estate while supporting the largest subset of users. (Note that this does not necessarily mean you should design the site to take up the entire width of the browser.) However, if you have the resources to evaluate multiple user environments (and I'd make the argument that EVERYONE does), then do so and provide conditional formatting. So, for example, a user with an 800x600 display will see a design optimized for that resolution without compromising the design used for others with larger screens.
"That's a real un-Mexican thing to do, accusing yourself like that."

What a moron... the whole piece is full of nonsense like this.
Our startup is right in Downtown Crossing around the corner from the T entrance. We got a ridiculously good deal on rent. Once our lease expires we'll probably have to move, because there's no way it's getting renewed at the same rate.
This is the kind of thing we emphasize at YC. Step 1 in web design: don't have irregularity by accident. Only make stuff vary when you want to draw attention to it.
Bravo! Couldn't have said it better myself.

BTW - I love what you did with PhotoFlock.
There was a lot of hype when Seth Godin implemented this idea on Squidoo back in December. I haven't heard much about it since. That's not to say it's a bad idea, but rather that it's not some miracle technology with guaranteed easy money.

I thought it had a lot of potential at the time and I still think it has a lot of potential now. The only problem is that until there is a large body of ads you get very scatterbrained results.
I hate ads as much as the next guy. But somehow, I still voted up an ad at the end of a pg essay. It worked on me.

The UI is good, the idea is really elegant, and it is well executed.
Actually, most people aren't. Apparently, most people actually LIKE ads--so long as they are relevant.

I don't know about you guys, but I actually enjoy looking through the ads in Wired. Usually they're catchy and they are almost always relevant for me. I can't say that about most ads on the web, and certainly not for TV (I will never buy a truck in my life so stop 'effin showing me ads for them!) Obviously the problem with these last two mediums is that they don't have enough information about me.

Honestly, I would submit my personal tastes/preference to some sort of central advertising database which authorized companies could then plug into. Right now, it would make a lot of sense if Google hosted that database, but it should really be something open so that any advertiser can use it.
When they say they will make something people want, they mean the advertisers. Besides, this is the Internet. Ads are here to stay, so why not make them suck less than Google's Adsense?
Edit: so long as they are relevant and done well. Despite, for example, my desire to buy a Wii, I would not tolerate a "hit the monkey and win a Wii" ad.
Nokia buys Twango for $100M, continues social media sharing push
correlation != causation

odds are fortune 500 CEO's just happen to like to read, it's not a prerequisite for success. journalistic sensationalism at its worst.
Maybe the YC company only charges advertisers for each impression -- or maybe for each click-thru. If an advertiser's goods are "down-modded into oblivion", then the advertiser at least didn't have to pay anything. And they can take their ad to, say, AdSense, or some other less exclusive network.
That's a really good point about the click/no-click. That said, I could see myself down-voting ads for which there's no chance I'd ever click, leaving ads I might be interested in at some point, but didn't actually want to click at that moment.

Also, there's the type of ad where you think you might be interested in it, so you click it to see what it's about, only to find that the product or whatever actually sucks. That's where the down-vote would help.

I don't know if this idea will work, though. Assuming it's used by web surfers, then I think advertisers will want it. But that's a big assumption. What's the incentive for web surfers to use it? Looking at ads, even "high-quality" ones, isn't really a priority of mine. And there are other tools like StumbleUpon or del.icio.us that suggest content to me, but don't really have the commercial agenda that an ad does.
That's still a piece of information though, especially if the same user has actively down-voted other items.
I may be a minority, but that's not how I buy stuff if I know what I want to buy. If I know what I want to buy, then I research the item using Google.

I don't click on ads often, but when I do, it's usually because something caught my attention that I wasn't directly searching for.

The one exception is that I occasionally try to "trigger" ads that give me a discount once I know exactly what I want.
I did the same thing, but I'll bet you did it for the same reason as me -- you wanted to try it out because it was a YC company and you were curious.

Now I wasn't "lying" when I up-voted the ad -- it did seem generally interesting (some Ruby site that provided tutorial screencasts), but I'm not sure I would have voted if it wasn't linked off news.yc.
How do you develop your Facebook application without disturbing your users?
I don't hate ads. I hate companies that sell products or services that only benefit themselves. When ads come from legitimate businesses providing products/services that are actually valuable, I think it's a wonderful thing that it's getting a lot easier to reach people who need them.
I would suggest instead of "Sorry" say, "OK, Bye." I think the latter would be more satisfying.

I adblock only distracting animated ads. Will they notice a pattern if I downvote according to ad style, or is it only based on ad topic?
Anecdotes prove nothing.

I know a few writers and I know a few entrepreneurs. The writers read their whole lives. The entrepreneurs I know never read all that much. I know a businessman who will only read books if they're bestsellers. I've even met entrepreneurs who have never voluntarily read a book. As far as I can tell, the guys who devote time to reading will never do as well as the guys to devote time to making money.
You're right. I was well-disposed because I figured it was a YC startup.
You're assuming people buy books to read them, not to display them and have them be status symbols.
It's a joke. Come on: War Nerd? It's his writing character. But that doesn't change the substance of the essay.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/ had ads that you can comment on etc. but it never worked out. These new ads are a step forward with the targeting system.

Still, I'd like to know how many people actually care about seeing ads.
100M for a site most of us haven't heard of? Beats me! Hopefully they know what they're doing.
Just sent my resignation letter and this is my plan.
Hi folks. I've just sent in my resignation letter from my job. Damn you all. ;)

My immediate plan is to plug the most obvious holes in my CS and math education. Being an art school dropout, I have plenty of those, but there are a few that I really want to address now, because otherwise I know they will be nagging me at inopportune times.

I'll also be catching up on the reading recommendations in the Library section of this site. I've read most of them already, but I'm sure many of them will make more sense now.

In parallel to such reading, I'll finish a pet project with no business aspirations, which I want for personal use: a subset/bastardization of the editor part of Jef Raskin's Humane Environment (AKA Archy). I plan to use that as my programming editor from then on. I did a couple prototypes in the past and I know I like it. I don't like Archy itself because of its compromise of using alt keys for leaping; I got myself a thinkpad-like keyboard with buttons under the space bar for this purpose. Again, this is something I had put on hold for too long, and I want to give it a chance before I commit full force to a startup.

I'll timebox 4 months for this although, in good programmer optimism tradition, I hope I'll be done earlier. After that, done or not, I plan to put out a few cheap startup failures fast. This is much in the spirit of the common advice to novice Go players: "lose your first fifty games fast". I'll just brainstorm for projects that I can execute by myself in, say, one month. At the end of the timeboxed period, if the project is not anywhere near shippable state, I shelve it and move to something else. Otherwise, I throw it at people and see what happens. Then follow up on the ones that get a better reaction.

From this I expect to get some basic competence in business (esp. marketing and dealing with users), system administration, and fluency in web programming (my background is in user interface design and programming for a MMOG). I also expect to get something I can show to potential cofounders so they can evaluate my taste and my ability to execute. And who knows, maybe something more ambitious grows out of one of these ideas.

My goal is to be able to apply to YC with a straight face in winter 2008 or summer 2009.

Please let me know what do you think about this. Don't pull any punches; I'm interested in criticism, objections, and alternatives, rather than moral support.

Thanks for reading this far!
Indian Startup: YouMagix, UGC of Yellow Pages
The scope of the experiment is so narrow that I wouldn't draw any conclusions based on this, unless I was making a cheaply-designed, SEO-driven, diet-pill selling website. Even then, the difference could be attributed to poor design (irrespective of width).
The Making of Pownce (interview with Leah Culver)
Twitter vs. Pownce
$100 + $12.95 a month for an easy to use, environmentally friendly Linux PC
I like the business model and this review: http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback202.html says that the overall experience with this box is great.

Do you think they will be successful?
Isn't it more fair to compare microprocessors to server-based applications, and not just to HTML with javascript, which is only one way to do it? In practice, it is the only way right now, if one wants users, but considering how painful and limiting it is, will things stay this way?

Unfortunately, I couldn't RTFA because it's down.
My cynical side remembers doing all the grunt work for 18 months at my first startup and then getting sacked to free up my unvested stock for the hopeless flotilla of "key hires" who proceeded to sink the company.
You could always just build a bot that adds 20000 MySpace accounts per day in order to ensure that MySpace stays ahead.
I don't have any experience, but this looks like a solid plan. If you mean what you say, I'm sure you'll be fine. Just keep focused!
Reddit too, also failed there as far as I can tell: http://ads.reddit.com/

This doesn't mean it wouldn't work across a large set of sites though. Aggregating responses and correlating them should produce really effective targeting.
Yeah the Stanford and Berkeley students are chumps.
okay lets for instance take a blog which I have coded and designed. I need to make it popular by giving it for free, ofcourse they will have to have their own servers etc. But what exactly will the users want? will they want their blog to be very easy to use, yes. will they want their blog to load quickly and have some and not zillion templates yes. this is the tip of the iceberg, how will i know what they are looking for exactly, the real reason to choose a blog.

The only reason I coded and designed my blog is because I was getting tired of wordpress frequent outages and customization. In the process I learnt php and various other factors in setting up to get to know people.
A very impressive and convincing presentation for letting graphic form follow function - letting the content rule.
MyYearbook battles it out with Facebook, MySpace
He is absolutely right: confounding is explained in the first chapter of any book on statistics. Alexa's stats do not fall into "randomized controlled" category of studies, therefore they are pretty much guaranteed to be wrong.
How to Keep Team Performance High
Whomever was running the negotiation side at Twango sure knew what they were doing. Launch to $100M exit in 9 months...
That's a big step and it takes courage. Good for you. I like most of your plan, except for one point: Why the 4-month delay? Study and a pet project!!! Doesn't seem like a high priority thing for someone who's betting his career on a startup. It sounds like an excuse to delay starting the hard work of a startup. Plus, I'm guessing that you'll be living off of your savings. If that's the case, then you have a limited time to do the try/fail cycle a few times before you have to get back to a full-time job. I think you should start right away, and you can do your study on the side.

Best of luck.
It's no different than with fully vested options that have not been purchased: the company. I think you are confusing vesting with purchasing options. First, you get the options. Then, you vest into them. Finally, you purchase the shares. Until you purchase, the company still has them.
Bottom line you have to assign a value to each entity, then it's a trivial matter equalize the shares for all the shareholders.