skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
the Y combinator is an answer to this exact question

Aur Saraf
You could do the same kind of thing that yCombinator is doing now. Accept the best and the brightest, train them for a couple years. Let them develop products inside the school by providing them contacts, advice, etc. Then take a percentage of the companies that make it. The students get a great education with the chance to do something great and the school gets the chance to fund the next wave of statups.
Dot Com on the Cheap - a slightly old article, but good stuff for entreps
See you at next year's startup school (hopefully)!
Would You Recommend Us? - the only question that matters
I was intrigued by the reference to the "good ol' days" when reviewers would let a restaurant have 30 days to work out the kinks.

I have a friend from Vietnam who started a restaurant in my hometown, which has a Vietnamese population of around 30-50,000. He told me, just before opening, that the first 3 days would make or break the shop. That's the way that community worked: hundreds of people would descend on a new restaurant and then go tell all their friends and relatives. So he put tons of effort into the first days. Sounds just like... Yelp!

Rules change, people adapt. The restaurants should read PG's essays on listening to early adopters.
You are worse than I am:)

My parents pestered me every weekend about my GPA until past few months. Slowly they have come to terms with the idea that I don't care much about school - and that my GPA probably sucks.
This is a simple request. How about making the Y in the upper left corner of the page be the shortcut icon? Nearly all of my bookmarked web pages have a representative icon, and it couldn't hurt anything, right?
I just pulled some statistics on Monday while I was in San Francisco to help me write a press release (for when I'm at the airport) to finally publicize my product. Anyway, here is what they are:

In an e-mail poll where 153 customers replied over a course of over a year:
More than 9 out of 10 customers said they "would recommend it to others".

Also, for each of the following statements, at least 86% or more of the customers agreed with each statement below:

"I received a full response to my question"

"The response speed was prompt"

"The response was clear and easy to understand"

For each case, the possible answers were either "Outstanding" or "Needs Improvement". All surveys were asked after I had thought I answered a technical support question, as you may have guessed. Of course, sometimes it turned out that customers still had a question.

What I found interesting is that you don't have to be perfect in order to have over 90% of the responders say they would recommend you to their friends and family.
Think of Outlook, Thunderbird, Pine, what have you.
Good points. I had some of them in the back of my mind, but I think that I was subconsciously trying to forget about all that :).
The funny thing is how ironic the title is, in that the author seems to be making the claim that he is not smart.
No! I'm reading news.yc/active these days, and adding comments to this thread makes it salient.

Please ignore such submissions entirely.
I guess Microsoft does, since the URL is msresearch.us. Am I the only one that finds it strange that Microsoft still thinks they can succeed by trying to lock out the competition through tricks like this? The idea of a computer on every desk running Microsoft software is a perfectly fine goal, but that doesn't mean that they should run only Microsoft software. I can't believe that they still refuse to acknowledge that anyone else is capable of writing software that someone would want to use instead of their own, such as Firefox.
I want a way to change my password. Or is there one and I'm just blind?
How to create a digg/reddit popularity algorithm
This is a really cool idea, but I wonder about the danger of falling into the "X of Y" or "A meets B" style of describing software.

"X of Y" is how Hollywood describes new scripts. The danger is that this is also how Hollywood comes up with new scripts. Have we gone whole hog and transformed into a fashion industry? Are we optimizing for quick wins, sequels of existing software, at the expense of real innovation?
"A startup company is like a bicycle", said one VC to me. "The two wheels are marketing and engineering and you don't get very far without both"
I must comment that the conclusion they arrive at is very interesting: that web-based apps work better for individuals (and also, I presume, small groups), while desktop apps work better for businesses, because a big part of people's justification for web applications is large-scale collaboration.

In the article, however, John Milan makes it seem like it's impossible to integrate a web app with a business infrastructure. I don't think that this is a necessary property of web applications. The problem is that most web applications now are ad-based, and they want their consumers' only access point to be through their website, where they can get revenue. If that model is changed, it would not be overly complicated to create an API to your application which would allow integration with other applications in some way. If I can use sshfs to make a remote filesystem look exactly like a local one, surely it's possible to write hooks into your web app to integrate it with other desktop software.
RSS is nice, but spammy. There should be a way to subscribe to an "N-point feed" that only includes stories above a certain threshold.
Well, except for "in need of a programmer", "intricate", "without revealing too much information", "in the process of", and "extremely successful". Did I miss any?
I would also include the number of replies, although I must admit that I've never implemented such a system myself. Typically, the best articles have the most replies, and quite often, the most interesting content is the replies themselves.
I think that's the point. Maybe you just have to know Vlad to get his humor...
is there any way you could filter applications before reading them?
I don't personally have a problem with using that manner of description when it can describe the GENERAL idea of your business in few words. ie. Google in its starting days could say "Kinda like Yahoo Search" or iPod could say "Better than your walkman"

Problem here is the X of Y description doesn't make obvious sense, at least to me.
Not necessarily, but building a web app turns out to be a good way to build a product. He wrote about some advantages of doing so here-
http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html
The first think I thought when I saw this quote was that there's a wall full of unicycles at the YCombinator/AnyBots office, and lots of people that ride them effectively.
True. I never knew the way these news sites actually worked. There was this post on reddit that made me search out this article. He was an upset new user who kept submitting stories and they immediately were knocked down.

http://reddit.com/info/1dk74/comments

My concern is when Karma has an impact in your ability to contribute.
No, me too. Sounds pretty vapid, to be blunt.
There's a large difference between the entertainment industry and the web application industry. Since the beginning of inventions, people have been crossing seemingly unrelated things to discover beautiful new insights. Because we create value, if "The Facebook of Wikipedia" is valuable, then it's safe to describe it in those terms; in fact, it's safe to come up with entirely new products in those terms.

However, you should note that you probably won't be creating / riding the Next Big Wave by crafting new things in terms of existing things.
These days they call it a mashup, which sounds cooler.
And yet YouTube is the Flickr of Flash videos, right?

And Google was the better-AltaVista of AltaVista. I'm just saying, those are pretty big waves.
See, it's like "pre-zenter." Took me a while to get that.
I remember meeting someone during the WFP interviews that was still employed. What constraints do you have on people still working at tech firms like Google or MS?

Have you ever had any issues with IP?
"A startup is like a bicycle." I think only a business person would come up with such an analogy. Remember, it implies there is somebody else sitting in the seat.

And the VC is riding you? Certainly not your customers, in the early stage, since you may not have any. And each of the founders we know is already a bicycle wheel, not the rider. Must be the VC, right? Remember, business people and large software companies see programmers as cogs or wheels, important only as part of a system. If you play along with their analogies, you are just asking for trouble.

How about a different analogy, which favors us, the software guys? A startup is like... Fill in your own reply.
Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center." - Peter Drucker
And needless to say, let's NOT impeach anybody! :)
They seem to release things internally first. This makes a lot of sense, but yes, doesn't help much with things targeting non-hackers.
hello vlad,

do you know how many many of your users found out about the service via a recommendation/referral?
From what I understand, Jobs could hack, too. It's only standing next to Steve Wozniak that makes him seem unhackerly.
They price it by making it up.
How do you let PG know you're the Jobs?
I found some by Paul Graham, of all people, when I typed in "a startup is like" into Google:

"A startup is like walking on your hands. A startup is like a pass/fail course. A startup is like a small boat in the open sea. A startup is like a mosquito. A startup is like a hang-glider launch.

No.

A startup is like being a mosquito trying to fly a hanglider-boat while waking on your hands and not failing school."

Can somebody top that (and throw in a marketing aspect?)
i.e. how does YC judge non-technical people on the app?
comments on relevant sites is a good way to validate a persons ideas, domain knowledge, and thoughtfulness, but my main contribution's have been to TC, AVC, Flickr, and others, so I get no benefit from that here. Maybe a hot idea for a simple web 2.0 startup would be an aggregation tool of all comments by a user across the sites they use. Could work well with OpenID.

Maybe I'll add that to the question in the application that asks for "any other ideas you've considered" :
I learned a couple things from a few similar projects, and realized there was a gap in the market for a particular product. The firm I was with (and some others who approach it in a similar fashion) all did custom development for this particular business problem.

Nothing in the world wrong with consulting, that's for sure. It's just not scalable. I'm still completely amazed at how big the Big 4, Sapient, and a few others have gotten.
Its income period. If you are reasonably frugal any sort of "real" programming job is enough to handle the loan payments.

But no matter how frugal you are a $40000 debt is unlikely to be paid off on $10000 in funding. You would be making a big bet not only on a success but a timely one. So yes I think student debt is a large deterrent for those who have it.
I think the main part of the "Jobs-Wozniak" relationship that people forget to mention is that Jobs approached Wozniak and thought that's what they should market.

In other words, you're not a Wozniak just because you're heavily into technology. Wozniak created a bunch of stuff because he wanted something very useful for himself and he was going to create it on a tight budget. That is actually what great leaders do (at least according to some leadership books and my own experience)--they don't create something and then force it onto other people. Nor do they tell people what to do. They simply start doing it themselves and then other people notice and want to take part. (In other words, if you want people to do what you're saying, start doing it yourself and people will copy it or want to be around you when you prove it works. Don't just start telling people what to do.)

So, Wozniak is more than a technical guy. He was exhibiting silent leadership about hardware. And Jobs was exhibiting leadership in how software should be later on.

If you think you want a Jobs, are you a Wozniak to even have such a comparison? In other words, are you creating a software or hardware product for yourself that makes things so much easier and better that other people notice it and approach you and tell you, we can sell this? Remember, Wozniak didn't ask anybody. That's the relationship that happened. Not, "Oh, you created a bunch of code, let's try to somehow convert it into a business." The idea made sense in the first place.

So, if you're 100% technical, the best thing to do is to show what you do to everybody. Don't force it on to them, and don't worry about anybody copying you since if you're clearly enjoying what you're doing and they think it's a worthwhile thing to do, everybody will want to join you. Remember, if you're a Wozniak, it means you can basically display your ideas everywhere, even to roomfuls of technical people like Woz did, and know that everything will be OK.
The First Free Open Innovation Portal
The Jobs is the one filling out the application for the Woz.
Well, what I meant was that it's a dangerous frame of mind to look for innovation only by crossing existing things. Originality helps :)
Ahh, then the irony is actually that I am the not-smart one :). Sorry, newcomer here.
no technical know how when building a web company is going to be a problem.

But I'm building a web startup, and I'm not an engineer/developer. I do know a lot about the web and product development so my eyes don't roll back when the conversation turns to apache logs, SSL stamps, and server side scripts.

I would suggest documenting your concept in a simple word doc, starting with the primary result, then spell it out step by step.

After you have the core concept in place, talk to web developers about the project, if the idea is hot, and they have the right skills you could be on your way to success.
Once in a while customers actually tell me that they've referred someone, so it must be happening. It's nice to have customers say they would tell their friends in a survey response, whether or not they actually do. :)

Also, the best part, by the way, is you can then contact those who said "needs improvement" and ask them what happened. The article talks along the lines of you "can" do this. I say, you HAVE to do it.
Perhaps I'm wrong about this - but I don't think you could pick out a future entrepreneur from a group of children. It's not about how bright you are - although that helps. It's more about their work ethic, drive, what they want from life, etc. It certainly has nothing to do with testable skills such as mathematics, writing, or even programming ability (programming affinity is a different matter...)
Actually, you are wrong. Why pay off debt that is only costing you 6-odd percent a year (or less if you managed to refinance a few years ago) when you could invest that money and average 8-10 percent a year (or better). If you have enough money to pay off your mortgage, shove it all into the stock market. You'll come out ahead over the 30 years you're paying your mortgage.
That's funny. I work at a place that's supposedly full of hard technical (and creative) problems. But they're always someone else's problems.

And for every hard problem at a "real" job, there's 10 annoying ones. I bet the startup ratio is probably similar, but they're YOUR problems (hard and annoying), not someone elses.
We encourage startups to explain themselves this way to investors and reporters, but not necessarily to think of the project in these terms themselves. Though the Zenters were pretty clever about their X of Y: they chose Gmail precisely because it was not merely web-based mail, but redefined what a mail program could be.
I agree.

I remember reading a chapter of Hackers & Painters in which PG states that he was able to implement new features so quickly, that it seemed to his competitors as though he possessed some kind of secret weapon. Instead, he was simply using Lisp, a powerful and highly abstract language.

What he doesn't explicitly mention is that he is an expert at Lisp, having published two books on the language -- not to mention having a PhD from Harvard in Computer Science, where he probably became an expert using the language (although, admittedly, I have never been able to track down PGs graduate research work...).

This is what gave ViaWeb their competitive edge in the section of the e-commerce market and led to their success. As a startup, you're unlikely to succeed. You'll want all the advantages you can possibly attain.
Originality is not, in itself, valuable in many markets. It's often a liability.

So maybe it's more true that originality hurts. That is, you don't want to be as original as possible, you want to be only as original as you can afford to be.

Joe Kraus's stellar lecture at Startup School last year explained this pretty well.
Gmail did a pretty good job redoing a certain technology, web based email, in this case. Powerpoint is a technology that needs reworking.
Of course, my parents aren't paying. In fact, the only reason I wish to be mildly rich is so that I may buy my dad a long vacation away from his job.
lol, thanks zaid...I take it that wasn't a compliment? I learned quite a lot of lab work simply from building a solar car ( http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~hec/pictures.html ) as a side project. So , in University, I was able to maintain an okayish GPA because I managed to do good in labs.
What are the implications for UK born entrepreneurs looking to start in the US. Is a visa needed?
I think this is a great essay, but it's missing one very important factor which keeps me from starting a startup (successfully so far) - networking. I don't know the right people, and knowing people is so much of the battle (as I've found recently).... I guess that's not much of a problem if you are Paul Graham, or know Paul Graham. But, it's a problem for average joes like me. Spend all your time hacking on a problem and no time meeting the right people and you'll still have problems with your startup, like getting funded, getting known by the public, etc. That takes people.
I just finished reading this essay and there were so many sentances that resonated for me that I may have to frame the whole friggin thing. We had originally applied a year ago for the Y Combinator summer program of 06. We didn't make it but we did the startup on our own instead and it continues to be the most rewarding experience of my life: JumpBox.com Paul, you are an absolute beacon in this industry. I look forward to reading all these comments on this post next...
Hmm. I'm not at all sure that 'entrepreneurship' is a real word.
Better yet, let's start a poll polling people about how much they hate polls [pic] [video] [NSFW].
A startup story from 1984
You're not picking out future entrepreneurs per se you're just getting the best kids. The odds are some of those kids are going to want to start their own company and when they do you are in a perfect position to help them and recoup some costs if it takes off. When you do find an entrepreneur it's just the prize in the cereal box, you're still teaching the children and getting paid to do it.
TIME Best Inventions 2006
Yes, I'd have more or less the same view; I don't know enough people, and I doubt I have the social skills to court VCs or similar. I've worked for a couple of startups/ex-startups, and in each case there was at least one person there from the beginning who was very good at things like that.
Just Announced - Yahoo Mail API
Traffic Data for Web 2.0's 25 Sexiest Sites
remember pb's (to distinguish him from pg) definition of a good product: the suffix "that actually works".
From http://tlb.org/eunicycle.html:
"Some time ago I built a self-balancing two-wheeled scooter. Since then I realized that two wheels are redundant, and only a single wheel is needed to make a ridable vehicle."
Simply put, no.

Unless he's rich and hard working. Then he is of some use.
"The Hug Shirt is a shirt that makes people send hugs over distance!"
Gut feeling says it does have an impact. I recall reading that reddit takes into account how long a user has been registered.

The karma system is pretty interesting... there are definitely many variables to play with in calculating "karma," but the end goal should be largely the same -- measure a user's contribution to a community and also how trustworthy the user.

While I am not familiar with current systems, it does look possible to accumulate the same number of karma points by say, submitting a few very popular articles, or by submitting many less-popular articles. So are these two users treated equally when their scores are the same? If yes, then the system is ignoring some valuable information! If no, then karma becomes a rather meaningless measure.
Stop it with the sockpuppet accounts or we'll ban the site.
maybe I'm getting old, but I'm totally done with fighting against manufacturers to get their products to do the sort of things they should've done out of the box.
look no further than gmail for domains.
Om Malik: Iminlikewithyou will be "as addictive and as powerful as Facebook"
This will never take off as an applet. Huge mistake. Hope no one here is creating applets.
We do, in a sense: some people who apply we already know, because people we've funded recommended them. If you can impress the founders of a YC startup, that counts for a lot.

This site was designed partly as an additional filter. It works too. When I met danielha I knew his name because he was #1 on News.YC.
Is there a way to change my password? I don't see a form for it anywhere, but maybe I missed it. If it doesn't exist, this would be a great feature to add for sure.
Paul writes: "The big mystery to me is: why don't more people start startups? If nearly everyone who does it prefers it to a regular job, and a significant percentage get rich, why doesn't everyone want to do this?"

You have a logical disconnect here, involving the self-selecting nature of the group. One could just as easily say: most people who try bungee-jumping enjoy it - why doesn't everyone bungee jump?
I certainly view hacking as a lifelong profession. The reason I started a startup was not so I didn't have to work, but so I could work on what I wanted-- particularly unprofitable stuff like programming languages.
But the existing RSS feed only gives the headlines ...
That's looking at it from the business's point of view, not the users' point of view. Also, it still doesn't make much sense.
There are a lot of "best practices" of Web development that were good decisions at the time but which are no longer needed.
Coder to Co-Founder: Entrepreneuring for Geeks (Marc Hedlund talk @ ETech)
Interview with YC's Jessica Livingston about what makes a good startup founder
Valley Idol: Heysan's Marie Brattberg (Seeks Engineers)
I really like this idea. I've had some girls that I'm friends with have some really bizarre experiences on dating sites. This one seems like a much safer route and doesn't require a long survey to match your compatibility. Seems fun also and not like the other sites where most people are looking for 'the one'. I wish them luck!
Hello. I am Aur Saraf.

Social skills are learnable. Very learnable.

I believe that every geek should submit himself to a crash course in social skills (to a level where he can control a room in a party). It's really not that hard. The problem is that it's one of those problems where no one would admit it and therefore I currently research the field alone, recording my results in private (anyone interesting in starting a community dedicated to it should contact me by mail, hunt my address).

Aur Saraf
Creating Value
Ask the founders of auctomatic; they're currently doing it.
Now I'm really curious about this website.... any invites available anywhere?
Top Ten Signs Your Software Project is Doomed