skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
'... been seriously waiting for a Scrubs-style primetime comedy on startups and/or Silicon Valley-esque entrepreneur culture ...'

AGENT: "So tell me about the show, what's it about?"

NERD #1: "Well its 4 guys, sitting inside on computers typing, making jokes, writing code and eating pizza trying to reshape the social networks in cyberspace."

AGENT: "So do you go outside?"

GEEK #1: "No, we don't need to. I just look up 'alt.nerd.obsessive' and find the google location & look it up on google map."

AGENT: "Do you do normal things?". "You know Like go to cafe's and meet women?". "You know talk, drink coffee?"

GEEK #2: "I saw a girl this week. I've counted three this week... including the one at the 7-11". D"o you know what I'm working on? I'm optomising a ...."

NERD #2: "Don't listen to them. They're doing server side work. We are the front end guys. I own a mac. It's got an OS10-X Tiger OS with ..."

AGENT: zzz... zzz... zzz...

NERD #1: "Guys, guys your blowing it, jeez. Now look what your've done. You've put the agent to sleep. How we ever going to get on TV?"

Geek #2: "What about YouTube?"

===========

Oh yeah it's really going to catch on :)
This seems like a good suggestion. If I get an invite to the Startup School, I'll be there.
when you say "... money is going to attract all sort of folks..." are you talking about employees? end-users? useless affiliates? all of the above?
If you've got this feeling that says: "why do I need somebody else? I can build/do everything myself", then I know what you're talking about. But if you only look at the fact that there are only 24 hours in one day, and that everybody can make an honoust mistake easily spotted by another person, it's a neccasity :)
You need someone to bounce ideas off of and help you refine your product well before the company is started. And then when it comes time to get into company mode, you definitely need someone to help bear the load and continue to develop the service and product. It usually ends up being that same person. No matter how brilliant you think your idea is, I guarantee that if you spend a few days hashing it out with someone you consider your peer, it will end up being 10 times the product. So here's my answer a slightly different question than the one posed- at no time does it make sense to be alone developing a business.
There's a good talk by doug kaye of itconversation with Jeff Bar on using (Amazon) S3 storage with Gigvox media. They have essentially outsourced their hardware & servers (distribution) instead concentrating their efforts on podcasts. ~ http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1728.html

worth the listen to see how one company has tackled the 'temporary' scaling problem.
I enjoyed the article but I kept waiting for him to get to the part where you really practice. I was disappointed right at the beginning that he combined study and practice into one concept called practice and then pretty much all of his drills were about studying. The truth is I think most programmers, especially good ones, are self-made, which implies also that they most certainly know how to step outside of their comfort zone and study- sometimes compulsively.

On the other hand, you really don't see a lot of programmers who practice (the real definition, not Steve's)- and I was excited that he was going to write about something I've been thinking a lot about but he never did.

Here's a real example of programming practice- establish a baseline and then repeat the coding exercise from scratch until you feel like you could code it with your eyes closed. Like that FizzBuzz program from the post a few days back that a bunch of us spontaneously coded- erase what you did and code it again. Figure out how to write it in lisp, then erase your code, time yourself, code it again.

If it sounds silly, actually try it- you really do gain something. Time yourself going through the vim tutorial (if you're not already a master)- do every single example 2x- and try to beat your time later. That's real practice, rarely practiced.
Alternate premise: businesses that survive and thrive are simply the ones that avoided really dumb mistakes. http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/ I loved this book.
Best ones you can get for the cost of pizza and coke if what you intend to implement is cool enough :)
Intro to funding: Friends and Family
or crested at least. probably. but that's ok since no one defined web 2.0 to begin with.
Yes, but you wouldn't start anything in the first place if you were *afraid* - you would get a nice steady job at a big stable company.
I think you should know by now not to listen to what others think and just go for it if you believe you can do it alone and have enough determination. Be prepared to be a developer, web designer, marketer, salesperson, etc., all at the same time. If nothing else you will at least have fun!
I know a man near San Diego who started a business and borrowed from friends and family. The business didn't take off like he wanted and he got very depressed- feeling like he had let down all of those friends and especially family. He took his life shortly afterwards which was obviously the last thing any of us would've ever wanted.

Make sure that those who invest understand what kind of a risk it is. If you ever catch yourself saying to someone close that you don't see how it could fail, or offering a huge rate of return and yet saying that it will almost definitely be successful- then you yourself do not understand the risk and probably should probably take a reality pill. Oh, also, if you ever find yourself accepting an investment from (usually a family member) someone who will absolutely need that money back in 6 months or else their standard of living will be adversely affected- you're doing something wrong- you are not managing risk as you should.
Good post. Yeah I wouldn't do this unless two things were both true: 1) The person could afford to do without the money for quite some time, 2) I was pretty sure it would succeed.

It's awfully hard to gauge #2 when it's your idea and you've got yourself emotionally wrapped up in it.

I'm beginning to think there's an entire class of startup funding that needs to be written about a bit more--spouse support. If you're married and your spouse can earn enough money to pay for the household for a discrete amount of time then that's perhaps the greatest bootstrapping source imaginable. Seems like a few of us here (from other posts I've seen) are considering this.
For those just starting out (10 dumb mistakes)
How to have a 36 hour day
I know some of you have put your blogs under your user profile, but in any case, who here has a blog? mind us having a look?
These ideas need some refinement, but:

If an article you submit reaches the end of the "new" page with no up votes it decreases your karma by a point. Yah, it would affect me too, but that's irrelevant.

Related, submitting a new article by someone with negative karma not allowed- or maybe the article is assigned that same negative karma that it must overcome...
Shaker Design Philosophy - Necessary, Useful, Beautiful
Agreed. I've actually gone ahead and tried. Contacted a developer who had a "team" in India and wanted to start a project. Well... lets just say I lost touch with him when I asked his entire team to sign an NDA. If you're going to look on Craigslist, have an NDA ready.
Make sure to check out the link to the "5 principles to design by" --- another great post.
all of the above, in that a corporation is a collection of interests. Depending on the capital structure, different players have different interests. Managing all of those in a way that promotes collaboration towards a common goal is a fine art, as they certainly will not all be aligned.

This is what intrigues me about the Y combinator approach. Anyone with 50K can fund a couple of kids out of school and if the chemistry is right, the idea has some merit, and a dash of luck (hard work always brings some luck), it can fly.
For the serial entrepreneurs among us: it's important to keep in mind that you only get one shot with friends and family money. If you don't succeed, and decide to move on to another idea, your friends and family will be very reluctant to invest in yet another venture. This can be problematic if you're the sort of person who likes to jump from idea to idea.

I financed a company a few years ago with a small amount of money from family, and ultimately it didn't take off. I'm now very hesitant to approach them again. I wish I had been a little more cautious before deciding to take that route...
The part about healthy eating is definitely true. I have a lot more energy, and need a lot less sleep, now that I'm strict with myself about my diet...
Peer Review my web app! (See Comment for more info)
I'd like to get some feedback and opinions on my web app Klipboardz.com. I built it so that my friends and I could all share links together without the whole Internet reading what we had to say. I thought other people might want that too so I built a social news site based on small groups. However, it doesn't seem to really be catching on with anyone. I'd like to know if any of you see a reason for that, something I may be missing by being too close to the problem. Please let me know what you think in the comments.
Is the only difference between this and, say, digg, the ability to block public access to a group posting area? It might just not be a compelling enough feature by itself.
Memo to Startup World: No, MSFT Isn't Buying You
Battling Isolation When Working at Home
This time the startup boom is no bubble
That and the Online TV section are the main features that make it different. I don't really like submitting to Digg, and now Reddit, because my posts rarely get anywhere. Also since the people I really want to talk to about it are my friends it does me no good because they can't easily find my posts. I built Klipboardz hoping that there were other people like me who read news sites but didn't contribute for fear of posting or because it seemed pointless. If they post on Klipboardz they know that their friends will see it and then if it makes it to the front page it's icing on the cake. But, as you said, it may be that there are't other people who feel that way, or that the feature isn't enough on it's own. The Online TV section is fairly new and I'm still fleshing it out. I have a PC connected to my TV in the living room and it's nice to just click on a movie or tv channel and start watching it without waiting for something to download. ;)
Looking for a summer job? Don't.
It seems that the crowd at OpenCoffee is mostly comprised of visiting international folk.

I'm going to stop by next week and check it out.

I'll let you guys know how things go.
This touches on an interesting problem. Those of us with limited social networks (aka not in grad school) who would like to collaborate with others simply don't have a way to meet other entrepreneurs. Err, sounds like a startup idea in the making ...
Product Strategy: Attacking dominant market share
How is this different from Blue Dot? http://bluedot.us/front
If you have a large skill set and can wear all the "hats" that need wearing then you can forgo a cofounder. If you can't wear all the hats then you want to partner with someone who can fill the hats you can't wear! (Did I take the hat analogy too far? ... lol)
Yeah, I read both these books before writing this article. "The Google Story" is history of Google while "The Search" is really a history of search itself. Between the two, I would recommend "The Search" since it covers a larger spectrum, and is written more recently.
VC investment in India up 90%
Good point! But I feel that most businesses attribute much of their fortune simply to coincidences. Randomness is a sign of complexity beyond human comprehension. We like to think we have control over our "destiny" but sometimes that just isn't the case.
Ajax Tutorials
Quick impression:

Has the rough look of a squatting site. The bold, underlined titles remind me of the style used in v|agra spam. The google ads are too numerous. I strongly recommend getting rid of them until you get serious traffic. They'll turn away potential users. Okay--those are just style issues, subject to opinion.
Haha you should have seen it before the latest 'redesign'! Unfortunately I'm not a graphic artist, but it may be time to find one. People don't like ugly sites, with the exception of craigslist.
What comes after AJAX?
Wikipedia founder to challenge Google & Yahoo
Change every occurence of 'cofounder' in your para to 'spouse'. What do you see? :)
It is hard to believe that any small startup can compete with Google anymore. Search is Google's domain and it will defend that turf to death. With more than 15 billion webpages indexed, it is no longer about superior technology alone but also the sheer mass of content available.
There's one other problem with single founders that I don't think gets enough press:

When you're a single founder, it's very easy to think in terms of "You against the world", with other people being mere tools in your quest for global domination. Because, well, a single-founder startup really is you against the world. ;-) Unfortunately, that attitude can carry over into dealings with employees, investors, etc. No employee is going to give his best effort when he thinks he's just a tool for some entrepeneur's quest for world domination.

When you have cofounders, there's much more of a shared sense of working towards a goal. If your smart, that'll carry over to employees too: they'll feel like they're working for the company and customers and not just for you. That kind of culture is very difficult to generate after the fact. You can start with it and lose it, but you can't start without it and hope to gain it.

It's interesting that one of the more successful single founders - Bob Metcalfe of 3Com - said that the secret of his success was "giving away his company". It's that kind of attitude that you need.
Your description should be more prominent. It's sitting obscurely next to the ads.

And about the ads: You don't need them, especially at this point. You don't have the traffic, I assume, to realize any type of real results from those ads -- and in the meantime you might be scaring away potential users.
I've read this argument in several posts: you're on dope if you are banking on an acquisition.

What most of these folks writing the articles are missing is that entrepreneurs, however optimistic they may seem, already know of all the risk and unlikelihood of them actually being acquired. We dream about it - but don't necessarily depend on it.

That is not to say that in any market there are tops 10-15 great sites. And if you can be one of them(which isn't too hard a feat) - by most innocent calculation you have a solid 7-10% chance of being acquired if there is an acquisition. 7-10% shot at relative fame is not too bad for something you doled out in few months and kept growing for couple years.
Yahoo Search Ads Will Displace Yellow Pages
Ten Years of Mobile Gaming-and Its Future
One of the most compelling reasons to have a co-founder is the support and shared perseverance. You could be an absolute whiz programmer but that means nothing if you collapse under the pressure.

When your company is in some trouble or you're facing an uphill battle, at least you know someone else is in the craziness with you.

"Our product won't scale, our user base growth is stagnant, and we're running out of money. We're in some mess." You'll eventually come to a situation such as this.

A good co-founder would respond, "Yes we are. Let's get working."
The 100 Hottest Web 2.0 Apps (Part 1)
Not everyone is from the area. Last year I flew in from Florida, and there was one guy there who came from Spain.
Adventures in Bad Interface Design
I'd be much more interested in an article about EC2 + Rails...
How Rumors Spread - sounds very similar to delivering a viral hit
I cannot see when someone has added a new comment to my question or link. Please color unread posts differently.
4) Is the technology more important than the application?
Isn't technology (here, Arc) merely a vehicle for the application?
juwo.blogspot.com
I don't think the idea of winning by having super-duper rocket scientists is antiquated. In fact, I think the world is just learning how fearsome a company can be if they get all the smart people.
I agree with the fact that "having confounder really helps in a great deal". But lets say if one can not find a good confounder, then does it make sense to just get someone for the sake of having confounder. Honestly I struggled a lot to find confounder because most of my friends are busy with their comfortable life now. Hence I decided to do it by myself.

I am founding company called Onista, which is a Social Marketplace. http://www.onista.com
I am developing everything by myself and I am on pretty good path to release Onista for public use in Summer time-frame.

Sorry if I was not clear, but what I meant by "Early Stage" was "Stage at which company releases 1.0 product for public use".

And yes I am in Silicon Valley.

Do I have all the required skills? Off course Not, but yes there is one strongest point I have is that I have a lot of determination and persistence. I am willing to learn whatever it takes to get things done.
Hope I will find a confounder or partner once I release Onista for public use. At least I will have something to show.

Am I doing the right thing?
Or is there any way I can change strategy?
While I agree that it's very difficult to compete on generic search, it's certainly not hard to compete in niche domains. And you don't need anything like 15 billion pages for those.
I entirely agree. The best way to build something is to get alot of smart people working on it--or rather, just enough smart people. The thing that Wikipedia leverages so powerfully is the ability of a wiki to let people work in parallel. Unfortunately, that advantage does not translate to building a search engine--you can't have people working separately, each contributing intelligence in their own domain, and expect to build a working algorithm.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but as far as I've seen, Jimbo is pretty much just flying around in his roflcopter talking up vapor on this one.
However, you need the correct subset of the 15 billion pages, which is only fractionally easier, and in some ways harder: google can just grab everything, and then pull semantics out. If you want to leverage your limited domain, you need to be able to be able to have semantics in your indexer/crawler, otherwise you're going to end up having to index everything anyway.

One exception, of course, is in genuinely finite-domain search engines, like Octopart. There, you know exactly where to send your indexer, so you can be very efficient.
If by "you're on dope if you are banking on an acquisition" you mean "you're on dope if you are banking on being acquired eventually" then it's sort of a funny point to be made by a VC. If you're taking VC money then presumably you're working toward a liquidity event and I am not hearing about many ipos these days.

I'm guessing his intended point is closer to the interpretation, "you're a dope if your banking on some specific acquisition" though sometimes he's not totally clear.
The ideas embodied in Shaker design are (in my opinion) almost always correct design rules (the almost being that, as always, you should break your design rules when they interfere with your goal), but aesthetics aside, there is a very relevant message here: in the startup phase, the focus should always be on creating what is necessary, useful, and beautiful. Useful explains itself (though it's often forgotten); necessary is the real Occam's razor of the group, and perhaps the important one for start-ups (i.e. during the initial angel phase, get your critical functionality implemented--a VC won't be impressed by great features if the core functionality doesn't work); beautiful is tricky. It's aesthetic. When it comes to code, though, beauty is usually directly related to maintainability and extensibility. Sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and what I think is atrocious C++ might be beautiful to you, and my beautiful Lisp might make you cry; what matters is that the code is beautiful to the person who has to interact with it.
Want To Win At Blogging? Promote Your Rivals, Say Yale Researchers
The code for the bookmarklet is refreshingly simple; glad to see that PG can design an interface that is minimal and functional, even in this age of wrapping everything in 12 layers of XML, JSON, SOAP, $ACRONYM.

Thanks for doing this, phil.
Yeah, Guy Kawasaki is a great example of the maxim that what really matters is "getting it", not so much "being it". Even though he's no hacker (and makes no claim to be) he understand hackers, which has made him incredibly effective at interfacing with hackers--which is really the hard problem of what he does.
SocialPicks: social stock picks & research
This was just to test out phil's bookmarklet.

(it works -- thanks phil!)
I had another bookmarklet whipped up to do the same but this one works a little better. Thanks. :)
Ah, I just realized that it had already been in for a week before parent :}

This was one of those features I was reluctant to experiment on to check on the status of. Perhaps news.yc needs a status page for new features or responses to feature requests here?

I suppose an RSS feed for pg's comments would be one fix.
Cisco Not Done With Social Spending
Yahoo discovered something similar in 1995. At the end of Yahoo search results they'd have links to do the same search at other search engines. People were surprised at their confidence at the time. But it wasn't just confidence: it made Yahoo the natural starting point.
I just noticed that the edit link on comments expires after a while. An alternative that helps with notification: disallow editing when a comment gets a response. That way I can scan recent comments on my user page to check for responses.
Only time (and a market that turns sour) will tell.
Success Is All in a Day's Work
I think the appeal is like that of a live show vs listening to a recording.
This is interesting, I'd never heard about it. Time for some research, I suppose. Yahoo's gambit is reminiscent of a real-world retailer telling a customer to go to a competitor to find the product they really want (my local bike shop did that once, and won my lasting trust).

In the case of bloggers, though, there is another effect in play: blogs succeed basically on connectedness, so for a new or up-coming blog, the most important thing is tying into the network of existing blogs in the relevant domain. It makes sense that praising, referencing, critiquing, generally interacting with "competing" blogs is the best way to jack into the community.
"mid twenties" -- pg in an email
Cool site. Are you affiliated with them?
new blog by founder and CEO of FeedBurner
hat tip Venture Blog:
http://p6.hostingprod.com/@www.ventureblog.com/articles/indiv/2007/001274.html
I have found that having a cofounder makes the process a little more easier. I tend to become more motivated when I feel that someone else is also dedicated to the cause. I think it is essential for killing bad ideas and thinking more creatively too. We come up with better ideas together than we do on our own. I know I have bad ideas sometimes but without that input from someone also involved in the company I find that the feedback I get isn't as beneficial.
Sun releases Game Platform as OSS
I think that's a good point, the ads aren't gaining anything for me and they take up screen space. Thanks.
We exist in similiar markets.:) Actually I hadn't realized they had the same kind of features before today.
Yahoo Answers adds Social Networking features
Do you have a $100m opportunity? If not, then you might not want VC money
My god, is that site cluttered with ads. Looks like a site from 1997. There was no "print friendly" (i.e. human friendly) link either. I just gave up.
Someone make a post about how it went, I may be able to join in on a later date (like April)
[videos] Larry Page and Eric Schmidt talk about entrepreneurship
O'Reilly Radar: Jedi build their own lightsabers