skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Europe will always be hindered by its inflexible and marginal immigration policy. If you want to be the best you have to draw in people from all over the world... India, Germany, Australia, Canada, etc. In my opinion that is what America gets right and what Ycombinator benefits indirectly from. It will be very difficult to reach the level of success that Ycombinator has and will achieve without changes to the macro-mindset. If at all anything this whole Yeurope thing will only increase the visibility of Ycombo in Europe and encourage more hackers to move to the USA.

Having said that, good luck to you guys at Yeurope.
I Don't Need 8hands To Reach My Friends
Kyte.tv launches: live blogging tool meets social network
they haven't (at least not in the public threads to date) because "Why Europe" as a name really makes sense as it is not the place people would normally go to start a startup given the intense regulatory environment there.

You got me laughing with that one, quite right. To be fair though, London is becoming increasingly competitive with New York for IPOs in the wake of Sarbanes-Oxley, so while you stand a greater chance of going to prison you might have an easier exit if that's the goal.
Find Top Keywords for Your Products & Websites
Google Earth gets new 3-D layers
can you be more specific -- where in ontario?
I agree with you. An unsolicited email would not be the smart thing to do -- it will get buried in the noise floor.
"The loan is a convertible note made to the entrepreneur's company. It is unsecured debt. If the company goes out of business, the entrepreneur is not personally liable in any way."

This seems to indicate that it's a NOT a personal loan, FWIW.
IBM to start selling MySQL products
SourceLabs looks to tame open-source sprawl
Not much of a "review"...
Your Business Idea: Hot or Not?
the Magic Ink article at worrydream.com/MagicInk is the best I've read on interface design.
Why is Scribd so hot? (includes funding details)
Set a deadline, Do it anyway
An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning
I'm very interested in applying theory or formula to "real life". PG used this to handle spam. What other types of things could Bayesian reasoning be used for?
Accelerate your vesting upon a sale
Six businesses that should hire Diggers
"I never cared so much for making a fortune...I only wanted to get ahead of the other fellows." - Thomas Edison
I prefer the opposite approach: every time you have a block of time, set a task list of things you want to accomplish in that block, and hold yourself to that.

Problem with deadlines is they tend to back-load a task. If you know you need it done in a week, you might figure it'll take you 3 days to do, and hence start it in 4 days. Of course, things rarely take as long as you expect them to, so you end going over the deadline anyway or stressing yourself out to make it.

With a task list, you'd start that task immediately, and it's done when it's done. If you go over, you have some padding before it's necessary, and you can decide whether to give up on your original task and start the next item, or push through with it and postpone everything else. It's also much less stressful, since things don't get bunched up around the deadlines.
Boost Your Business 100K Bplan Competition from Forbes
go Scribd! A "funding frenzy" is a new term for me, but must make the founders pretty happy.
Another way to fund your startup
I can see this having both a positive and a negative effect on open source software. It might help by making it easier for corporations to adopt open source software on a system-wide scale. If SourceLabs gains momentum, however, I can envision open source projects wasting valuable time promoting their software to SourceLabs or knocking on other open source software in order to "prove" that their solution is better. This time would be better spent developing future versions, addressing current bug issues, or any number of other possibilities. Also, the conflict that could arise would not bode well either.

So while I find it to be an interesting initiative, I really hope that the positives and negatives at least offset each other, and hopefully the positive aspects will make the entire project better for the open source community.
What great application of simple principles. Would be usable even on an iPod.
they are pretty responsive, this is not a typical VC deal where anything off the wire is in the garbage, they are actively soliciting you to contact them, much like the YC app.
I wouldn't worry so much about graphics programs - after all, there are no graphics on this site and you use it, right? Start by learning how to do valid markup and get good at CSS. I second the recommendation of http://alistpart.com
most business get started with loans. While there seems to be a high aversion to putting your own money in or borrowing money to get off the ground in tech and web firms, it pretty common in the small biz space as a whole.

One advantage is that it is fast, and you remain in control.
Videos about pitching to VCs
I didn't realize this was part of a tv show when I posted this link. Some of it seems pretty silly in that light.
Vote up if you want the submission title displayed as your browser title for bookmarking
I never set deadlines. I just work as fast as I can. Likewise when I was poor I never made budgets, but just tried never to spend any money.
Looking a bit further, news.yc doesn't seem to be very SEO friendly or accessible either. Maybe there was a reason for not needing to be SEO friendly, but not accessible? By this I mean that apart from the topic not being in the title, there's no use of HTML tags to confer semantics from the blocks of text, e.g. no use of H1-H6 tags, no use of lists for comments.

Is there a reason for this? I just thought it was good practice, but I'm still just starting out in web design.
You mean you want the submission title to be the title of the comments page about it?
Scibd is hot because its a brilliant idea (that no-one thought of) and its extremely well executed.
Idea: Online algorithm creation and sharing tool
Should be simply a port of existing software. I imagine a community of people sharing algorithms about many different subjects and at different levels of seriousness. My brother wrote a paper on Math Equations for the Socially Challenged in college that would fit well into this concept.
A deadline helps me to minimize features. "I can't build that and still make the deadline.." and then also, the question: Is this feature so important that the dealine can be moved for it?
Yes. Like now as I'm writing this reply if I wanted to bookmark this page, it would read "Y Combinator: Add Comment". From where you're reading it would read "Y Combinator Startup News". It would be more convenient for me if it was instead the original discussion/submission title. Right now, I copy the title beforehand, and paste it in when bookmarking.

Damn fast feedback, excellent work.
How easy did people find RTML to use?
How did you meet your cofounder?
Interesting story - voted up.

I can't help myself, though: the trophy (at the end of the story) looks like it could have been a urinal from the original star trek series.
I'm thinking about using context parsing as in "I need to go to the store tomorrow" will add the event "I need to go to the store" to the calendar for tomorrow.

But for some things I need a certain structure like this: "Wait for Bob to finish report, do whatever". And "wait for Bob" would send an email off to Bob that he needs to finish the report.

I want to know how easy it would be to train a user to follow that structure for certain things and would like to know if any users had trouble with something like RTML.
I met one in the post office by overhearing his conversation and recognizing a fit. Another I met through linkedin by searching for a specific skillset and a third I met by asking a friend if he knew any good matches for my project.
He was an undergrad at the university where I went to grad school. Though he's only 1 year younger, there was a 2 year overlap because he got kicked out of college for a year for not doing his classwork.
How totally odd. I never knew this existed.
Our initial reaction was to fill it with beer. ;)
Good point.

Now, if only the US didn't follow the EU footsteps regarding immigration rather then the other way around...

As someone who is neither European nor American, moving to the EU was much simpler for me then moving to the US would have been. In fact, I would probably not have even gotten a tourist visa to the US these days (which used to be really easy a decade ago)!

The USA is no longer an immigrant friendly country, I'm afraid - not unless you come from a one of a small group of preferred countries like England or Canada.
The answer is one word: traffic.

Any startup that gets huge traffic (except from porn or "illegal" music sharing) will have VCs all over them.

As a first approximation it's as simple as that. If you have a lot of traffic you matter, and if not, you don't.
Congrats, that's a great story.
Looks like it's for existing businesses only and has a very long process... I can't imagine how any startup could reasonably expect to have the same information delivered over such a broad timeline.
If your company fails, you are not obliged to pay the money back, you can walk away. However, if you succeed to the point of getting your first round of funding, then you have to pay back the money with interest. But I'm glossing over an important point. They really don't want their money back--they want equity in your company. So they will convert the loan to equity, however, they want up to a 25% discount on that equity.

From an example on their web site, if they lend you $100,000 and you end up getting Series A funding, then they can convert that $100,000 loan into $137,333.33 of equity in your company. Your company's valuation will ultimately determine just how much of your company you are giving up for this money.
I have to imagine that pitching to VCs is bad enough, adding reality tv to that must make it a complete nightmare.
I would not recommend this. 200 hours writing a business plan that you could have spent building version one? This is the way startups would begin life in the Soviet Union, if it still existed.

Business plan contests are only good if (a) they take near zero time (i.e. you simply submit a business plan you've aready written) and (b) the judges are people you want to impress.
Amen to that. Those guys have done an amazing job. What especially impressed me was how involved they are in their own community. I posted a presentation on scribd on APIs and one of the founders (Jared) commented on it personally. A little thing, but very impressive to me.
Dinner party at a friend's apt.
While that might be true I firmly believe that writing the plan helped us to have a much better focus for our application. Also, the 200 hours was for both writing the plan and building the prototype.
I think the problem with Europe as a place for startups is not the government regulations or the immigration policy. The sources of Europe's weakness are the same as Iowa's: (a) lack of angel investors, (b) society as a whole doesn't understand or support you if you start a startup.

Whereas in Silicon Valley starting a startup is considered an acceptable thing to do (by your landlord, your girlfriends' parents, potential cofounders, etc), and there are lots of investors ready to give you money if you show the least promise.
I would say SCite editor, I grew up coding with it :-)
Tried a project with one and saw we worked great together. Anyone you are not sure of, try working with them on something and see what happens. If you are still not sure you haven't lost out. Plus, working on stuff is quite fun.

You really need to test all aspects of the relationship with cofounders. So deliberately acting angry to see what they do or needing help and seeing how they respond are examples.

Spark is one thing you notice if things work out. Good luck!
for bay area folk interested in seeing what a Bplan competition is all about, the final presentations for the UC Berkeley Bplan is Thursday, April 26th.

learn more at: http://bplan.berkeley.edu/

a nice thing about this event is that the judges are top Bay Area VC's.
Introducing FoundRead - Web Entrepreneurship Blog
Ooohh A List Apart, very good choice, I go there at times to get designs for my websites.
Forms vs. Applications
"Thats why its so important to follow your passion. You do your best work in an area that you love. A lot of creative talent goes to waste in this world because people tend to choose money over their passion."

I know it's been played out millions of times but I always get excited whenever I see a quote like this.
One at startup school '05; one was a friend of a friend I met at MIT (who then co-founded a YC-funded company.)
Why Research Labs Fail at Innovation
What We Can Learn about Focusing User Attention from Sex
Lived across the hall from him in college, sophomore year.
for me it was the same way that i learned programming or guitar:

1. start with tutorials or poking at an existing design until it does what you want; learn the fundamentals of html and css from a dummies-level book or tutorials

2. find motifs or patterns you like, and reverse engineer (i.e. steal) them: specifically, start with a canvas with the original image on the left and try to create it from scratch on the right

3. repeat 2 until you have a toolkit of techniques (e.g. web 2.0 motifs like gradients, rounded corners, patterned backgrounds, reflections, all that cliched shit :)) and can put together things from scratch

4. integrate more formal theory (graphic design books, typography, photoshop/illustrator technique, web design books, etc.)

your first few designs will suck, but you'll get better :) but definitely learn by doing.
I second that. I bookmark many comments threads and the default title comes up as "Y-Combinator startup news". Then I copy the post title and paste it in my title field. It would be nice if I can skip the copy-paste step.
semantics are obsolete.
Startup Meme Compared to Other Startup Focused blogs
And really, it's not the news but the communities that form around it which really drive the traffic.
The Wing IDE ( http://www.wingware.com/ ) is by far the most polished Python IDE, but will cost you.

Although, if you have an open source project apparently they may waive the licensing fees.

http://www.wingware.com/
http://www.wingware.com/store/prices
The YCombinator Clones
So this is just a blog entry...
I thought it's a new site like hotornot where you submit your idea and users rate it.
vote up if you think that is a good idea for a website ;)
The possibilities are endless. Replace the phrase, "Bayesian reasoning" in your sentence with a subject that you know well. Say, Calculus for example.

Do you see why your question is hard to answer? Don't feel bad, we all get excited when we hear about a new cool tool that promises to solve XYZ. Java (back when it was new), wavelets, Bayesian analysis, RoR, etc.. Consider two extreme options:

1) Find a problem you want to solve, and then figure out what tools will help you solve the problem.

2) Learn a tool really well, and then start applying it to problems. (grad school is really good for this.)

If you really want to do (2) with Bayesian analysis, look at this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=14540 . Either path requires lots of effort, but both can be rewarding.
I recall Mr. Gates in the mid to late 90's talking about the impact the Internet was going to have on their business model and their efforts to be at the forefront of that. The problem was, and always has been, that they couldn't and can't change their entrenched business model for a new one. Typical to the Innovator's Dilemna, an entrenched organization cannot easily remodel its' business practices to meet new challenges. IBM has, to some extent, but the premier example is, obviously, Apple. In the cases of IBM and Apple they had to undergo an almost complete demise of the company to fight their way to a new approach. I'm willing to bet that a similar situation will come about in the case of Microsoft. The only question is will they (like the others I mentioned) be able to recover in time or will they be the Wang of this century?
Come on people use the feature request link!!!!
Hardest programming class I could take during undergrad. Spent weeks worth of sleepless nights hacking in a lounge working on a final projects.

I dropped out first, started a company, then came back just in time for him to drop out and start the company we're currently working on.
Looks like the ycombinator (the company) has been ycombinator'd (the function)
Blogging about blogging alert.
I concur with you re: angel investors and societal support and an understanding of what it takes to build a company around technology.

But I also think a society that is vibrant from a cultural perspective is equally important -- you need a multicultural mix of art, science and liberal thought to attract the fringe elements who _think_differently_ to your environment. The multicultural aspect is necessary now more than ever considering the global context in which technology is applicable. It is these fringe elements who create startups. Both Stanford and San Francisco provide that mix to the Bay area. You could say that Iowa lacks this, as does most of the USA between NYC and SF.

In Canada for instance, there is the right cultural mix, but a lack of intelligent capital. So I agree with you.
Scribd Will Definitely Make A Big Exit
Have Product Placement Deals Ever Found Their Way Into Novels?
It's definitely getting very meta around here.
One of the hardest parts of a "seed investor" is having actual successful experience in an early stage company (See PG, Trevor, and RTM in ViaWeb-Yahoo Store), and being able to use that experience when mentoring a young company.

Having talked with all kinds of investors it's amazing how much more you can respect and understand the advice of someone who's been in your place before - and how much more relevant they can make it through their own experiences.
Y2 Combinator launches: the startup starter starter.
Whoops! Guys, if you hover the mouse over the submission title and right click, click on "Bookmark This Link...". This will add it WITH the submission title, instead of the default "Y Combinator Startup News".
The traditional claims for success/failure of companies inside/outside of the valley comes from Venture Capitalists who have years worth of statistics coming from their own investments.

The stats point to a change in percentage chance of success for any incremental distance from Palo Alto/Mountain View that a venture funded company is moved. (I don't know the numbers offhand - but it's significant, even down to whole percent numbers per 10 miles if I remember correctly)

From someone who's recently been talking to many people about the choice to live in Boston, Mountain View/Palo Alto, San Fran - or somewhere else, every person (investor/entrepreneur/historian) points to MV/PA.

Many people (and firms like Sequoia ...etc) won't invest unless you're in the valley.
The application generator is hilarious. PC, your first name better not be "Paul."
He gets marketing.
Does that include this submission as well?
Afraid not -- it's Patrick
Yeah, I got my rejection from then in less than a week. They seem to read the summaries, if nothing else.
I don't see the cool thing about UStream. I hate seeing people sit in front of their computer with a web cam. Justin actually goes outside and does things.

I think Justin.tv's problem is the scaling. The cutting out isn't too bad, but once they hit 400 viewers it starts to becoming a pain to watch.
Advertised for one on campus - used facebook and posted flyers all over the CS dept.

Got 15 interested guys, picked two and spent the summer with them hacking on a project. We lived and worked in a tiny apartment, all sleeping in the same room. Best summer of my life.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I agree.
"I like Y2 Combinator, is nice!"
How Digg uses LAMP to scale downward
Good points, however I think once the novelty of justin.tv wears of, viewers will stray. That already seems to be happening.

But that's OK for justin - because their business model is to sell this solution to others, and they've already proved it works.

On the other hand, Upstream is more of a social network type site that takes facebook stalking to a new level. I envision people using it to keep tabs on what their friends are up to. Who knows if it'll work, though.
All sleeping in the same room?

Wow. That's "hardcore".
Ask.com Launching AdSense Competitor
I also just realized that we might need a new acronym for Ruby. LAMR doesn't sound good
Really wicked, Is this done by YC itself or someone else came up with this idea.

I really love the sense of humor.
I'm surprised more sites don't do something like this.

Apparently just adding the Alexa Site Stats Widget to your site can bump your alexa ranking by 10-20% or more for smaller sites.

It's really the fault of Text-Link-Ads, ReviewMe, bloggers, etc for placing such emphasis on Alexa rankings, giving sites an incentive to game the system.
Brillant! When's the application deadline?
Is this a joke by pg?
No; YC had nothing to do with it.
I think you mean "This site is inspired by, but not affiliated with YCombinator."
why dont it work??
Web Apps making: A guide to costs and times involved
I think you meant to say "This site is inspired by, but not affiliated with sites that are inspired by, but not affiliated with YCombinator."
"There's a big difference between a restaruant and craigslist."

Awesome point. I'm in the same boat to a degree -- I have several businesses that throw off a combined $3-5k per month in cashflow. Nothing to sneeze at, but you have to start somewhere.

Also just sold one "lifestyle business" (was only putting in 1 hour a month on it, literally) for low to mid five figures.

"Startups" seem to have that Get Big Fast mentality, where you're either the next YouTube in 18 months, or you're a failure. But it doesn't have to be that way...
Have you guys heard of The Business Experiment?

It was trying to do a lot of what's being described here.

I also tried to do something similar back in the day, a kind of "human capital investment group."

What any "group" that gets together like this will inevitably find is, 99% of people, or more, will just want to put up ideas. The people who would actually implement them (like myself and other entreprehackers on here), already have way to many ideas of their own that they don't have enough time to pursue.
Couldn't you have given this article a more descriptive title?
This was an interesting read, almost skipped it because of the title.
There's a difference between adding value and doing things for you.

Believe it or not, once you get into YC you still have to put your own work into your start up and not expect YC to magically work everything out for you...
HitForge, a new twist on incubators
Everything that's truly true is recursive in nature, my friend :)
High school math team.
You can find full episodes online in less official places. It's a pretty good show but is skewed towards entertainment rather than investment. The 'dragons' tend to ridicule those pitching and take every last possible percent of equity when they do invest.
Really interesting post ;)
Recruiting the Top 1 Percent - Joel Spolsky
How To Submit Video Directly From Mobile Phone To YouTube
Still looking for the cofounder..
Paul Kedrosky: If You're So Dumb, Why Aren't You Rich?
There's also the i-RAM ( http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/gigabyte-iram/index.x?pg=1 ), a battery-backed RAM disk. My employer uses it for an app where disks simply couldn't deliver the latency we needed, and yet it had to be fault tolerant enough to survive a power failure.

Edit: wow, totally did not see Sam_odio's original post, linking to exactly the same product. Oops. And yCombinator doesn't allow us to delete comments...
Looks like rewording of what Ryan Carson has said over at http://www.barenakedapp.com/
web audience measurement kerfuffle: why it's a good thing
Do as I say, not as I did