skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Group health insurance is one of the perks of having at least 2 founders. According to my insurance broker, we just need to people on payroll working at least 25 hours a week to qualify for a group plan. Healthy people in their 20's get better rates than the elderly. (Zuckerberg's real reason for only wanting to hire young people)
Mozilla Transforming Into a Social Network
I'm excited to take a look at Joost and see how it's going to work out. Has anyone tried it? Do you have any insights into if it's the 'next big thing' in online TV?
Here's my result:

http://www.likebetter.com/quiz/results?quiz_id=556637953&user_list_id=6
Work for a YC Partner: Anybots is hiring
i just noticed this -- i'm logged in
and i visit www.fluidplay.com, it doesn't redirect me to /sri, and i end up staring at the create form, and "sri, what it do, baby?" at the top. clicking on the "sri" (which is kinda small), takes me to /sri -- (i would consider the /sri part my dashboard, and should be redirected there if i am signed in, when visiting fluidplay.com....)
I just assumed it was used as an example.

typo
Weblin adds a dimension to the web: Meet the surfer near you - Amazing!
I don't think he's suggesting you shouldn't have posted it.
A meetup at last week's WebInnovators conference would have been perfect. Unfortunately the next one is 2 months away.
looks super cool.
the ad is quite nice.
and done by the founders of skype and kaaza (!)
i predict that within 10 months it'll sell for $10 billion to microsoft.
there, i said it!
Google Desktop Now Works on Mac
how much is the rent?
will probably make my hair stand on end comparing it to Kansas rents.
(just asking so I can get my kicks for the day and skip drinking coffee this morning)
invite me!
They specifically said they are not seeking cash-for-service because we probably don't have much money.
My site is iJigg.com
Are you saying that if someone built a house with an inflatable mallet and someone else built one with a nail gun there would be no difference of quality in the resulting house, or that one wouldn't be completed sooner, or be more extensible?
(Yes, you can laugh at me.)

I agree with you that all languages are tools (I love working with all kinds, actually). But aren't some tools better at some things than others? Or what would we need so many for?

I'm not saying Lisp is the nail gun and everything else is an inflatable mallet, but I do think there is a difference.

What I got out of the article is that Lisp is a tool that worked pretty darn well in a couple cases. I feel that's a good thing, because I kind of like Lisp.
Potentially stupid question: If they could sell the company today at $20-30mm, why would they take a pre-money valuation of only $15mm? Or is this standard for VCs to take a 'discount' on valuation? (instant upside!)

I know YC does this, but thought that was peculiar to that situation...
Anybody that can make a dollar using google adsense can make two using other means.
trading equity for pr seems risky. and not "opportunity" risky. they're giving you something with a limited life, that may or may not make any difference, in exchange for a tangible slice of pie. of course, your startup may not work out either, but i have to imagine you have a better chance of success than a pr campaign made by pr people.

why couldn't you do this "very specific (and fun) marketing idea" yourself?
The alternative is to convince YC that proximity isn't the most important thing. (It is an important thing, I understand, but it's not the most important thing.)

It'll take a very compelling story.
The Meaning of Money
Youtube Is Not Built On Copyrighted Videos
Actually, health insurance is an important factor. If you catch pneumonia or the flu, you're looking at getting knocked out for 2 months (pneumonia resulting from a "cold" that was not properly handled), 2 weeks (flu) without medical intervention. Personally, I'd rather take some meds and be back on my feet in 3-5 days than not be able to afford to see a doc or take some meds....putting my startup behind which would kill me more than an illness. Without insurance you're looking at least $110 for per doctor visit and about $90 bucks and up depending on what meds you need (PER prescription). Or let's say you broke your arm or leg because you tripped on your shoe laces while walking down the stairs of the Y Combinator building. Without insurance you're looking at about $2500 and up to get it fixed and that doesn't include the cost of seeing a doctor added into it.

Paying $120 bucks a month to cover potential injuries or finding affordable medical insurance and covering yourself for potential injuries is a definitely an important factor not only for yourself, your company, but also to prevent you from getting your co-founders sick.

It is true that if you're younger you are less likely to get sick. However, if you are under a substantial amount of stress, your immune defense will drop and your chances of getting sick increases. That's why you see a lot of people get sick during mid terms and exams.

So for all of you who are in a startup, I suggest you get at least 1000-2000mg of Vitamin C. Clinical trials have shown that taking 1000-2000mg (usually an 8oz glass of OJ, depending on type of OJ) of Vitamin C a day provides prophylactic use (prevents the occurrence) against acute stress induced illnesses.
Sorry, I couldn't resist...

But seriously, there are good PR firms in the same way there are good real estate agents or executive recruiters: they exist, but are few and far between.

I.e. it's one of those "looks easy" jobs that attracts a lot of driftwood.

So before you commit anything of value (cash, equity, or even your time), find out whether or not the firm is any good and can add any value for you.
You are probably correct. There were snide remarks made about Lisp in particular however, like claiming it is not "used in industry" and is thus "nonstandard". Similar remarks could have been made against any language the guy DIDN'T know. Regardless of the reasoning there are people like this who end up stamping Lisp (and other non-dominant solutions) out.
I think it may depend on the type of startup. If I was a "dating" related startup, I'd want to be in NYC. NYC is very huge on the "dating" scene. Heck, they have speed dating there where the guy has to make at least over half a million dollars a year and the girls have to be 'hot' to attend the speed dating session. Tickets cost $500 per person and the speed dating sessions are always sold out.
It is very politically difficult to raise taxes or introduce new taxes anywhere in the USA, even Massachusetts. Also many people in the USA are skeptical about socialized health care. The USA's system is definitely broken in some ways but it is not clear at all that the systems of other counties are not also broken in different ways.
I've already done "1. Start your own landscaping company" and it's definitely a moneymaker 8 months a year on the East Coast. Then I took what I've learned landscaping and started on "3. Start a website or blog" blogging about the landscape business. If there are any graphic designers looking for work designing flyers and logos let me know as google sends several people a day looking for landscaping flyer designs and templates.
I'm probably going against the grain here, but I think adding more attributes to RSS is a mistake. It's supposed to be about simple syndication. In the bank account example, rss simply isn't suitable and trying to make it suitable is a hack. How about using RSS to notify a customer of an event, but have the actual content of the event stored somewhere else?

In other words, use RSS as a notification service, and have the link attribute point to somewhere that contains the proprietary format. So, anyone can be notified of the event, if you want to get more details, use an adapter that's suitable for reading that particular format.
Buffett Wisdom
Why hasn't anyone just automated twitter yet? There should be a twitter for people who don't wanna type, it just senses what yer doing.
Good News for Startups and Angels: Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs Act 2007
DoubleClick Eyeing To Become eBay Of Online Ads
The short answer would be because the Delaware courts are favorable toward big business, much like New York. A long case history biased in favor of you, the business, is much more useful to you than a case history biased in favor of the consumer (California).

Legal troubles of any sort are a tremendous waste of expense and time and can cripple any company, big and small. That alone is worth incorporating in a company-friendly state.
You have to pay to visit a doctor? That's insane!

I mean, prescriptions, elective treatment I can understand. But are you saying that you actually need to pay just to walk into an examination room?
about $2600 for a 2 bedroom.
Entrepreneurial Idol - UC Berkeley, CRV and Om Malik
that's not a bad idea!
Warren Buffett once called Siegel's theories "demented".
Well, I'm actually interested in the specific differences rather than speculation. In the end content wins, but my curiosity was more on the technology. I'd like to find out more but at the same time I understand the Justin.tv guys will want to protect their trade secrets.
Languages are not just hammers. They are universes for thinking in.

So you're using Rails... What if I told you all your competitors were using Java and Spring? Gives you a surge of confidence, doesn't it? That's the feeling Lispers have about Rails programmers, for the same reason.
you know, the more I think about it the more I like it. Maybe I should apply to YC with this idea for the winter round?
The campaign revolves around a potentially viral Flash game that we(not the PR firm) are producing.The PR firm can help us increase our seed of the game.

I am not too worried about the fairness of things. Like pg says, if they can add 5% value for 4% stake they would be technically worth going for.

The key I am realizing is linking any kind of thing with performance and time not just one time help. We'll see.
For doctor office visits - they make sure you can pay before you see him. If you list that you do not have insurance, the
nurse or secretary to will tell you how much it will be without insurance to verify that you can pay the cost.
If you go to a "doctor's office" he has the right to deny you services if you can't pay (only for non-emergency incidences). However, if you are in an extreme emergency such as a heart attack or you're dying, he cannot refuse you his services due to the hippocratic oath.

However, doctors in hospitals are different. If you go to the ER (hospital related) the hospital doctor is REQUIRED to see you by US law...without verification of ability to pay. For doctors in hospitals, this is a big problem because we cater to a lot of homeless patients who walk out and do not pay...and of course one can't do anything about it since they're homeless.

Anywhoo, if you get treated in a HOSPITAL, always request an ITEMIZED list of charges. Anything that says "misc fees" you need to be weary off. Check for overcharges and outrageous charges. For instance, do you want to pay $170 for a "mucous recovery system" (BOX OF KLEENEX). Sometimes it's a "mistake" but sometimes there are unethical hospitals. Save yourself and your startup some money.

Cheerios.
This article can apply to situations other than real life. Anyone creating a virtual economy may benefit from reading this and other economics articles.

For example, iminlikewithyou's virtual economy. #4 may apply here:

"The size of the market is determined by the number of participants who want to exchange money for goods and goods for money."

So iminlikewithyou's virtual market size is the number of active users, right? Well, not necessarily. If a number of active users have no incentive to bid anymore, for whatever reason, the market size goes down. If it drops below a certain critical point, then people may lose faith in the market due to lack of goods and leave the service. Of course, I feel they're doing an awesome job and I don't expect this to happen. It's just an example.

The best markets are those with the highest number of people wanting to trade.

I think that creating virtual economies inside of a product is interesting because you have to create something people want (the startup's product) and then something people want inside the product (virtual goods, which happen to be cute women and men in iminlikewithyou's case). So if creating something people want is difficult, would creating something people want squared be difficult squared?
Join the Boston Startup Meetup group on Yahoo!

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/boston-startup-meetup/

We're having a get together next Wednesday evening in Cambridge.

Also, there's OpenCoffee Boston which is a working session between entrepeneurs and VC's:
http://boston.heyletsgo.com/event-122245

You can email me if you want to know more, or would like to get together: patfitz06 at gmail
Don't build soley on someone else's technology (witness Flock / Firefox)
This is a good thing to note. You can run into problems when:

1. You are using somebody else for infrastructure and that infrastructure changes/goes away/is suddenly more expensive. Witness Amazon AWS (which we're using), Google Maps, etc.

2. Your benefactor suddenly decides to compete with you. That happened to a company named Outlooksoft earlier last year when Microsoft decided to get into the budgeting and planning business. Outlooksoft had based their product 100% on a Microsoft infrastructure. They had to scramble to add support for other databases and G/Ls.
Mindful Startup Resources
Yes, it's an education barrier. BRL (Scheme adapted for web apps) has survived numerous attempts to quash it at my employer over the past 7 years, as different managers have needed educating.

The other education barrier is with programmers. The "Wow, this is simple and useful!" response comes in 15 minutes using Python or Ruby. With Scheme or CL it comes in a week or two, though it's stronger. I don't know if s-expr notation will ever have immediate appeal, or if it needs to grow on everybody.
New social networking site launched for wine entusiasts
I've got a few invites. If you want one, astonm at gmail.com.
That is why when we were planning iJigg it sounded really cool if we could wrap it around Facebook and its API. Even though in short-term it would be good, in long-term a) we'd be typecasted as a facebook feature and b) always be at the peril of a large corporation. Doing it without dependance on other corporations is tougher IMO but the only option if you don't want you business to depend on facebook's press releases.

-Zaid
Open source involvement is definitely a PR move. When was the last time the open source community took something Google open-sourced, improved upon it, and then Google used those improvements? For the most part, these open-sourcing arrangements from big companies turn out to be one-sided, and so they're essentially buying good will in the hacker community. In Facebook's case, it also suggests that smart people get to work on cool stuff, so it helps for recruitment, too.
Why gmail should have a reddit-like social news service
"Moving costs" for anyone inside the US is sure to be less than $1000.
It seems we are beginning to see people use social news services as a complement to their email so they don't receive so much email from people they don't know.

SearchMob and Y Combinator Startup News can be seen as examples of this.

Of course, this is also true of blog comments. But social news allows you to use lots of people to collaboratively filter your email from unknowns.
See also Alexa/Alexaholic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=7542
Hype Off: Justin.tv Vs. Twitter
Ugh, I'd rather see a tax break on the self-employment tax for entrepreneurs, or payroll taxes for very small companies... given the current state of the angel capital market, they don't really need that much more incentive to invest.
I would rather lock myself up in a room with healthy food and finish the project than staying out of action due to sickness. I would rather cross my finger and possible request the germs to attack me later :D
Never underestimate the power of tax incentives - would more Angel investing be a bad thing?
Wow...thanks for the heads up. My co-founder will be moving up to Mass. which is where we'll be based out of, so this is good info. Thanks again.
How would you interview people for your startup? Would you focus more on low-level implementation questions or higher-level application ideas?
perhaps 5000+5000n isn't enough to cover your actual expenses for the period.. perhaps you have a mortgage, or dependents, or debt, or a lease that can't be broken, or you need health insurance (see other thread)...

This is why YC's audience is typically college students and very recent grads, who are less likely to have additional obligations. Or, rather, originally the YC concept was geared towards this audience, and the funding amount is an artifact of that.
well theres this...

http://ifthensoftwarehq.blogspot.com/2007/04/twitteromatic.html

But i dont really want to annoy people, just want an app to do the work for me. Occasionally pester me with a "what are you doing" snags my url and creates a post.
I would ask them real problems that I was currently struggling with and see how they responded. Seeing how they work through it and how compatible their solution would be with my own thinking would be invaluable imo.
Pipes - Google Tech Talk
Google Tech Talks April 2, 2007

Speakers: Pasha Sadri & Jonathan Trevor of Yahoo!
This is correct. Afford can do with things other than a bank-account.

There is the argument that "is your startup not important enough to leave everything else behind" ... but thats being a little too harsh.
2 other things:

1. I tend to be listening to music when I am browsing the web, so it was kind of disruptive to have the playlists of others automatically load when I was looking at them. Might be better if they were stopped initially and I could choose ones I might want to hear.

2. Id probably like to do / see a little more before I registered. I don't like to just register for any site I stumble upon. I like to get a sense of what I am getting into first. The more I can do, the more likely I will register.

Hope this helps.
The money will all end up with lawyers and accountants as the rules become increasingly complex in order to prevent people from gaming the system. :(
Neither should be primary.

Honestly- The best thing that you can do is to figure out how they're going to get along with you, and how well they can find solutions to problems.

They say that the first few employees really determine the culture of a startup, and you want people who can adjust to whatever job is necessary, and solve problems quickly and move on to the next thing in the ever-growing list.

I read an article online (Was it Joel? Seth? Not sure), who argued that there are really two types of programmers- Problem Solvers, and Cogs.

Cogs are the people who can tell you every line of code in a TCP/IP stack, or squeeze amazing performance by reprogramming your server-code in assembler. They're the people you bring in to solve problem foo-

"We need a guy who kicks butt in SQL to optimize this thing" Let's find one."

That's great, and that's amazingly useful.. But not for the first few people for a startup.. For a startup, I'd worry more about coming up with solutions to problems that we have.
Someone who can pick up Lisp or Ruby or (insert language of the week) in a few days more useful in those crucial early weeks than someone who can eek every bit of performance.

Focus on the hard stuff first, like building something people actually want to use. THEN, hire people to help specific elements.

With any luck, by that point you'll have created a corporate culture that encourages flexibility, and they'll come around ;)

-Colin
The Post Money Value: A Good Way to Get Rolling - Sample first pass series A term email from a VC
One part that surprised me:
"You have not taken a salary in two years. Typically, founders doing that have kept records and get paid in shares."

I sorta figured working for free (or close to) for a while was just part of the deal if you want to keep burn rate down (or simply don't have cash). Interesting to note that you can get paid for it later. How common is this?
Basically, do anything, keep learning and expanding on it and you'll be an expert in the field relative to most others you work with. Do it with something you love and you'll come out on top.

I'd love to see a salary polling site that mashed wages over time with a person's level of interest in the job and time spent learning and training more on the subject.
Interface Design Juggling - great advice on typography, color schemes, microformats and more [.pdf]
I've seen this before in business plans and such... the being paid in preferred shares part is new to me; I've seen it as deferred compensation accumulating as a liability for the company to be paid in cash at some later date. I suppose being paid in preferred shares makes sense if you are expecting acquisition or a later VC rounds, whereas deferred cash comp. makes sense in a cash-only organic growth situation, and gets factored into your break-even calcs.
My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive
New restaurants need anonymous and confidential reviews more than web 2.0 startups do. Aren't 1000's of blogs already writing about the latest web startup?
oh, and a mac port is coming :)
What Entrepreneurs Most Want to Know: March 2007's Most Popular Work.com How-to Guides
this is a good point, there does need to be more tax incentive for entrepreneurs to start, especially if incentives were targeted relieving the burden of the first few months.

This is way over the head of politicians who simply want the next google to happen in their backyard.
Perk Place: The Benefits Offered by Google and Others May Be Grand, but They're All Business
This has great potential!

Only suggestion I would have is go slower on the demo. I know you lost me very early into it switching between windows.

If you are looking for a wider audience than those who already know the context of dropbox, make a video where you lay out the case for use of dropbox using simple examples from user point of view(think a college student) and then in the demo show just the basic features. I got the feeling you tried to show too many features too quickly.

In general, I have realized it is much better to launch with something that does a few things REALLY well rather than a lot of things with little focus. When you launch with whole lot of features people assume you are competing with the big companies. When you launch small and do it well, it is easier to attract a user-base and THEN keep feeding it more advance features in form of updates.

Good luck! Looks slick from the UI.
That's hot!
Guide to Marketing Your Business in Second Life: The Beginning of the 3D Web
I like the app; but instead of telling people to throw away their USB drive maybe you could incorporate a sync feature that would allow users to work on their files offline. Sometimes you just dont have internet access. Just a thought.
Cool stuff indeed. I would give 5 stars for such an useful application. I dont know if users can have administrative rights installing this features on some random computers, cant u incorporate something like web based interface?
yup -- i didn't get to mention it, but a big piece of dropbox is that it's a local/"normal" folder that's synced in the background -- you can work on your files offline (that, among other things, drove me nuts about typical online drives) and get local IO speeds (good for photoshop, film, etc.)
it should degrade gracefully and work without admin rights; in addition you can download (and soon, upload) via the web interface if you're not at one of your computers.
Then u would win this YC for sure as i can see potential in this. Good luck mate :)
I'm impressed.
Google Talk Continues The Integration Journey, Becomes a Widget