skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bad publicity is not as good as good publicity, but it is better than no publicity at all. As Seth Godin often points out "Being safe is risky".

If you wish to make a pre-launch buzz, try it in a controlled environment. A strategy I used was to aim for foreign startup blogs (mandarin, spanish, french, etc) instead of western ones. Their reviews gave me a leg up on the feedback I should anticipate from western bloggers.

Since the initial buzz I generated centered around foreign bloggers, I did not risk losing my reputation in front of the big name Web 2.0 startup bloggers. I took my startup to the west only after I was satisified with the feedback.
Any chance of adding the 2mb zip warning into the title please?

Other than that great slides. Wish I was at SXSW :( The audio/speakers would make it more meaningful
Awesome work Daniel! You just made my day :D
I'm going to have an H1-B visa as well soon (currently on TN). I was under the impression that you're not allowed to work for any other company or start your own while you have an H1-B/TN. Is that true?
Applying to YC is a bet that this statement is not true in general. Or that they invest in great teams with ideas that they do not fully appreciate.
You can work for another company. There is an H1-B transfer process that involves some paperwork and a fee (which your new company might pay).
If you like these insights you might want to give barenaked app a read. It's the story behind trying to sell dropsend and they reveal a lot of the numbers behind it. Here's a great starting point: http://www.barenakedapp.com/dropsend/number-of-users-on-each-plan
Twitter and the evolution of blogging (Cat style)
pg, you were born in england? where abouts :)
agreed. I loved the detailed post. I am now reading "Demo Day":
http://mealticket.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/demo-day/

"..when you think of Facebook as being one of the most exciting companies in the Valley right now and then you realize it's being driven by a young team it makes you question a lot of assumptions. So my 'intended' career path had been law - where your pay and rank is determined purely by the number of years you have worked at the firm for. When you hit a certain age maybe you make partner and maybe you don't. But the point is that age and experience rule in that culture and not raw ability. Why do we have to assume that we can measure the ability to perform well purely by the number of years someone has worked in a particular field? Mark Zuckerberg doesn't have 10 years experience of running companies worth $1 billion but he's doing a pretty good job of it so far.

Why does someone who has spent 10 years analysing financial markets have a better chance of making a success out of an idea we live and breathe everyday? The attitude in the Valley is that your age is determined by the number of startups you've gone through - there are people here my age who have already started and scrapped a couple of companies. That gives them experience and all the 'grey hair' they need."

Thanks for the great blog, Harj!
Demos are great to crstallise thoughts and really build the platform for your application. Don't underestimate the value of the experience gained by putting put a demo. Afterall, you want to build something people use - you can't do that with an idea.

We've got a number of applications around the same core bunch of ideas. prototyping one application and getting people using it couldn't be a better validation of one's ability to execute when it comes to Y combinator. Lying back on an idea and waiting doesn't show anyone you want to make it happen.

If your idea changes - well it just means you've proved you can execute before. Get a demo out even if its very rough (anything is). Just start!
Why write a script when you can just use reality? Give each startup in the next YC batch a video camera and get them to record the journey. They could either post it regularly as a video blog or save it all up and edit it into a lovely 2hour documentary. Would be great to watch and give outsiders a better idea of what startups are like. Kind of like 'Project Aardvark" [http://www.projectaardvark.com/movie/].
Google Analytics is great. They provide an amazing amount of user info. I just started using it a week ago and I am completely addicted to it. I have a day job and have to control the constant urge to check it. I'm thinking of getting a palm computer or something like that so I can ssh in and sneak a peek at the stats.
'... I up-voted a comment ...'

don't up-vote *before* you commit a comment. News wipes the contents of the edit box.
'... everyone I know has bailed from reddit. ...'

what about 'programming' or 'joel' sub-reddits?
Is quitting your day job a pre-req for getting funded?
My startup is about to go into fund raising mode, meanwhile I am still holding down my day job. Is this going to be a dealbreaker for investors?
Thought this was pretty funny. But more seriously - twitter represents the atomisation of internet services - so moving from the heavyweight to the lightweight.

Do you think its growth is simply attributed to humans wanting to express themselves (like yelping)? Do you think twittering can become mainstream?
How come no girls choose to apply to y combinator?
I'm curious - how many YC companies have girls involved? How many founders have a mixed founding team?
"1) The productivity of the startup is mainly the sum of the traits of each individual. Plus, to a lesser extent, the synergies between them."

I would argue the synergies between cofounders to be the single most valuable entity in a partnership. You may have complementary skills but if you don't come together and are able to do incredible things that are spurred on by eachother. Spark is key - this linear trait argument isn't correct at all. Never compromise without spark.

You don't know by chatting with someone - best to work on something non trivial together and figure out if you get on.
Paul Kedrosky on Y Combinator
That's how I found out about Y Combinator. Thanks Paul
This seems like it could be an interesting feature idea -- maybe I could include a way for people to solve a problem together after they introduce themselves?
I thought so, because you might want to look for someone who's not as good at something as you are. That's something to consider though; if that ends up giving too many garbage results I can always remove it from the index.
interesting! I never thought of coding it up a la a dating site. I wonder what sort of algorithm would work best for that. I don't want it become like eHarmony!

I could add such a questionnaire as an optional part of the process.
This has been a really interesting 17 hours. I've only posted here and startupping.com and I've received a lot of traffic (a lot for me anyway). One thing I did not anticipate was all of the international visitors. So far there's Sweden, UK, Spain, and Canada. So I am going to add a Country field ASAP. I've never done an international site; are there other things I should keep in mind?
I added another section where the score changes.
Mutual rating. Can you please look at it again?

----------

The current numbers are self-rating. We can also have mutual-rating numbers where these 'scores' become dynamic.

There can be online 'dates' or interviews where potential cofounders assess each other using the same questions as guidelines. these meetings take place via Instant Messenger chat - or if in the same city, a face-to-face meeting.

The more 'dates' or interviews you have, the more other people can assess you and presumably, the more accurate your score. The mutual rating scores would have to be combined in some way.
We don't know how much is wired in the brain when a person is born and how much he learns and how. Generally, I don't think imitating nature ever works. You can experiment this way forever.
I like that the post looks like a poem and as tight as one too.
Lets look at this from the practical point of view. Even if these numbers are valid, would they change the way you start or run your business? No! The reason is that statistics is about the average and there is nothing average about you or your business. You make your decisions based on the intimate knowledge of your own situation, goals, etc. I guess VCs have to use statistics (even bad one) because they get thousands of applications
I doubted how useful twitter would be untill recently. After going to a bunch of (un)conferences I wanted to stay in touch with the many great people I met. I used email, IM, linkedin, blogs and twitter. The only method that worked was twitter. It seems to mimic the kind of conversations you would have if you were sat in the same office as each other.
JNLP makes java application deployment easy
Ever got laughed at because of your idea?
Re: social bonds - precisely! To really make these sites work, you'd have to also invent a time machine so that you could go back and get to know the person well over time... "Listen to this dude Rufus, he *knows* what he's talking about".
I did apparently....dunno if it's the environment (Philippines) and my professor (who claims to be a actual "practioner") states that only fools would use my product :D
Oh We can definitely own a company alright! But the problem is with time/mind space. Currently my entire spring break is dedicated (to pretending) to study for my Qualifier exams! I am hoping it will be better once I finish the requirements and start on the thesis. But it has to be moonlighting I guess, the visa has us cornered.
hey..it always happens and with everyone at early stage..this does not means your idea is bad..
For the same reason guys don't apply to "America's next top model". There just aren't enough female geeks. Which is a pity, since they are mathematically better tuned.
Wikia plans editable Web search engine
Weymouth. My father was working at Harwell.

Actually 2 out of 4 YC founders are immigrants. Trevor's from Canada.
At Viaweb, two of the three main hackers (Robert and Trevor) were in grad school the whole time and actually got their degrees. In fact, Trevor got his a day or so before the Yahoo deal closed, and was the subject of Viaweb's last press release:

http://www.paulgraham.com/tlbphd.html

I believe some cofounders can still be in grad school, as long as at least one isn't.
You're allowed to start, and own, a company while on an H1-B. You're allowed to work for it too, so long as you continue to also work for the company that sponsors your H1-B.

You are not allowed to pay yourself anything from the new company while on an H1-B.

If one of your co-founders, or investors, is a US citizen you *might* be able to arrange a transfer of the H1-B to the new company. This is difficult and expensive though (at least we found it so). I decided it was more sensible for me to just wait for the Green Card.
I think 4 out of 39 startups have had a female cofounder. This reflects fairly accurately the proportion of women among the applicants.

I think the reasons there are so few women are that (a) fewer women are fanatical about technical stuff, and you have to be kind of a fanatic to start a startup, and (b) fewer women are willing to have their lives consumed by work, which is what happens to most founders of successful startups.

Y Combinator itself has a female co-founder:

http://foundersatwork.com/jessicalivingston.html

We've talked about the question a fair amount, and I think she would agree with the explanation above.

[edit: changed 3 to 4]
It's not a dealbreaker for us. It becomes more of a dealbreaker as the amount of the investment grows. For VCs doing a multi-million dollar series A round, it almost certainly would be.
Wow how is this going to work? Being a code monkey it looks like a fun tool to play around with :D but could it really challenge Google?
I suppose so, I guess the key to handling people is to lowered expectations? any thoughts on this?
Would it not help to have a cofounder who is fanatical about the service itself rather than its implementation? Such a cofounder could take on something like a program manager role.
You can own a business on an H1-B visa - I would talk to an immigration lawyer if I were you. I'm in the states on an L1-A right now which allowed me to bypass the PERM process and qualify for my green card under the EB1 classification; the waiting list under this class is only ~8 months. L1's are bit more expensive, but if you're in a hurry they're worth looking into.
that thing is ten years old
This entry asks a yes/no question, when there is no yes/no answer.
If you read the TechCrunch comments on FreeBase, there are a couple of people who say they had the exact same idea -- one even reserved "ifreebase.com." The idea is definitely not new. Facebook wasn't entirely novel either. There are a lot of factors that can make a good idea unprofitable, or a so-so idea a big hit (who knew what AJAX was before it was called "AJAX"?).
So, yes, your idea may be stolen if it's good. If your idea is obvious, there is a chance that people are just too lazy to implement it. The only way to win in either case, is to work damn hard on your idea until fruitition.
Of the current batch just one.
Thanks Lucas. You have been very helpful.

I guess I shall see when I launch it about what happens.
Onista is HUGE application and I do not want to release it with any less features than originally planned. Just my UI Mockup is 200 pages. (just giving you idea on how big the application is). Onista being huge application, it has lot many features, so I believe that users will and will not like some features, but they will have lots of them to choose from.

Thanks again.
That shoulds like a good idea.
Can you please point me to any foreign startup blogs those you know of?
Appreciate it.
Is it ok to write code for your startup while you're still employed?

http://reddit.com/info/l1xb/comments/cl41q?context=5
_"If one of your co-founders, or investors, is a US citizen you *might* be able to arrange a transfer of the H1-B.."_

Can you elaborate on your experience?
LOL! Trust me, if you can get 1% of this world's fools to use your product, you have a hit.
None do? I'll bet there are *far* more men that do than women who start and stick with tech startups.
Learn What You Want To Learn
YouTube's spokewoman upon the acquisition received approx. 5 million dollars. The 3 founders together received more than 750 million dollars.

Your co-founder should be able to provide more in tech side of the start-up because thats what is important in the beggining.
9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers
According to Jessica Levingstone, it is 4. And according to Paul, it is 3. The rest of us can take the mean and agree upon 3.5 females.
7 Reasons Why Web Apps Fail
Is YouTube a Google-Sized Distraction?
Design Decisions: Login Screens
"You are not allowed to pay yourself anything from the new company while on an H1-B."

What about any revenues that your new company might make? Sorry if that is a stupid question, I have done almost no research into this issue yet.
Whether or not a startup succeeds has probably more to do with understanding what users want rather than anything to do with the tech side. Tech is important later when you need to scale the service to support millions of users.
FYI I just now tried to register but kept getting some sort of "something went wrong we've been notified" error. 3:45 pm EST 3/11/07.

On the app - when you say technical do you just mean things like programming, hardware, networking? Certainly more than tech skills are required. Is this site only for those with tech skills where someone a bit softer can find someone?
As far as I know these revenues have to remain the property of your new company (you can leave the money in the bank, or the company can spend it on something). You certainly cannot pay yourself a salary using them.
drop....I've considered the Meetup thing myself. Which group or type specifically? In my area, there is a list of about 100 waiting for an entrepeneur's group to start (no one willing to pay the $20 required). I'd do it myself but looking at the waiting list, many seem to be small biz services, accounting, biz planning, or MaryK types.
I've never got laughed at but I've had a lot of people tell me what I should do with my idea. I think the most frustrating part is when someone obviously doesn't understand what you're trying to do and proposes another route that is just bad. I think with any new concept people are very rarely capable of seeing another alternative outside of the way it's always been done. Any laughs I'd just shrug off as just them not understanding.
Startups where multiple founders may not work out as well as just one (think X-Plane by Laminar Research)
It seems to me that if a startup requires very specialized knowledge, then one founder may be better than two or three. An excellent example of this would be X-Plane by Laminar Research:

http://www.x-plane.com
Open source projects such as TeX and TeXmacs also support this view.
Good reflective piece on Y Comb. It seems like being around people that were also highly motivated entrepreneurs really pushed you guys to work harder to create a great product.

I also agree with the hiring issue. Reminds me of a popular book called "The Tipping Point". It's all about finding the certain characteristics others might have that'll get your concept to become an epidemic.
How are they mathematically better tuned?
Another example:

http://www.stephenwolfram.com/about-sw/
The Complete Web2.0 Directory - Something to check before you start that next idea
with "the beggining" i was reffering at the "later" you are talking about. the scale and the success of the web start-up is its beggining. And you need the people that will do that. Expect if you are the investor and paying them to do so...

To my mind and my experience unfortunately, if you have a co-founder who is doing only business without any other contribution (e.g. money) and he has same equity of your company as you then he is ripping you off. Better go to YC and give them 5-10% and access their network if you need a what u call program manager...

the reason you decide to start-up, is that although you don't know everything, it means you already know or u are willing to use other skills too and/or learn the rest (including those you are reffering to) , in order to encompass more characteristics --enough to take the risk to become a founder. Otherwise using one skill (e.g. programmer) should get you a job somewhere.

an non-YC example with female co-founder I am aware of is Emily Boyd of www.rememberthemilk.com
Certainly a good insight into the overall, but I'd love to see some more of the details of what people are going through- Almost Triumph or the Nerds style..
Maybe follow some of the YC teams for a Documentary?
There are two real problems I see with a site like this-

The first is that the people working on it aren't friends- They don't know each other well, so won't have the relationship to whether what comes..

The second is that people who are pulled together like this are unlikely to care deeply about the same idea..

The idea behind wanting co-founders is people who both believe in a dream, and can help each other through it.. That's not something that a site like this helps with.
This sounds like a marketing hit. Do revolutions need marketing?
oops, the bookmarklet really has no confirmation :-)
Oops, it is 4. I forgot one.
Just ignore, I was trying the bookmarklet. Seems that there is no delete here.
Although equal, I believe women are overall more risk-averse than men.
mistake - please delete [dead]
Peak Pitch - Pitch to VCs on Skiing Chair Lifts
via gigaom: http://gigaom.com/2007/03/11/ski-pitch-get-funded/
Capoeirista, please contact the management
Capoeirista, would you mind sending me an email at pg@ycombinator.com? It looks like you recently tried to submit a comment that tripped a bug in the software, possibly due to some weird characters in it. If you can tell us what you were doing, it will help us diagnose the bug. Thanks.
So essentially what you're saying is that any assets that the company makes cannot be transferred to me until I am an American citizen? I wonder what the consequences would be if I am an H1-B holder and revenues from moonlighting grew to a point where I could quit my day job.

Since I am a Canadian, I also wonder if it would be easier to just incorporate in Canada instead - this does not seem optimal either, as Canadian taxes are incredibly high, and the fact that I own a company there would mean that I would not be able to maintain non-residency status (and thus am not exempt from Canadian taxes) =(
Is a H1-B a student visa, or a work visa? And how are they awarded?
How long do you have to be on a H1-B in order to be granted a GC?
Unless a company will only have one employee forever, there is no knowledge "specialized" enough. If you are exceptionally skilled in something, you can find someone who possess what you are lacking. Especially in an investor's point of view, it might seem dangerous to have a single founder running the show. You need someone to back you at times, and disagree and say you're doing it wrong at other times.

Instead of finding exceptions, why not have the statistics work in your favor?
But what are the statistics for very specialized startups such as X-Plane?
Consumating to release all its software as open source
Miniajax, how to do all the ajax tricks you see on the big sites
volida, can you qualify what yu mean by "only doing business". A good product is nothing without distribution, good product management and a keen sense of copy, branding, and the ability to sell. Building the product is only part of the battle.

If you mean, the business guy can't read code, doesn't know how interfaces should look and can't visualise the direction of the product i guess you are right. But, strangely business guys are needed to get users and thats pretty hard - even if you are myspace or bebo. Bottom line - doesn't matter how great your tech is - someone who gets business makes or breaks your product.
One of the main reasons I want to get funding is to be able to afford to quit my day job. I would have absolutely no issue with that being one of the conditions of getting investment. It would be a pleasure to fulfill.
yah, very cool. Thanks Harj.
Does the MySQL Fulltext Index Scale?
yeah, basically i mean someone who is not willing to be part during the development cycle and is interested only in pushing the product or finding the users.

The problem is that in the beggining there is not a product to push! And if there is and is launched even with some minor features showcasing the idea, then you'll receive feedback from the users, so you get this help from your users. This means, that having more features to produce you do need someone who is technically capable while the product/service is maturing.

Now if there is a product/service and that product needs someone to find clients that will pay for, and not relying in word of mouth, like most low budjet web start-ups do, then ok, you need someone who will help you with this, but does it really worth it giving up equity equal to yours?

For me, no because I believe that if its your idea (refering to 1 or more people), then you know it better. So, being the soul you can pursue becoming capable to talk about it and make others even invest in it.
Why do you think users will be interested in trying out your service and giving you feedback in the first place? You need someone to help you understand what users want.
I think "have the statistics work in your favor" means "be average".
Seems to me that many good things have come from founders not knowing that something had been done before; also, in general, being the first to market with an idea doesn't seem to have a particularly big impact if someone comes along with a vastly better version, second. The concept seems flawed.
It probably doesn't affect your chances of getting funded, but any potential investors will have a serious discussion about how your employer views intellectual property. In our case (YouOS), once we had received funding, we had to rewrite what we had developed from scratch, since our old company's employment agreement was a bear.