skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's an anecdote about Ken Thompson having "coder" as his occupation in his passport. Shame I can't find a link. Typical of a man who debunked persistent objects with a quip about having them for years; they're called files.

Being an above average coder or programmer means understanding many things. Grabbing the moniker developer instead seems more about worrying how others perceive you.
I would host with nearlyfreespeech.net. They are a pay as you go hosting service. So if you use them, you don't have to pay for a month of high traffic hosting for isolated peaks (like being dugg for instance).

On the off chance you become consistently epically successful you should be prepared to move to dedicated hosting and to split the application between servers if necessary. This will take extra development time especially if you don't really know what you are doing. But, I think it is a worthwhile skill set for an ambitious young web entrepreneur to learn.

I think it would be optimal to immediately try to monetize traffic to determine whether you really need to pursue outside funding. I estimate that you can recklessly fund the adventure on even a lower limit credit card (or just get an Amex charge card if you're feeling particularly reckless).

As everyone says it is a good problem to have. But, as a matter of full disclosure, I should note that I don't really know much about this. I am an as yet unsuccessful entrepreneur. Good luck.
Thanks, not particularly intuitive :)
By reading some of the entries in the Startup news section. one gets the feeling that these people are self-centered and have a limited viewpoint of what the masses really wanted.
"Failure to plan is to plan for failure." ... Writing a plan is fine does not creates the delusion that that one can actually control and predict how things are going to go. ... It gives the implementers an concept what might be happening. ... From a high level but pragmatic viewpoint, it is what process of writing the plan are you using that is failing you. If you are writing it from a low level, you will FAIL.
Planning requires people with wisdom, vision and conscious experience. . . . A person who has no conscious of what is going on, usually live on the seat of their pants. ... Reader! Who is planning for your company? Do they know the big picture from a "top down tangible viewpoint"? (Where we are at, We call it a Tangible Vision.) From the strategic classics: One who excels at warfare will await events in the situation without making any movements. When he sees he can be victorious he will arise; if he see he cannot be victorious he will desist. Thus it is said he doesn't have any fear, he doesn't vacillate. Of many harms that can beset any army, vacillations is the greatest. Of disasters that can befall an army, none surpasses doubt. - Six Secret Teachings, 26
Freelance Bidding Sites: Another Lemons Market
Wikipedia page on the Market for Lemons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemons_market
Well, lets start with comparables:

1) Which sites have seen their traffic grow to millions of visitors daily within a few days of launch. I can't think of any, but you must have a few in mind.

2) What did they do or fail to do to handle that growth?
Very true. "A friend of mine" was writing some ad copy for a job req. "his" employer was trying to fill, and wanted to use the word "hacker" in the headline. (E.g. "Looking for a great hacker", or somesuch.) The (oursourced, non-technical) HR dept. would not permit the use of that word, as it sounded too much like advertising for someone to break the law.

I've always believed that these terms told you a lot about the speaker, but I was shocked to see such a clear, real-life case.
Launch: Silicon Valley 2007
"Instead of 'programmers' (people that specialize in writing code), what you need are 'developers' (people who will contribute in multiple ways to make the product successful)."

http://www.ericsink.com/No_Programmers.html
it depends on where your bottlenecks are. if you're serving static content (e.g. an image hosting or photo sharing service), amazon S3 is a cheap and simple way to do so. if you have a big database involved anywhere (e.g. facebook, which has to keep track of user profiles, mappings between users, groups, and god knows how many hundreds of other kinds of connections), it's a lot tougher.

in general, you can "scale up" (buy bigger servers) for a little while, but eventually you'll have to "scale out" (divide the load across a lot of smaller servers.) amazon's EC2 service lets you do this relatively easily. it's hardly plug and play though; you have to figure out how to scale out within your app and ensure that you can split up your data across multiple servers, which is often not trivial. for example, even if you can partition your data, what if one "piece" gets hammered with a disproportionate amount of traffic (i.e. one particular photo album or whatever gets dugg/slashdotted); what if a server goes down; what if you need to dynamically add servers; how do you protect data if a disk completely fails; etc.

here's some food for thought from the sysadmins of livejournal and digg, and how they dealt with growth.

http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/Interesting/servers%2C%20infrastructure/danga.com%20livejournal%20backend.pdf
http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/Interesting/servers%2C%20infrastructure/digg%20sysadmin%20presentation.pdf

perhaps better than the technical solutions are social solutions to hypergrowth: you can use invites, beta periods or waiting lists to control your growth instead of turning people away indefinitely, and also set users' expectations that things may go wrong and to bear with you. it's really tough to anticipate on the technical side where things will break if you're adding hundreds of k users; just look at ilike, which got rocked by f8 signups.

there are more pieces too besides just serving the http requests properly :P presumably you'll need to provide some support to these people, answer emails, fix things when they go wrong, have some method of discovering and triaging problems, etc.
I wrote this, let me know what you think.
Who has the time to sit and watch this stuff?
The word Hackers has been basterdized over the years and it's mundane usage makes it an elusive term. What do you call the traditional programmers that broke through systems?
I don't think there is a hard and fast rule, but here is what appears to be many people's (i.e. not everyone's) interpretation:

- Programmer: Primarily just writes code to accomplish the tasks that he is given.

- Developer: Understands and writes code too, but is also involved in slightly higher-level considerations such as overall architecture and visual presentation of a large app, also probably has a say about software processes, an impact on testing procedures etc.

- Software Engineer: Doesn't write that much code but organises the framework in which it will be written: i.e. gathers requirements, manages the testing process, makes sure the architectures will support long term development and maintenance issues, forward looking in terms of functionality, languages, technologies, and competition, as well as making sure everyone else has what they need and things are on shedule.

- Peter
Wanted?
But it gets oh so complicated when you introduce the modifiers "rock star" and "guru".

For example, who's more 1337: The guru programmer, or the rock star developer?

We live in a complicated world.

:)
It's funny, the importance of a office cannot be overstated, yet most of the start-ups I've seen are militantly anti-office.
Working with Facebook f8: you are not in control of your access
Why we should make it happen in Europe
DHH: Scaling to multiple DBs with Rails
I wonder what they're all working on.

"Google is now adding about 500 workers each month"

Hmm...500 people. By my calculus, 500 people should be able to implement about 100 business concepts every 1-3 years. That seems off somehow, but...well, they can't all be system admins, can they?

Take a look at google labs: http://labs.google.com/

How many of those things make money? Some of them seem to be a part of a long-term Orwellian strategy:

http://webaccelerator.google.com/

...but I don't really see the revenue stream. What are they doing with all of those people except mocking up start-up environments and hoping for the occasional big hit? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just let the free market work, and buy other people's companies as needed?
DHH certainly isn't even attempting to hide his tone of this post (obviously he is not a big fan of the Twitter guys) but I can't help but agree. If you want something done put some effort into doing yourself instead of putting your effort into whining about it. 75 lines of Ruby, wow.
Concerts get 'Second Life' on Internet
Gas price Web sites see skyrocketing traffic (Site profits running on fumes?)
For completeness sake perhaps it should be mentioned that those guys don't have a very good reputation. Mostly because Jamba was making money by ripping of kids. Then there are rumors that their numbers were seriously inflated when they sold Alando, but I don't know if that rumor only got started because people are envious and spiteful because of Jamba.

Overall I guess it is better than not having started a company, but I could think of "better" entrepreneurs to look up to.
this is really old news.
Find another local startup and share the cost.
Haha sure, i'm looking at the story of them being young, determined and in Europe. I think at the time they were quite experimental but founding and exiting 2 companies big is an achievement.

The stories of spreadshirt, mindcandy, moo, skype etc are also pretty interesting.
Facebook is the Microsoft Office of Social Apps
From what I hear nobody has aggressivly sold ringtones in the US market, like Jamba did in the UK. Could someone in the US confirm this for me please?

Based on rising SMS usage in the US, now would be the perfect chance to clone Jamba for the US market.
Beyond the Browser
Perhaps there needs to be an EU equivalent of "Founders at Work" with interviews of all these great startups so that people have easy access to these examples? Not necessarily in book form but possibly in a blog such as StartupStories.
Zingy.com
Web 2.0: Create Personalized News And Alerts
You have no idea what you're talking about.

How much work is it to maintain the world's best search engine? Think about not only the algorithm/ranking problems, but also performance and systems problems. Google recently (2 weeks ago) completed a complete overhaul of it's backend - this took 2 years! Yet most users won't notice a difference between Google today and Google from 1 month ago.

So your "calculus" is wrong, search is a tough problem and Google has a ton of work to do just with its core product. In fact, they claim that 70% of it's resources are spent on just its core search and advertising businesses.

As for Google Labs, I'm sure everything Google releases has some goal to eventually add to the bottom line (If not directly then through increased customer loyalty or technology sharing).

Let's not forget that while Google's employee base has been doubling every year,so have it's revenues so something is working.
Great idea! Let's send Jessica to Europe - I'm sure she could be convinced. :-)
'... You know it's not cool anymore when grandma is on it. ...'

Got the feeling this journo was suffering a bit of techno-fear.

'I have tried to find anyone I know on these sites - but nobody seems to be there'

It does highlight the boundary between current users and the mass market. Most of my initial twits came from my flickr friends where I recognised their twitter images before their names (there is a confusion of real names & user names with twitter). So if you don't have your current friends there and you don't/can't make new meaningful ones what is the use of using it?

'... "Up at dawn, back hurting. read the Guardian online," is the thrilling news from TopDoc. ...'

That is the crunch of the argument. No compelling use. Yet the same person is probably spouting out twit like messages all the time to people around him in the office . Twitter is just an extension of this using the phone or computer.
Interesting side note: Zingy was founded in NYC by Fabrice Grinda, a French guy (http://fabricegrinda.com/) He had previously started Aucland in France, an Alando competitor. It's a small world. He'd be a great candidate for a Euro edition of "Founders at Work".
Do you know any concrete case of people on Student Visa (F-1) that joined Y Combinator? What type of visa do they have? What are the options?
I've hear people try to refer to them as "Crackers" but that term just makes me hungry
'... While I think the LINA announcement is interesting, I'm not really seeing how it affects me as a Windows user or software developer ...'

Don't be fooled or distracted by this announcement. I had a look at the developers ~ http://openlina.com as of now there is no code, demos, examples or things you can consider technical.

The biggest problem I have with the crux of the article is it introduces a layer of complexity installing applications to desktops for something that as of the moment people are not screaming out for, off-line saving and desktop applications.

Do you want to go back as developers to using the MS toolset (lets face it your going to have to use it to save time OR hobble an open source development environment plus installation tools) AND have all the hassles of installation, support and development of desktop development?

I think evolution via speed of development will kill off this approach into something we cannot yet see. Maybe someone has already started?
Facebook is Microsoft Office of Social Apps
VC markup sale underway: everything Web2 up 75%!
Cheers sharp, guess I can shelve that idea. I wonder if there are any mobile ideas from Japan/Korea that I can bring to Europe..
That's a crazy idea when you can same performance from a VPS with no capital costs and cheaper hosting AND better reliability. Read my findings here:
http://www.productcriticblog.com/2007/02/startup-lessons-from-productcritic-save.html
Mark Zuckerberg stated at his press conference that he's always felt the company should stay independent (maybe the ridiculous $2B price he reportedly asked for from Yahoo was meant to scare them off) and that F8 confirms this.

Facebook pulls in a profit. The site can demand a higher CPM than Myspace (thanks to the higher quality of its pageviews and its more attractive demographics); the company employs only 85 developers; the user base constantly replenishes itself as new students join pre-existing networks; older users are increasingly comfortable connecting through the site as an alternative to LinkedIn; the international markets leave room for growth. I expect Facebook to go public.
Why Joel Spolsky's Crazy Schemes Never Paid Off
"I think my biggest problem with bidding sites is that they drive down the rates. I see writers offering themselves for fifty cents an article and Virtual Assistants charging $25 for a days worth of work. Are we so desperate to earn money were willing to settle for less than slave wages? I dont know of anyone who would flip burgers for such a paltry sum, but yet many will happily accept next to nothing to get a proverbial foot in the door."

Slaves don't get paid any wages. That's why they are slaves.

Why not use it to your advantage and hire the cheap people instead of be one?
" Orwellian strategy"

Grow up
Creating a Search Engine - Google & Others
Backwards!

I think Facebook wants to go public. I'm not convinced it'll be good for them. Until they figure out the social networking business model, they're going to be a lot safer being acquired. Too bad their price is too high for anyone but the big boys to consider.

The international markets Facebook isn't in are already being won by other sites. See Bebo in the UK and Orkut in Brazil and India, to start. If anything, their lack of expansion should be a con, not a pro.

Older users still understand that Facebook is for fun, and LinkedIn might actually be useful in getting jobs and making business connections. Anyone dumb enough to mix business and pleasure is bound to regret it later.

The user base is growing fast, I'll grant you that. I mean, still not as fast as Myspace, but that's beside the point. The real question is, is their revenue growing that fast? And can they sustain those growth rates as they reach saturation in the college market? It's pretty much their only demographic. I'll admit, though, I haven't seen the numbers re: the falloff after graduation.

The company is hiring like crazy, as far as I can tell. I personally think 85 developers is a lot. I'm not really sure why the dev count matters, though.

I can't really comment on CPM numbers, but it's clear to me that Facebook could be making a ton more money, given the value and size of their audience, as everyone claims it. They've claimed page views on the order of Google (alexa says Google's only twice as big). But their profits are 100 times smaller, by most estimates.

I also think the $2 bill ask was real, and that the independence line is totally new. Why didn't we hear it last year?
Instead of weasel words what you need is a description that covers how you get done what it is you do. In fact its my experience that people who identify as programmers, hackers or coders are much more down to earth about solving problems and doing useful stuff. What's after developers? Software construction facilitators? Fancy names just seem to miss the point.
Granted, 75 lines of Ruby represents a substantial amount of logic.
Pretty much any service has these same terms. What do you expect them to do? Promise to not do anything similar to any app people happen to build? Promise to provide free access forever? No responsible business would do that.

Any time you're building your business on top of something that isn't in your control, you should be cautious. This isn't any different.
How important is a founder's personality as it relates to the target demographic?
"The Innovator's Solution" & interpretations as it relates to web development
Make a somewhat effusive statement, that's really ingenious; a hard currency for the new millenium, portable, divisible, and universally accepted.

Of course you've traded the brutal master of the despot's printing press for the harsh mistress of Moore's law, but the second at least is somewhat predictable.
RFaceBook: Ruby library for FaceBook's new API
I am grown up. Thanks. If you read the spec for web accelerator, you will see that it will allow google to know exactly what you are looking at at all times. This fits the definition of the word "Orwellian" as I used it.

Man, I can't wait for the day when google stops being untouchable.
YEAH! You kick their butts!
Particletree - PDFs Worth Checking Out
I disagree with his idea that you should not have a private office.

Granted, I don't currently have an office job, but given that a phone call or knock on my door will rip me straight out of the flow, I can't imagine even being able to get in it in the first place in a room with half a dozen other people all madly typing away, making noises, and moving around in my peripheral vision.
I'm not familiar with Jamba, but it's hard for me to watch an hour of TV at night without seeing at a handful of advertisements to buy ringtones or wallpapers for a few dollars, plus a connection fee and monthly recurring fee, conveniently mentioned in small text.
Yeah. However, I don't think one should be discouraged to start a ringtone service just because there are all these commercials floating around. In my opinion, and in many others', most of these commercials come across as incredibly cheesy and one can tell from the first 3 opening seconds that amidst the cheesiness lies a huge scam.

I'd say the only company who has tried to pull this off and come across as legit is MTV.

I don't like cheese.
Making CSS saner (from Patrick of Auctomatic)
No, no, this is about a DIFFERENT guy making six figures from tower defence games. There's more than one. (!!)

http://novelconcepts.co.uk/FlashElementTD/

Paul Preece vs David Scott
Yay, let's all waste time arguing about useless semantic differences.

Go build something.
C2 - One of the best kept secrets on the web. Have a dig around
Good work Patrick
pg, that's intriguing. What do these words say about the speakers?
thanks honey
group hug
Via Digg: How Many Visitors Does Your Site Need to Make You A Web 2.0 Millionaire?
apparently jamba was a korean clone. So the revolution can start there.
Fabrice supposedly derived inspiration from the Samwer brothers. Just as they had brought Jamba from korea, he brought Zingy to the US based on the idea from Jamba from Germany. These guys are good friends.
What are your Top 3 Open Source project sites (like SourceForge)?
haha - good to know the auctomatic love lasts well into the morning
Does a grown up person assume that a search engine will shortly become a Totalitarian Overlord because their computers receive which sites you visit?
I'm hacking away as we speak. I'm taking the root of what I applied to YC with and trimming it down a lot. Mostly I just want to learn the API and I think that being able to link into an existing social framework provides great benefits. There is a definite trade off when it comes to doing something solely for Facebook and I'll be interested to see if it pays off.

At my current rate I should have a beta that people can try out in two or three days. I'll post something here to get feedback, comments, and hopefully users when that happens :)
The Hidden Problem With J2ME or Why Mobile Development Crawls
Do you want me to list all 10,000 good Open Source projects, or just the ten I like the most?

Seriously, SourceForge alone has 149,257 projects, and that's probably not even a quarter of all Open Source projects. You've really got to give us more to go on.
With laptops and no PHBs why even make a decision?

I really like both. When doing work that is highly collaborative it's nice to have everyone in spitting distance. When I have have no need for discussion with others I love my solitary hackathons. The most productive times I've had were moving back and forth between the two environments freely.
Should you elect your new co-founder as a director immediately?
Assuming you just got yourself a new co-founder for your year-old startup, should you elect him as a director too, besides giving him equity?
"Hacker" is somewhat special, though. I tend to use "programmer", "developer", and "coder" almost[1] interchangably, and I don't mind using them to describe someone whose only language is COBOL. "Hacker" confers greater respect, and I would only use it to describe a small subset of the people whom I would describe as coders.

[1] They describe the same group of people, but grammatically I use them slightly differently. Programmer is in association with a language, and developer in association with a project. Hence: Joe is a coder; Joe is a C++ programmer; Joe is a KDE developer.
Take a novel little piece of "value" then multiply it by many tens of thousands of users and the result is success. This illustrates perfectly why some stuff that seems so technically trivial (Twitter or YouTube) can be so powerful.

Thankfully most organizations are totally incapable of producing simple focused products, so there's plenty of room for startups.
I was going to make a joke about this topic before I read your comment but this is actually true.
I'm not sure what you mean.

"Thats the option Paul Preece took with his phenomenally popular Desktop Tower Defense... in Preeces case, close to six figures."

The article mentions David Scott's game as an inspiration for Preece's game.
No wonder it's taking you so long, you're playing with CSS. :)
I think his backup plan paid off. He has a privately held profitable company.