skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> True, but advising dozens of startups, some of which became highly successful, does.

I would be surprised if anyone on YC news couldn't get a few successes out of 60 start-ups.

YC's had its share of duds as well. And various times we've heard they're not far in the black; considering the micro-investments they're making, that doesn't strongly support the notion that they are especially successful.

> "Whim" and "arbitrary" have a connotation of carelessness; I don't think they fit here.

I'm sure they are careful in certain ways but there's only so much to be gleaned from a brief application, which may not include the follow-up 10-minute interview. Three people can't advise 60 existing start-ups and do due diligence on 500 more. Not to mention, a substantial number of people haven't even built anything, which means they really have no choice but to judge the book by its cover. There are always snap judgements and rush decisions in any big application process.

Hence, whim.
Some of these are silly. icanhascheezburger? That's been in my rss feed for months.
I speculate the general engineering requirements exist because the most complex engineering projects require an interdisciplinary approach. The different disciplines need a set of shared concepts and language to work effectively. Thus the idea of an "Engineer" who is both a specialist as well as a generalist.
Interesting stats on the bouncerate, fits with what I've always thought which is if you're a web app then the landing page needs to be the app.
I think it would only be Buffettism if Warren Buffett was one of the Chinese oligarchs...
Myspace runs? Really?

More like limps along..
Has anyone experimented with a hybrid push/pull setup? If your data refreshes are bursty in nature, then this could be good idea, judging from the data in this paper.

Poll regularly for the server status using pulls, and in the event new data is published (start of a burst), initiate a push connection for a preset amount of time (this can be server controlled, depending on load). If the burst is not yet over after the thread is closed, it will just be resumed after the next pull indicates there is new data.

This setup would help minimize the mean time that threads are tied up, thus decreasing the thread pool size and server load. But again this is only beneficial if your data updates are bursty in nature..

There is one thing this paper did not mention.. Unfortunately, due to browser security restrictions, AJAX calls must occur with the same server where the javascript originated. So this means when you are using a push setup and your server is beginning to max out, you are affecting the performance serving pages too! The HTTP keep-alive settings will keep those threads open for a while each time a page is served. Normally you can proxy and forward calls to other servers, but in this particular example the web server MUST maintain these open threads.. I think..

Just thinking aloud with this, but I'm interested if anyone else has comments.
I would suggest that Google's design had a part to play in peoples preference in search engines. I agree Google's narrow focus on search was the defining outmaneuver. I would also suggest that this focus had to transcend their UI. The front page had to be a personification of their concentration on this function. It's subliminal and minimal but it's actually excellent design.

Although there is very little info to design on Google's homepage that is because that is how they designed it - clear, simple, plain, minimalist, yet colourful, memorable and vibrant. They could have had all sorts of ad's or other corporate info on there but they chose the letterbox and logo (which their 25yr old $100,000 a year designer changes on a daily basis so there is a lot of design going on by someone who is regarded as being one of the best apparently).

Google, to my mind, has a whole load of design. Just because you see white and primary colours doesn't mean there is no design. It's like talking, the worlds greatest orators were not masters of articulation and words...... but of silence. The most powerful and effective tool in speaking is the use of silence and pauses. When you deliver the killer bottom line when pitching your startup leave a long pause after. The last thing you said reverberates in the listeners head, over and over. I would suggest that Google's minimalist design does the same thing to users - they remember the brand and site because they never got LOST trying to FIND what they were looking for. I believe these two word are two of the most important to successful search functionality.

I had to outsource my design to someone who produced her best work on my site (Quarrysell.com - please don't laugh I'm new to this game, am a one man band and operate in a niche market). The advertisers I have lined up love my Google white minimalist design because my design (and Google's) does not detract from their logo, advertising and banners i.e. my main source of income (and Google's). Design is bloody important in building a brand and allowing users to easily navigate your site.

Although design is best incorporated at the beginning I do not agree that a designer is integral to hashing out a phase one project, this is not opinion but experience I sadly speak from. Design is a big deep hole of time, money and particularities startup have neither the time nor funds for. Good and excellent designers are obsessive about the smallest of things and this can hinder building the house.

My position: Once the foundations are solid, you have a roof over your head and windows to see out of then get the painters and decorators in.
well at the "planned" level, nothing. At the throwaway level, everything. Things that would take ten seconds in php (like a simple post form to a db) could end up taking 2-3 hours in C#/.NET
I worked in Boston for a summer once - Joe's American Bar and Grill on the waterfront (next to Marriott and Aquarium). I can safely say that I wouldn't rush back to living in Bean Town. Sorry but the Blue Laws suck, if you're going out you had better know of a party cos 2am is a bit early for a European. I also worked in a Law firm in New York for a yr or so and can safely say Boston, as a business and legal center, has a bad rep for being stuck up for no apparent, earned, reason. The weather sucks, the city doesn't have enough clubs and it's nightlife centers around that square which really is square. There's my tuppence worth. Woohoo Red Sox!!!!!!!
ok...so? not be a smart ass, but really, who cares if goog is going to take on fb? i've got to pay my cell phone bill, and find a cofounder. When they actually release something, i might just check it out. But uh, goog hasn't been so hot on the social networking/soft side of things. see: orkut.
whats digg?
Geesh, you expect me to remember these things?

Sometime in November, 1995.

Actually, that's a little inaccurate. I had entertained ideas about being a professional shareware developer when I first learned Pascal - that was when I was 12, so about 1993. The November date in question was on the way to a WoCoMal math meet. One of my teammates asked our driver & math teacher "Are you a millionaire?", to which he replied, "No, the only millionaire on the faculty is John [one of the school founders, and another math teacher]. He founded and sold a company for like $40 million." That kinda planted the seed that yes, owning a business was achievable and it did happen to people like me.

It kinda grew into "I'm going to start my own startup" over time. I was writing a MUD at the time, and about a year into the project (which I eventually gave up on), I found out "Hey, people actually pay for games like this!" Then after high school, I worked for a tech startup founded by the aformentioned math teacher/school founder, and found I liked it. Then I took a long holiday from startup stuff while I was in college, though I did have primary implementation responsibility for a non-profit. Then I came back to it my senior year, because I realized "Oh shit, I have to get a job now" and realized how sucky most jobs were. Applied to SFP05, wasn't really ready for it, was rejected, took a job at another startup that I'd interned at instead. Then this year I started letting it be known that I was interested in starting a company, and got 3 overtures for cofounder positions within 8 months. Took the most promising, applied to YC for SFP07, was rejected, going ahead anyway, and we'll see about WFP08...
In the end of this article, the author states that "In Conclusion X It's Not Necessarily Ugliness That Sells." He then goes on to plea with people to consider their usability over their aesthetic design. This seems a somewhat weak ending given the rest of the article, however reasonable this conclusion may be.

Furthermore, to quote myself:
"...one of my favorite anecdotes from Blink is the tale of the identical ice cream: the same ice cream was wrapped in two different packages, one plain, the other fancy, and taken around to the public for taste tests. People actually reported that the ice cream in the 'fancier' package _tasted_ better. What's great about this story is that it's an excellent way to explain to someone the value of beauty to usability. Given two functionally identical products, users will believe that one is _easier to use_ simply by virtue of it being aesthetically pleasing. I once saw a presentation at a UPA (Usability Professionals Assoc) Conference where a study showed just that - a product with identical information architecture was run through two usability tests: one where the product had a rudimentary look and feel, and one where the look and feel had been touched up by a graphic designer. User data showed that people felt the prettier version was easier for them to use, even though it took them the same time to complete tasks in both versions. Now, as an interaction designer myself, I would hope this argument is never used to dismiss the importance of interaction design and information architecture. We can't use aesthetics to 'put lipstick on the pig,' as one of my coworkers is fond of saying. But if you've taken the time to make a really usable product which meets a user need, imagine how much people will love it if you ALSO make it beautiful. That, for me, is the definition of a "delightful experience." " (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38839)
Amen. Why don't more software engineers realize designers are on their side? If your product isn't meant to be used only by hackers like yourself, then you need to have someone thinking about how the end user will understand/interact with/experience your product.

If your design team is not trying to make a usable and delightful user experience, then get a new set of designers.

Interaction design is NOT about making things pretty. It's about giving the user a delightful experience. This includes making it match the user's mental model of how the system should work, AND designing it so that users enjoy spending their time (yes, using your product will take some non-zero amount of time) using it.
More Cell Phones than Land Lines in Households For The First Time
Openness is good, but if they want wide adoption, UI is a huge factor. Google's history is pretty hit-or-miss in that regard. GMail: hit. Google Video: miss. The inevitable iPhone comparison (in the event that this even turns out to be a real product) is probably spurious, but it bears mention that the iPhone salient feature is brilliant UI. That's what makes it a good device.

That said, I'm sure that Google would keep programmers very much in mind, so if that's your concern, there's probably not much to worry about.
Well Vlad you certainly know how to hijack a thread and turn it into your own subject matter. Well done boy. Waiting for the death rattle. Although our averaging and estimates on the numbers may be fair the numbers may be skewed by the fact that numbers alone mean nothing in the face of quality. As YComb gets more 'popular' the quality of applicants will improve and so I would suggest the chances have actually reduced in real terms not increased.

P.S. I am looking for co-founders with amazing hacking skills to join our application team. Any Hackers without an idea or team are welcome to contact me: colinbeattie@gmail.com. I have strong ideas to discuss and am keen to organise a team together or discuss other ideas we, as a TEAM, may propose.
I agree with you on the shabby state of CSS support, but it's hard to see how more font options will be bad for design. Horrible designs will always exist, so the fact that they have more fonts to choose from won't make them worse. It'll just make them bad in new ways.

For good designers, though, wider support of more fonts is wonderful. There's a reason that rich print typography developed in the first place. And at the very least, we can begin to kiss sIFR goodbye.
ACM Queue - A Conversation with Joel Spolsky: What it takes to build a good software company
Wow, I remember when this was brought up before in other threads, everybody who answered said they just received a standard rejection notice.
As the people commenting at fw's blog say, it just isn't going to work. It's also been done quite a few times.

Maybe if you tried a "fun" twist instead, like a link that says, "Don't bother other people with this ad". Make it explicit, you know.

BTW, I'm a consumer of web ads, and my ctr with adwords is usually between 2-3 percent. (For certain keywords, as high as 50 percent.) My adsense ctr? For this month... 0.02 percent. One click total. So, there's definitely room for improvement.
I got an email from Paul and a call from Jessica, both asking why we were doing this now as undergraduates. I think it's a very good sign if you get some interaction with them before the deadline, but it's not a bad sign if you don't get any feedback.
I know this is way late, but that was funny as hell.
Visual Differentiation of Scripted Links
How to keep the lid on a good idea
I was quoted in this article, but the point I really wanted to make (that ended up on the cutting room floor obviously) was that a startup should be more concerned about the 3-person startup working on the same thing than an investor or big company stealing their idea.
Black Plague and HIV resistance in Europe
Don't believe that your chances are worse this season. You will learn a lot regardless of what happens.

The question is, did my post help people? I've never mentioned my project here before, and I hope it did help. Best of luck to you!
Hires?
Around 1980.
He was a professor; I don't think there was much of a company to acquire.
It is incorrect to say that the CCR5 delta32 mutation came exclusively from the plague. It is more likely that it came from smallpox.

The title of this article is even worse, ~10% of people of European descent are resistant to HIV and 10% of those individuals are practically immune to HIV. The mutation is more common in people of northern European descent and some eastern European ethnic groups, like Ashkenazi Jews.

This summary of a paper published in Nature shows that mice with the CCR5 delta32 mutation still get the plague. http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_... Subscription/university tunnel required for the real paper.

This is another study concluding that smallpox was the more likely selecting factor for the mutation.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=29...
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=12...

This is a personal interest of mine because testing for this mutation is my startup. http://www.hivgene.com There's an enormous amount of untapped potential with the CCR5 receptor; I wish I had the money to do private research.

To cure HIV: Start with some adult stem cells from the HIV patient to be treated, specifically the stem cells that produce T cells. Introduce the 32 base pair deletion in the CCR5 gene and grow the cells in culture. These can then be "transplanted" back into the patient. These transplanted stem cells will create HIV immune T cells. Once there are enough immune T cells, the patient will probably still have HIV, but it will not develop into AIDS. There will be no chance of rejection since they are the patient's own cells. Furthermore, since the body does produce antibodies to HIV, these modified T cells may even be able to fight off the HIV.

To test this, we would get a mouse line, which are genetically very similar to each other from inbreeding so we won't have to worry about rejection of the transplants, and introduce the human CCR5 receptor into them. This, in theory, will allow the mice to be infected with HIV since HIV attaches to the CCR 5 receptor to enter and infect the cell. If this works, we can then try the technique of taking some of their stem cells, introducing the mutation, transplanting them back in, and see if their T cell count increases or if the levels of HIV decrease. It could also be used as a preventative therapy, which we can also easily test on the mice.

(HIV curing idea is courtesy of my partner, his username is ingenium on here. If anyone with money is interested in branching out into a different kind of biotech company, please get in touch with me.)
Facebook for engagement; Myspace for self expression
> Amer. Heritage: whim: "Arbitrary thought or impulse". Arbitrary: "Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference".

What you're doing here is a lot like the game telephone. If you follow a long enough chain of definitions in this way you can prove white = black.

Every native English speaker knows "whim" does not have the same meaning as "decision," which is what your argument implies.

I assume you're not deliberately trolling, but I have the same feeling of having to explain things I shouldn't have to explain that I do when I'm tricked into arguing with a troll.
Sparklines for members of online communities
Daniel Dennett on how brain-like computers are
Numenta springs to mind. I don't know much about Deep Blue, but despite what Dennett says, it seems much less human (and certainly less useful) than the sort of thing Hawkins & co. are up to.
An app like Reddit? Are you sure yours is that simple? Probably $2.5-$10k for someone really good.

We expect to spend about $15-$20k, to start, and I'll be doing all of the heavy lifting of hooking things up--we just want to get HTML/CSS mockups done, with no actual work on integrating the style into our application or website. But we have a lot of stuff in our app. Heavy use of forms, vast swaths of information spread across hundreds of pages, etc. But then again, the pool of talent that we're wanting to work with is pretty much limited "famously good". If we're going to pay for it, we figure it might as well be as good as we can get. I've gotten much better over the past two years, as I've focused more on design and less on software development...so if we're going to pay rather than just let me tinker with it more, it's gotta be great.
Towards the end of the Q&A session, he says

"Business plan is overrated for any kind of application
If you have plan that is really precise, you are over thinking and not programming enough"
I didn't mean elaborate in the sense of how many words it takes to express.
Interesting implications - would expanding / changing locales to include some CoWorking space and possibly improving the amenities (in light of elevator issues) inspire even more to move into a post-college startup community?
Why are you not pursuing NSF funding for this research? I am nowhere near as informed as you on this but there has to be money out there to pursue this investigation if what you say has even a small chance of working.
It's an intimidating and overwhelming process. Josh (ingenium) and I went to a multi-week university seminar for faculty spinning off research into commercial ventures and the speaker on NSF grants said that it's really tough to get government grants without hiring a consultant who knows the ins and outs of the system. This will be something to do as soon as we have a spare $10,000, but we don't have any spare capital for now.

We also need a PhD on board... we haven't looked for a faculty sponsor because if we get someone from the University of Pittsburgh on board, Pitt owns all of our IP. Pitt has a much worse IP policy than many other large universities; PG and I had this discussion a while ago on here and he posted the link for MIT's tech transfer policy which was much more reasonable.

Basically, Josh and I aren't qualified to lead the research, in the eyes of the government. But Josh is pretty good at what he does and I am confident we could lead a team of Biology PhDs pretty well. They have really low salaries in Pittsburgh too, $40,000 is the starting salary for a post-doc and $100,000 and a pittance of equity would get you anyone you wanted that didn't have tenure at a university.

You can also only get NSF/NIH funding if it has been posted as a "Funding opportunity" or "Funding notice." They don't take unsolicited ideas; they say in advance what ideas they are funding. I hadn't looked at these for a while and I see we may have just missed one that may have been relevant. It's not exactly the idea above and I really don't know if the process is flexible enough to allow for our adult stem cell treatment. http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-07-014.h...

It seems to me that Josh and I aren't going to be able to get government funding without handing our IP over to the University of Pittsburgh, and I have no desire to have to deal with academia. So that means we need to wait until we are independently wealthy to start researching. I also feel that we kind of have a moral prerogative to get research in this area moving forward, and I'm not sure what else we can be doing. We've casually mentioned this treatment technique to various PhDs and MDs and they unanimously say "Yes, that could work." However, they don't say "That's the best idea I've ever heard and I'm going to get be your Principal Investigator for an NIH grant."

Can you think of anything else we could be doing? For now, we're just bootstrapping our genetic testing company and seeing where that takes us.
Percentages for New Hires...
Engineer, 5 years experience. Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field. What option percentage should this engineer expect?
Here's a meatspace comparison. You talk to two salespeople. One is plain looking in plain clothes that could be bought at Target (or some equivalent box store). The other has a similar message, but is stunningly beautiful and wearing amazing designer clothes. Do you trust one more than the other (assuming all other factors are equal)? How many people would walk into a car dealership and approach the salesperson who was most attractive?

I think some "pretty" design smells like salesmanship to the savvy consumer, and this is reinforced by the fact that many of the most valuable sites (Craigslist, Amazon, Google, Ebay, Gmail, Del.icio.us, Reddit) aren't pretty to look at.

This isn't about usability and it isn't about simplicity. It's about the spectrum of ugly ranging to beauty and whether people have a bias against pretty/slick design (I think that a lot of people do).
It depends.

A company such as you describe ("Product close to launch, series A finished, in a specialized field") might have 20 engineers building the project; or it might have 3 people and several million dollars of hardware. Obviously in the later case a new employee would make a greater impact on the company and thus be able to demand more options.

An engineer such as you describe ("engineer, 5 years experience") might be a 23 year old who got an entry-level programming job straight out of high school and has no particular expertise; or he might have a PhD and be a world-recognized expert in the particular specialized field in which the company is working. Obviously in the later case he would be able to demand more options.

All I can say with confidence based on the information given is that he should probably expect somewhere between 0.01% and 25%.