skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Roger Ehrenberg's check list applied
Investor Roger Ehrenberg has written a good piece of advice (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=324800) for the entrepreneurs starting a new business in current economy downtime. Being myself one of these crazy guys, I decided to take a shot at my venture and see how the check list really works.

core criteria:

1) "2-3 person teams, with a CEO who is the product visionary" : NO, that's just me
2) "A strong technology lead" : YES, that's me :)
3) "A CEO who has infectious passion and intensity, yet is humble and coachable" : MAYBE, that's me again, but Google hadn't a CEO when they started either
4) "A business model that I can understand in 30 seconds without visual aids" : YES, I guess
5) "The company has a prototype/alpha version that is currently being challenged by users and generating feedback" : YES and NO, I'm finishing the prototype, but with limited feedback
6) "An ability to generate revenues in 6-9 months" : YES
7) "A business that needs no more than $1-$2 million in financing to become a $25-$50 million (exit value) company, simply by executing the core business plan" : YES and NO, I need less 100k and hope to get around 5m
8) "A business that has an inherent call option, that could boost its base-line exit value by at least 10x" : MAYBE

added criteria:

1) "Initially sells to the enterprise for branding, credibility, awareness and early revenues" : MAYBE, the product is targeting professionals, as well as the enterprise
2) "Can get to revenues within 6 months, tops" : YES/MAYBE
3) "Is sold on the basis of ROI, e.g., helps generate revenues or reduce headcount/costs" : YES/MAYBE, the product aims to reduce the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
4) "Integrates easily with existing platforms and/or programs" : YES
5) "Either leverages existing open source programs or can itself become partially or fully open source" : YES
6) "Has multiple revenue streams, e.g., software, maintenance, services, etc." : MAYBE, there is always an opportunity to provide consulting when selling to the enterprise

well, I suppose there is no single check list that will apply ideally for anything, so what these answers mean to me and what I have to do first to have better chances for attracting investors (angels)?

1) find co-founders and CEO
2) get more feedback
3) switch to another idea with better exit projections
4) discover additional revenue streams
5) a combination of these
6) all of the above

Any thoughts?
I clicked on the link and got a page which only said:

"Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 6553600) (tried to allocate 77824 bytes) in /home/nerdlife/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 981"

I'm not sure if this supports or refutes whatever point the author was intending to make.
Two comments:

1. Philadelphia is a mediocre city for startups, not only because it's sort of boring, but because there's NO INVESTOR MONEY THERE. That's the number one determinant of where startups are and thrive. Hi SF, Boston, NYC.

2. What's up with dreamit's website?
http://www.dreamitventures.com/

Live Your Dream! - Do they want me to sell knives or something?

As a founder I'm all for anything that gives entrepreneurs capital to build their own companies and increases the level of competition, but something just seems...off.

EDIT: No idea why I typed Midwest. Reading about my beloved Detroit Lions and writing on HN is not smart. Rich zip codes don't matter much. Investors do. I thought it was obvious I was talking about investor capital, but I updated that as well.
Yunno why people hate eBay, business practices. They layoff 1000 people and turn around and buy 2 companies. This pisses me off.
Norton Antivirus 2009
Existing for a little over 18 years, the brand Norton is synonymous with virus protection software. They have various other software protection packages, but with Norton, you know that you are getting the cream of the crop when it comes to virus protection for the computer.
http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x...

This seems like a good guide on how not to fuck things up with C++.
Cheap Student Airfares
Most of these cheap student airfares are not included in travel brochures. They are usually posted online or in specialized travel agencies that deal to the student market only. Always keep in mind that most of these cheap student airfares are meant for students expanding their education at other destinations.
In my mind the foosball tables and video games are a way of demonstrating that a company cares more about your actual productivity than whether you appear to be busy all hours of the day. The times when I'm really productive are more on the scale of sprints than marathons, and it's valuable to sometimes do something other than sit in front of a computer if I'm not feeling productive. Personally I'd never play video games during the workday because they destroy my ability to concentrate, but I appreciate the sentiment.
Ever thought of moving back to starting up again?
Cook virtually with this site's cooking games, chefs and food games 
This is the cooking games site you don't want to miss. All of the cooking related online flash games are here and free. Make your way to be a chef, play the cooking, cake decorating, fast food games and build your own restaurant here.
A couple more possibilities:

1. Tasks that require a lot of repetitive, manual work, but which are difficult to automate. Example: UI testing.

2. Creaky legacy projects using outdated tools/code/platforms. Some people like Software Archeology (I sorta do,) but most developers seem to hate it.
Be sure to read this as well:

The Fourth Quadrant: A Map Of The Limits Of Statistics (9/15/08):

http://edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html
I've always thought that purple is equal to 6 and yellow equals four. I don't look at the number and see those colors, but when I conceptualize those numbers I get colors along with the numbers.
Social Media ABC's - Q is for QWERTY
Midwest WTF?

There is a serious amount of capital around Philadelphia. It has a couple of the richest zip codes in the country. You just don't know what you're talking about.
A debit card doesn't count as credit in most cases.
AOL-Yahoo Merger Details Emerge; Deal Could Happen This Month
> it's in the midwest

Midwest?
So far I’ve received more than 90 resumes for a job that’ll pay $12 to $15 (not much, I know, but for a starter job not too bad — my first job back in 1993 paid $10 an hour and this one should be a good launch to a fun career in journalism or PR or any number of jobs).

Heard of inflation, Scoble?
But then... How did they come up with all these learning algorithms? Do all researchers have that 95% failure rate?
BlackBerry Application Center is RIM’s answer to the iPhone App Store
What 700 billion? >:-)
I once applied for a job, and was rejected with a letter listing reasons why they typically reject applicants. This list included grammatical and spelling errors on one's letter or resume.

Ironically, the company's rejection letter itself contained both a grammatical and spelling error. Having already been rejected, I decided to write back to them and point this out. I guess they were in some way impressed, as they wrote back to me asking if I'd be interested in a job, but by this time I wasn't.
Or CS degrees.
So -- another "this is what I'm looking for in a resume" posts, eh?

Nothing wrong with that, except there are hundreds of thousands of guys out there with their own lists of stuff they want.

The art of writing a resume is the art of creating a targeted sales brochure to the exact person who is able to call you in for an interview. That means, between you and him, you have to understand at a gut level what makes his boat float and what are going to be key selling factors for him.

It's an acquired skill, but not too hard to learn. The interesting part is that not only do you have to target each opportunity, you also have to go through a certain number of opportunities per day/week to make the machine work.

I find it fun once I get used to it. Of course, as I get older it's all word-of-mouth now.
I agree, the team I started working with has been changed significantly. I started working with people who thought oop meant ctrl-c. Now, I'm working with guys that really know what they are doing and it has motivated me a lot more then before.
Ask.com Revamps Search Engine
haha that was my bad, corrected.

Just because the zip code is rich doesn't mean the area is full of startup investors. Maybe I should up & move to Beverly Hills, Palm Beach or New Canaan. Come on.

I didn't say it was awful, it's just not very good.
Corrected - fetching coffee now.
AIDS and cervical cancer discoveries scoop Nobel prize
Yeah. I'm much happier working on products. I'm not going to be a full-time investor -- I'm not suited for it. I mostly started out doing some angel investing to see if it was for me.

I think the main problem here is that I see problems and I immediately want to solve them. The goal for an investor is not to find and solve good problems but to bet on good teams. As Josh Kopelman says, it's about the chef, not the ingredients.

So mostly you end up saying "no" a whole lot. If you give an explanation as to why you don't like it, many entrepreneurs will simply change the details and then expect money, so you can't even generally give a reason. I think I spoke to north of 90 companies to consider even the eight deals I have done. Between that and incoherent summaries, MBAs with just a powerpoint deck, etc, I just get too tired.
I agree. Being an angel is, in my mind, about belief. If value can be easily demonstrated, the valuations would be higher.
> doesn't mean the area is full of startup investors

I'm sorry, I forgot startup just means webtard 2.0 stuff around here. New profitable companies that work with elevators or pharmaceutical plant operations don't count.
In short, no. ESR had it right. "That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot."

My primary bread-and-butter language is Javascript. When done "right", Javascript is a very expressive functional/prototypal object oriented language with a lot of very interesting features. If you can do it in lisp, you can do it in Javascript: http://foohack.com/tests/ycomb.html

I've seen in myself and in coworkers, the best Javascripters know at least a little lisp, and as their lisp skills increase, so do their javascript skills. I suspect it would have the same effect on Ruby or SML or Erlang programmers.

Their attitude towards boilerplate code tends to change as well, and they begin seek solutions that are as concise and expressive as possible.

Lisp is unique because it effectively has no syntax. You write the abstract syntax tree directly. By removing the scaffolding, Lisp exposes the programmer to the fundamental nature of any programming language in a way that no other programming language does.

That's why C and Lisp are the best languages to learn, as early as possible: if you know these two pretty well, you're in a good position to master any language you might come across.

Misc is a promising cousin of Lisp: http://will.thimbleby.net/misc/ I've played with it a little, but not enough to really have a strong opinion of it.
We're profitable. And so were my two businesses (one website, one not) before this one.

I get what you're saying, but I believe the article was talking about startup/website/application investments not traditional brick & mortar businesses.
I'd advise the opposite: Keep doing shit you hate. At least until the economy gets in shape.
We're not talking about them. We're talking about the net outflow of younger natives.
no, no one in the bay area lays off unless the street (stock) demands it.

the psychological impact of layoffs is the antithesis of growth, which all bay area companies are trying to project

if they didn't need to layoff, they would just put the excess headcount on cruise control, like google and yahoo do
they are chump-change acquisitions in the grand scope of ebay's market cap
As someone who left Pennsylvania: Dead on.
Does anyone else find the post incredibly disrespectful? So to merely have a chance at $12/hour one should include a customized video and pay a professional editor to go over the cover letter (presumably one of many since we are also instructed to make sure and customize each application)? Seriously?

Mr. Scoble's sense of entitlement is staggering. Just because you can lord it over people who find themselves unemployed in a bad economy doesn't mean you should.

In the very least he should refrain from making fun of over-qualified candidates. That's just unnecessary.
just ask the really fat guy down the aisle
Hey Hacker News, author here.

I have a totally unrelated question about this post. Do you see the two trackbacks? One of them (the first) appears to be a totally legit blog, but also appears to be spam? What is the proper etiquette in this situation? What is your opinion on trackbacks?
Reminds me of Cleveland, Ohio and to a lesser extent Detroit. Some of the young neighborhoods (The Flats is a prime example) in Cleveland who were thriving ~10 years ago are now dead. It's ridiculous.
Thanks David - I didn't see this thread, but the presentation was clear that there was still a lot of C++ in addition to the Erlang services. Still curious as to the thinking behind Erlang getting the nod...

And yes, that would be one route - arguably the best route. But if one were to make a career out of his job in a big corp, I would say it is worth it to introduce new languages into the company to open up more options in future development. It goes without saying though...languages with more/better documentation and healthy community would be a plus in considering.
i'll explain this market for you all so you can understand it

DEBT UNWINDING

the world has flooded itself in debt, far more than any economic expansion or confidence can handle. there is always an inflection point where confidence in debt unravels. this is why even the govt can't stop the debt unwinding.

until a significant de-leveraging takes hold, all markets will stay in the toilet

for de-leveraging to take place, assets need to be repriced

we are now in a period i will call

THE GREAT REPRICING

all assets will be repriced. you see stocks reprice quickly now because they are the most liquid asset. bonds are next. houses will continue to fall. in the end, houses will fall by a minimum of 50%. i say this as a homeOWNER, i have already made peace with the fact that my home (in desirable bay area) will fall by 50%. in some places they have already fallen 50%

this is the exact experience of the japanese in the 90s. even 0% interest rates could not induce more consumption and debt. it took them TEN YEARS to work it off
Hands-free Coding with Microsoft Vista Speech Recognition
Slicehost are awesome. They know their stuff, and they actually care.

I've had a few dedicated servers from big companies, with absolutely no support provided by people with no clue whatsoever.

Slicehost has been fantastic. Most notably dealing with a couple of DOS attacks against my slice.
They don't really provide details, but generally yes. If you have achieved your desired energy, you might then want to irradiate something in air (remember some of this was used in weapons research). So he could have stuck his head in front of the beam exit, or they might have pulled apart a section of the accelerator, sealed it off, but for some reason the beam was still run and the beam simply passed through the seal.

I'm guessing that he was probably working on one of the beam dumps (not the main accelerating ring), which meant that the beam could have already been accelerated many times around the synchrotron.
Too Many Gas Stations (A parable for startups)
Honda Launches Official Insight Hybrid Blog with New Photos and Videos
Don’t forget that sometimes a startup can take a bite out of the existing market by taking the current status quo and twisting it.

To continue the gas analogy, perhaps you believe that there’s a better, more convenient way to sell gas, and you’re willing to bet that others will agree with you and be willing to pay you for it.
I am not nearly a good enough statistician to give a good critique of Talib's theories.

But I do recall a great article that was very informative and for the life of me, I can not find it.

Does anyone here know what I'm talking about, or did I just dream of an excellent Taleb counter point?
As a resident of Pittsburgh, I disagree. :)
Nokia E51 ROSE Steel Unlocked
This business phone strides right into the boardroom and commands attention because there’s nothing frilly about its appearance. The Nokia E51 means business right from the get go and right down to its features this is a phone that doesn’t mess around.
Don't forget that persecution of a thing tends to drive it underground but not eliminate it. There is no way of knowing how many people in centuries past were non-religious because they would have hidden this fact to avoid persecution.
Perhaps not! The people who do that usually do it with borrowed money. There's no money to borrow now.

They just might end up putting on white sheets, driving the mexicans out of town, and then standing around outside home depot.
"Busts are when rich people started on their path to wealth."
very timely.

its the people that are up and running when it turns that appear "lucky", when in reality they had been building during the downturn.
I'm the only person on a frontend web dev team who knows:

* Semantic HTML

* Advanced (> Basic) CSS

* Stylesheet design

* JavaScript

* JavaScript libraries

* How to write a reusable function

* How to use a database

* Damn near anything outside of Dreamweaver

Sometimes I really, really think I need a new job, but someone would have to approach me because the market's too risky for me to justify a serious hunt right now. In the meantime, I get to teach everyone else as much as I can, create interesting work for myself, and take care of my responsibilities which is the easiest part.
I agree with you - there is really no need to be talking about black swan events, it's simple math. Over the last few years people (especially in the US) have been borrowing like crazy based on the value of their homes. These were inflated because of banks being willing to loan to people that really couldn't afford it, thus driving up the price. A simple but vicious circle that ends the day someone yells "the emperor has no clothes on". And that time is now.

If you look through all the bank-yadayada and think for yourself it's both very simple and inevitable. And the only thing that will fix it is bringing prices and spending back to their natural level, which is well below what it is today.
How does this compare with Student Universe?

As I understand, their system primarily relied on a series of in-house travel agents who negotiated the best deals that they could..

Their "secret sauce" was in their way of verifying that someone actually was a student; They spent a lot of money developing it, and workign out the kinks. I'd be curious to know how TravelLulu does the same.
How Usable is Your Copy?
Nail Fungus Treatment
Nail fungus can be difficult to treat, and repeated infections are common. Over-the-counter antifungal nail creams and ointments are available, but they aren’t very effective.
The banking system, betting against black swans...

I'm so sick of this guy and his gimmicks. Here--I'll sell you some zebra stampede insurance. Now you're covered against that black swan. It could happen, yes? But by definition, a random event can't be predicted, so why bother planning against it?

But this wasn't a "black swan". There was nothing strange about what happened, and many, many people predicted it and explained their predictions. Yet, the media is giving credit to some charlatan who provides nothing but magical thinking:

where he believes no one can predict black swan events, he's eager to cite instances where he alone has done so.
I can't get quite get my finger on what that car reminds me of. Oh right, it's basically a sleaker Prius with a Honda logo on it.
Amazon is insanely paranoid about running A/B tests on its front page and optimizing it for the bottom line.

And what do they find? This "cluttered" design makes people buy more stuff. It's hard to argue with $$ numbers.
SearchMe Calls Out Yahoo On BOSS Screenshot
Micah - definitely agree which is why I said:

Are you entering an already crowded field with the hopes of doing what everyone else is doing and then try to sell some lottery tickets and candy bars along with it?

For gas stations, maybe it would be interesting to have paid memberships to a gas station franchise (would have made a killing in the last few weeks in Atlanta). But doing the same thing as everyone else plus selling candy bars isn’t the way to make a killing. At least I can’t think of an example where that was done to huge success.
agreed, there was no black swan here. this was a simple debt implosion
Living Without Sessions
IPhone outselling every phone but RAZR in U.S.
php is a great language... for a hack
I guess he got bored with the pickle slicer.
"So, with the help of the strategists and the professional firms we were able to throw a few more resources at the teams. We got a local marketing firm to donate some strategizing help. We wanted to set up an infrastructure for each team that they could potentially build around. And it worked out really, really well. I know that some of the DreamIt companies ended up getting quite a few people from these partners companies to be on their boards."

Having people on the board of directors of your company from the local accounting and marketing firms? That's just really weird.

A board position is certainly not something to be handed out lightly, should reflect the ownership of the company, and definitely not something you're "lucky to have people on".
"Do not look into proton beam with remaining eye."
Worst Windows Flaws of the Past Decade
Yeah. Amazon is one of those rare sites where it actually benefits from cramming as much as possible onto one page.
Lenient-to-nonexistent dress codes and flex time can go a long way here, too.

Sometimes, having foosball tables and video games around distracts the people who actually intend on doing work, though.
Oh man, you're hilarious. You're fairly certain Docs doesn't allow for offline editing yet? REALLY?!! They've offered it since May 2007 when they released Gears, that was the whole purpose of Gears to allow offline access to online content. It works in YouTube for gods sake, did you not even bother to read what Docs or Gears is before claiming knowledge about them?!

Why do you claim saving documents is inefficient, when a SSB of a document can be HTML, OpenOffice, PDF, RTF, TXT or Doc. I'm sorry, I'm failing to see how this is inefficient? I mean, how can it be any more inefficient than Office that makes a clutter of files without a users consent?

With Docs I have full access to my files anywhere, including offline. Then whenever I need it in an actual file format, I merely download it, which incidentally can be done whilst using offline mode. BTW, the application shortcut provided when allowing Docs to run through Gears actually defaults to offline access and connects if it detects an internet connection.

Oh and, here's the trumps of using Docs. The one time an error happened, I wasn't told the problem the error report was sent to the developers. And you know what, the error never happened again and I didn't have to wait till Office 2012 for the fucking fix! That's why Docs is better than Office, because it's not updated every half-decade and still a buggy CPU hogging piece of expensive crap.
Can you share those links?
Here's some anecdotal evidence. I'm a programmer, and I agree 100% with this part:

Developers hate three things, above all else, in increasing order of painfulness…

Working on stuff that is easy
Working on stuff that is tangential
Working on stuff that no one will use