skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If the company wanted just someone to code a prototype they could probably get a couple thousand dollars together and hire a contractor to do it. As long as the success of the company is based on the execution of the software you have to hire top notch developers and pay them accordingly. The idea itself is not worth that much, most of the time it's about the execution. And if these guys could raise some money without any code then they should go ahead and do so and they pay market salary. Until they can raise enough money to pay close to market rates they need to pony up equity to developers.
The First Mover Disadvantage
Not many...I'm lazy ;-) I guess I'll just summarize here:

I'm the co-founder (and, loosely, EIR) of a $4B alternative asset management firm in Chicago. We also have a small correspondent office in London. I have two co-managing partners that come from a more traditional background (investment banking, investment management, real estate, etc.) My background is mostly in startups. I've had a few nice exits in the past, and my pedigreed partners were willing to overlook my lack of polish for that reason only. The bulk of all of our personal assets are invested in the firm. We have, all together, around 400 employees. We have an essentially flat management structure, so a larger percentage of our employees are developers than you might expect. We pay fairly well, although our culture and our equity/performance share is more compelling to most new hires.

I have some limited input with our equities trading activities, but I don't have anything to do with our M&A or real estate activities at all. I manage all of our software and internet investments. I don't just sit on boards, though...I play an active role in all of our portfolio companies (except one that is a somewhat special case where we brought in a graybeard with more industry experience.) I make essentially all strategic and marketing decisions, and most hiring decisions for the companies in my division. I even write (abysmally bad Lisp) code on occasion to prove a point. Our internet division operates almost like a traditional VC firm, except the bulk (95%+) of our investments are in our own ideas. We're open to outside ideas for the most part, but we haven't found many that are worth pursuing instead of our own. Most of our active investments are in business and financial services, although we also have a few portfolio companies that are in more 'pure play' internet areas. All of our launched companies are currently profitable, and none rely on advertising for revenue. That record is likely to change once we launch our next three companies, though :-( Most of our investments are in industries that YCers would probably find boring (pension administration, payment processing, skills assesment, mortgage underwriting, etc.)
Well, I've had plenty of moments of stumbling across a competitor. I was never so far along the process that I had to tell investors about it so I usually backed off and went to another idea which turned out to be the wrong move most of the time.

Just because there are competitors doesn't mean you should back off the idea. It's a good thing if you stumble upon a competitor. It means your idea has some sort of value and since you didn't know about the competitor chances are a lot of your potential users/clients don't either. Even if your competitor is larger they might want to buy you later on to decrease competition or another larger player looking to enter the market might buy you in the process.
the mobile web top 10 tips
Funny you forgot an obvious choice: sleep. Better than pills.
1. Virtually zero barriers to entry

Incorrect. This is where many analysts have been wrong, and hence have been underestimating goog's longevity. Google has one of the largest barriers to entry of any tech company. Personally, I think larger than Microsoft's. Here is why: they solve ridiculously hard problems and make it seem simple and easy, and monetize it well! Yahoo, Microsoft, and all the 2nd tier search companies cannot hold a candle to Google's ability to search and index. Why? Google has the smartest people in the world working hard and enjoying themselves while working there.

2. Competition from the other big dogs

Incorrect. The other big dogs are falling rapidly behind. Microsoft is not doing well on the web, momentum is basically carrying them. Yahoo is not doing well, again they are doing a decent job at making money being second horse, but they do not do anything innovative on search or advertising, they eat up the scraps. AOL clearly is dying. Google's margins are much higher than any competitors, and this is massively important.

The other arguments could hold, but I don't agree with them entirely.
Generally, I feel the advertising based model allows them to monetize any product they create, from web mail to any of their newer products, including potentially free wifi.

Just my two cents.
very cool forum for all topics (just started)
GOOG is 'overpriced' because of their aggressive growth. It is quite rare for someone of their size to be posting double digit quarterly growth rates.
Name that Athlete Game
This thread was one of many started at RootZoo.com. I thought it was really cool. Stumped me. Are you good enough to figure it out??
Overall everything worked well. However, I did find the navigation in the "Results" page a bit counter-intuitive:

I entered "beer" as the seek term and was taken to the "Results" page and I clicked on the first entry in the results--"Beers" which is a list--and got a new page with a view of the items in that list. But when I clicked on the second entry in the results--"beer" which is an item--I didn't get a new page with a view of the item. Instead I got a preview of the item in the frame on the right-side of the Results page.

After further review, I saw the link to the right of the "beer" entry labeled "view" and was able to view the page for that item. I really don't think labeling the links to the right of each results entry differently--"preview" for a list and "view" for an individual item--will prevent the user from being surprised by this behavior.

Seeklr is a very intriguing site. The presentation is very attractive and implemented nicely. Good job and good luck.
I'm not sure I agree. This article is so much more substantive while following a very popular meme. There may be some PR in there, but it seems more buried than the more obvious examples.
I think the idea about the assistant telling you what you should be doing if you're not currently working on the top priority item is a great idea. We're going to add that to StreamFocus.com :)
Your Desktop Is Not a Destination
Thinking about domains
I think this is going to change very soon. They're close to unveiling a targeted ad system. As smart as AdSense is (targeting ads to content of a page), targeting them to the specific preferences of a user is even more compelling.
funny... don't use a dark background... on a page with a black background.
I hope you're right, and I hope it's awesome. My best guess, however, is even if they've got such a system, it's sure to be immature and hence not very compelling. Facebook doesn't have near the advertising talent Google does, so I wouldn't be so quick to compare their so-far-nonexistent ad system to the behemoth that is AdSense.
Normal brain functions, such as seeing patterns, make us more likely to believe in the supernatural.
Yeah, I still say it is a flop. Any company with google's resources, should have been able to leverage them much better than they have. Also, if they really thought they would be able to build something compelling, why would they pay murdoch and co all the money they did instead of just building their own/
Can we stop misusing the word "Zen" already? I practice Zazen and I rewrite code... they don't have that much in common!
If you want to write web applications you absolutely need to know JavaScript for client side work. On the server it doesn't really matter whether you choose Ruby or Python. Both have good web frameworks and both are dead slow, so be prepared to write algorithmic code in C (now you know why you learned it :-). Lisp is conceptually much more interesting and (depending on the implementation) as fast as C. But the selection of Lisp web frameworks is anemic.

Just in case you ever plan to look for a corporate job you should be aware of the fact that 80 % of those jobs require Java and/or C#.
This kind of gives geniuses a raw deal. Sure, many of them are undisciplined, but their brilliance is useful. If managers just focus on how they don't have the same strengths as the rest of the company's employees, seems like the managers aren't making good use of the company's resources.
job offer advice needed
job offer question

Hello ycers,

I have a question for all of you.I have almost run out of money saved from a couple years of freelancing and as a jr. dev, trying to bootstrap a startup, so I needed some cash. Over the weekend I applied for jobs and interviewed at two companies. Both of them are heavy .NET C#/C++ houses, and they both offerred me 40,000/yr + benefits. But thats where the similarities stop.

The first company i interviewed with had a Tom Brady look-alike for a "technical director", everyone was wearing some variation of Zegna (might has well have been, but could have been Target), creative colored walls, and was essentially a profitable "product" company ( 10-12 employees ), with $1.2mm earnings on $3mm in sales. They do a bit of extremely expensive consulting ($200+/hr), but their bread and butter is in their enterprise product. Their adherence to OO and relational db principles was rigourous to a fault, as demonstrated by the robust 4'x 2' diagram of their db on the wall of the TD's office. They just seem like a perfect fit. The td ended the interview by saying that it would be a very steep learning curve for me to understand their system, even with my (decent) understanding of software dev.

The second company's contrast to the first was so profound, that during the interview, I was tempted to laugh at the many unprofessional attributes of the place. Having previously worked as a (gasp) VB dev at a small firm (~20 employees, mostly fix-it IT guys), I thought I was used to a lax environment. But this wasn't lax, this was sloppy. I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say that twice I had to jump out of the chair provided to guests to evade the live-in cat. Being a web development company with no proprietary product, they were not profitable, and still funded by who-knows and the few $40 - $80k websites that they developed . They were very folksy, and I actually laughed quite a bit during the interview. Taking 40k from them seems like a cakewalk.

I'll end by saying that I think I would learn a lot about complex software and whats right(wrong) with it/how to build it, or I could just take the easy job,hack in my spare time, and make enough money to get on my feet until i decide I have something good enough to show VCs/yc. But then, yeah...I was wondering if "run upstairs" applied in this situation.

So

As a 20yr old, cs dropout, self taught programmer and aspiring startupper, which job would you take?

I appreciate all advice
link didn't work for me - here is the new link http://foundread.com/2007/10/29/question-of-the-day-just-fou...
Looks good overall. I understand where you're going with it. However, I agree that the navigation is just a bit confusing. Also, the value proposition is a bit unclear, in my opinion (perhaps because there are limited amounts of users, and it's new?)

For instance: What benefit do I personally gain from using the site? To see what other people think?

I don't mean to belittle your startup, I just want to be sure that I'm not missing the point. Perhaps a bit more explanation on the landing page would help?
Orkut is also the dominant English social network in most parts of Asia and the Middle East (although Facebook is becoming increasingly popular).
Option #1 all the way.

Sounds like an opportunity to learn how things are done right, or at least close to right.
You make great points. I think good hackers who are interested in doing a startup really should pay attention - what we think is interesting is useful is often not anything people want. Great if you're just hacking, but not so much if you want to build a business.
Seems like a better title for this would be "Why I Never Hire Over-Confident Men". I don't see what's so "brilliant" about confidently making unjustified changes.
Haha, do what feels right. Still, there's always option 3: Find a team of talented young entrepreneurs where at least one has the cash to float a startup for a while. That way, you can avoid the "office job" entirely.
I don't much care either way, but here are the things I see wrong with your assessment.

1) With the stock options vesting, some of the smart people at Google are leaving. Most are being poached by Facebook or they've gone on to start their own companies. In the Valley, it's true that Google has cause a huge brain drain, but that doesn't mean Redmond doesn't have equally smart people. You've been had by Google PR.

As for their solving ridiculously hard problems, that's not the point. It's all about distribution. Google has effectively been able to outgame Microsoft in terms of distribution, for now. Open up Firefox and it's the default search engine. It's now ubiquitous enough to be used as a verb. But that doesn't mean Microsoft is out in the cold, they still rule the desktop and enterprise. In fact, Google search for enterprise isn't on par to other offerings. The Fortune 500 company I work for has recently switched away from Google and many other IT managers I've spoken with have been jumping ship to either Microsoft or InQuira.

2) You point to other companies but offer little. Microsoft may not be doing well with Vista but they're making money hand over fist. Yahoo Search Marketing also has a somewhat different CPC bidding process than AdSense that many are liking more. And as for AOL, they're now transitioning into a full on advertising company and with a lot of cash and Time Warner backing, they're a formidable competitor.
Maybe the world has moved toward their speed, nowadays. But, perhaps the /puer aeternus/ will just aim that much higher.

The article makes a good time-contrast with the new ycombinator-type speed of business though, for sure.

> "By constantly thinking about it, madam," her "dear Sir Isaac" muttered.

Heh; there's hope for we dummies.
I don't think you got the point of the article. It's pointing out that hard work and ethics is mundane but it keeps his company running. The brilliant ones can come in and out but they don't help his company run any better.
I disagree, the top guys leaving is quite over emphasized from what I heard. For a lot of us geeks, Google is a dream job and atmosphere. Not many people are entrepreneurs.

Microsoft is making money on momentum, not on innovation. They also are not making a lot from online products. Yahoo is doing alright, but again is doing nothing great and is in the dust behind Google. AOL is horrid, their page views are dropping fast, and they are dumping employees faster. They are transitioning to owning a few portals and blogs, and hell they use google ads on their site and google search. They are not a formidable competitor in the least, they are dropping in market share rapidly. They just fired 20% of their workforce for the second year in a row.
Yeah. I'm keeping my eyes open, but I haven't been able to meet any really talented ones yet. Hopefully I will now (moving to a bigger city)
"No Edison could ever qualify"

I bet Edison does qualify. (Lincoln too)

"In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher the Reverend Engle was overheard calling him "addled." This ended Edison's three months of official schooling" - Wikipedia

Perhaps genius itself is successful mediocrity without any exception. And the other "brilliant men" that he talks about in this article are just bright snake-oil salesmen.
Business model:  improve OSS and ask for payment to release result as open source
Are you looking for Lisp consultants?
Would this make sense? You make whatever improvements to OSS that you like and then you ask people to pay you so to release your improvements as open source.

You could also release binaries to try to convince people that paying to open source your improvements would be worth it.
People have tried it, and it doesn't seem to work very well.
The advantage is that you would have complete freedom in what you do. It's not like you are working for anyone.
Ask YC: Object databases
Has anyone played with OO db's?

Which did you like and why?
I don't doubt that work ethic is more important than intelligence, but the author errs by suggesting that brilliance and work ethic are mutually exclusive, or at the least very negatively correlated.

I suspect the reason the author gets it wrong is because he doesn't take into account the fact that intelligence signaling is higher fidelity than work-ethic signaling. That is, going into an interview it's much easier to fake being a hard worker than it is to fake having brilliant ideas. I'll refrain from trying to make a 2x2 matrix in ASCII.
AskYC: How exactly does the 'saved' function work
Is there a way to save a certain post? Do I not have enough karma to save something?

If I want to track something, I have been leaving a comment, so that way it shows up in my threads. Sometimes my comments have not really added to the conversation, but I know I'll be able to quickly access it when I come back to the site.

Where am i going wrong?
Something about the design of the front page makes it look like one of the linkjack/adsense pages. This is a first glance kind of thing, but it's important as it can turn off a huge percentage of visitors.

Also, the footer on the front page seems a little off.
Maybe IPython would fit the bill for you:
http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/
By not work I mean that people don't seem to be able to make a living at it, let alone "get rich". There are a few cases of people successfully doing a commercial version that gets features before the free version, but that's sort of a different thing than the "ransom" (as it's known) model.

This has been discussed on the Free Software Business list before:

http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?mss:11850:200710:ldi...
old school option: jolt. It's funny how you mention the end of adult swim and I know what your talking about. For me it used to be when mtv started playing videos, you know you've stayed up to long.

Seriously though you need sleep. Things that should take 5 minutes start taking longer and in the long run your killing yourself.
Now, if only I can be dumb like Newton, I'm golden.
There are two kinds of sloppy: sloppy because it's micro-managed by pointy-haired bosses (in this case, yes, run away!) and sloppy because they just don't know better. In the latter case, you can experiment as you like and bring improvement; it's an interesting challenge and it's rewarding. And if it's a relaxed and funny environment, it's even better!

Or you could go with the guys that know everything and are so proud of their system (system that is sooo complex and hard to understand).

In both cases you'll learn something valuable, anyway.
If it's big enough, release the software but make people pay for the documentation. That's how NumPy and VTK do it, currently.
Did you find any relevance between the story and writing?
If you vote a story up or submit the story, it should show up on your saved page.
It's called ransomware.

Fabrice Bellard (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr), who is not your average hacker, tried this model with kqemu and as far as I know, despite the great quality of his work, it didn't work (he finally decided to release the thing under the GPL).

Stephen King tried a similar system for a novel and it didn't work either (he quit writing it).

John Carmack has a model that works: initially release the thing under a proprietary license, make money with it and then release it as open source software.
Yeah, it took me all day to read (occasional bouts of reading between time spent doing actual work, I mean). Very well worth reading; I've been considering moving to apple for some time now, and this was a great overview of the kind of things I could expect from OS X.
eXelate Raises $4M for Delayed-Ad Exchange
Alibaba Set to Be Second Biggest Internet IPO Ever
Ask payment to who exactly? The 'community'?
Interesting. I can definitely see what you're saying and we don't want to give that impression to first-time users. Thanks!
No, you're not belittling it at all. Communicating the purpose and value of the site clearly and quickly has been a recurring problem (and we still haven't gotten it right yet).

To answer your question: The value to you is to find new stuff. So if you are interested in crime comics, you would come to Seekler to quick find some new comics to buy. Ditto with music, movies, etc. If you happen to have an opinion on some area, it'd be awesome if you made a list yourself, but it's not necessary.
Sorry, you're in the wrong decade; the OODB people are now working on XMLDBs (or sometimes RDF triple stores).
Hey, great feedback. I totally agree with you - the navigation on the results is pretty confusing and we should make it all consistent. Thanks a ton!
I'd go with that option too, except you love cats :P
It took Google what, 4-5 years to finally come out with AdWords and begin their powerhouse ascent?

Give FB time, they'll get there.
There's one approach to OO databases which is seems interesting to me. It's called SBA (Stack Based Approach) and the corresponding query language is called SBQL. It's been a subject of academic research in Poland for quite a while now, they've published a number of papers and a book on the subject, but only recently they actually got to implementing the thing. The project's web page is http://loxim.mimuw.edu.pl/ It is still rather immature and the English documentation is definitely incomplete, but in my opinion there is a (small) chance that this could grow into something big and useful.
Anyone can contribute to the payment. When it's high enough for you, you would release your code as open source.
When you say "internal Google project", do you mean hired a guy who used code from his previous company and slapped the name "Orkut" on it?

Via Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut

"In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Orkut Buyukkokten and Google based Orkut on inCircle code.[ambiguous] Originally the Orkut community was felt to be elitist, because its membership was by invitation only. At the end of July 2004 Orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark and by the following September it had surpassed 2,000,000. As of August 2007, the number of members equated to over 67,000,000 users."
As a young programmer, the most important thing you need is someone to learn from.

Someone to show you what obvious stupid mistakes you are making, and how you can reach the next level in writing good code.

The first place looks like it will be a bit of a hassle because it is so strict, but it will be meaningful to get that under your belt.
The second place sounds sloppy, like you mentioned.
That is, until the 70s call to get their hierarchical model back.
brk - while it's sometimes nice to have varied opinions here on News.YC, I can tell yours will be modded down quite a bit.

This isn't "Suits News" or "B-school Guy News", it's Hacker News. I would view reading this as more of a learning experience to see how hackers view the world of startups, than trying to convert us to your viewpoint. Just my $.02, and welcome to News.YC!
Thanks. I'm installing Firebug now.
true but what about the falling value of the chutzpah relative to the maka-maka?
OODBs sound like a great idea in theory, but I've yet to meet a good OODB in practice.

Just use an RDBMS and in your application use a layer which abstracts away the "relational" part of the RDBMS and exposes it as objects to the rest of the application. This /can/ get a bit tricky with transactions and etc, but your internal data layer can be designed with some notion of transactions.