skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with the licensing. I have been using with Windows 2000 and Sql Server 2000 because I don't want to pay MS more money but if I go to 64 bit servers then I would need at least Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005. That is one reason I am looking for money now while I wasn't before,

And I have been officially rejected from Y Combinator... time for plan b... too bad :(
New French finance minister aims to change French attitude to work
Of course, but ideally I wouldn't be bombarded with that junk to begin with.
I like the mental model description. I think programming (like other skilled arts) requires constant evolution of programming mental models or memes.

Developing new languages is a great exercise in creating new tools to solve specific problems. Rails really kicked the status quo and made programming so much easier for a bunch of us. But is it possible to ever create a language that will make all the different kind of programming problems equally easy? It always seems like there is a tradeoff, programming abstractions vs performance. As another case, all of us know english, but how many of us are great writers? (not I! haha)

Great link though. Look forward to the day when game programming is as easy as brainstorming out loud to our computers.
Submit Your Startup to the LeWeb3 Competition in Paris
Argh my idea (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=69954) rejected officially 5:46 pm Pacific time. Too bad for me.
> A key building a company is knowing when it's time to step aside.

How about: "A key building a company is knowing if it's time to step aside." From what I can see Zuckerberg is doing a damn good job. If I had stock in Facebook him being replaced would make me sell it.
Juan Pablo, do you live in Miraflores? Or where? I have family all over Lima.
"Expensive Eccentric" - how markets normalize the mob
Ask YC: Where are the Other Opportunities?
Now that we're all past the decision-making process, I'm curious as to what other places there are that are somewhat like Y-Combinator. Anybody got some links?

I hope it's appropriate to ask that question here. I don't have a personal need for the information right now (my application was a lark anyway) but I know others might find it useful. And it's something nice to have in your back pocket for the future,right?
Techstars:
http://www.techstars.org/site/page/pg1682-pn_TechStars_2007....

Boostphase:
http://www.boostphase.com/
YC rejection emails are out!
"We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding.
Please don't take it personally, because most of the proposals we
rejected, we rejected for reasons having nothing to do with the
quality of the applicants. For example, we were very reluctant to
accept proposals with only one founder, because we think starting
a startup is too much work for one person. We also had a higher
threshold for applicants who were still in school, groups where one
or more members planned to keep their current jobs, and groups that
couldn't all move to California. We rejected a lot of proposals simply
because we couldn't understand them, or didn't understand the problem
domain well enough to judge them, or because the project seemed too
big to start on only three months of funding. Sometimes we even
rejected good ideas, because another group proposed the same idea
and seemed further along.

We realize this process is fraught with error. It's practically
certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful
startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email
telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.

Thanks,

Y Combinator Staff"
Highland and Lightspeed, two VCs, run summer programs that give free money for living expenses for student entrepreneurs.

http://www.lightspeedvp.com/summergrants.aspx

http://www.hcp.com/news/newsdetails.php/id/49812
We weren't invited. Oh well.
I kind of take it like a diss from a girl.

I just want to find a hotter girl with bigger, better assets and make sure that one girl that didn't give me a chance see's that she really lost out. Maybe even send her a nice sex tape.
Thanks to all of the Y Combinator Staff for taking the time to read our application. I wish those who made it through best of luck with the interviews. To everyone who didn't, I'm going to keep going, I hope you will also!
Technically, it was a diss from a girl. ;)

Nah, a diss is personal. There's nothing personal about this.
I can't imagine why Y Combinator would reject someone with such impeccable taste in similies...
Since YC is not really about money but about networking, inspiration, communication, etc. (at least it is how I see it), why those applicants whose applications were rejected couldn't host a bootstrapped "camp"? I mean if several startups could try to grow jointly, sharing experience and expenses that could be an exciting experience.
There's always other places to turn to.
For all of us that were rejected, remember there's always other places to turn to. Plus, 6% is awfully steep for $15-20K. Google gave up only 12% for millions in investments.
Good thing they're finally out. I've been driving myself crazy for the past week. (no dice here)

Frankly, now that the worry and anxiety is over, I can now focus my leftover time on building my idea.
Congrats to all those who made it. For those who didn't, it's time to work even harder.
last cycle's thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11496
I think that losers party is a loser's pattern. Non-accepted people are not losers.

Rejection is a good chance to prove the opposite, either alone or with others.
Who Will Own the Search Experience?
Agreed. I made the edit. Thanks for the call. That was too crass. Sorry.
By the way, these guys don't require a formal introduction. So networking is not too important too them. They profess that they are pro-underdog. So take a look! But don't ask them for the money that we will be getting from them or we will send you nasty emails every Thanksgiving!
It's personal because everyone on our team put in personal time, meaning more time than we allotted for our normal procedures to apply.

It sucks to be rejected. I needed to vent somehow.
At least we'll all qualify for a future version of Jessica Livingston's Hackers at Work book...being rejected at least once is a general theme of the interviews!
> To know which method is called, you need to know the class of the receiver and the method name

Unless someone's been using metaclass trickery, eg.

array = []
def array.length; "banana"; end
array.length # => "banana"
[].length # => 0

(you can do the same thing with []=, the example is just longer)
Also, be grateful you weren't this guy.
http://distilled.wordpress.com/2006/02/23/ycombinator/ I think they got an interview for the round after, not sure if they got in from there.
Gooooooo fish!
Interesting. 3 rebuttals:

1. VCs opportunistically pick companies they think will do well. They don't have a grand problem statement that their companies fit into.

2. A company's failure can be due to market characteristics or just mismatches in the team. How do you separate the two?

3. Do VCs want to be in the market research business? Are they equipped to learn from failure? Arguably not.
Ditto the thanks to the YC Staff for going through the slush pile. Best of luck to those who got invited to Boston.

We didn't make the cut, so we're incorporating within the week, cementing our partnership with a 3rd team member (Columbia biz school prof), and immediately seeking funds from more conventional (although more dilutive) sources. We are also looking for one more hacker to join us. We can pay $5k for sure (possibly more depending on alternative funding) + equity for Jan-Mar in Palo Alto area. We're building a collaborative investing system that's quite different than the ones out there, and we have team members with deep domain expertise.
> Programming is a profession. Professions are hard. That's what makes them professions.

It could be a matter of tools, though; computing (ie. by hand) used to be a profession, but now we have calculators and spreadsheets and anyone can do a long series of sums.
It's a hard email to swallow, but I'm going to continue my work. I was excited at the idea to be a part of Y-Combinator; it's tough to entertain the idea of pursuing your product with the support of peers and successful people. Then realize you're not going to have a chance to WOW Y-Combinator at the interviews in November, nor will you be there in January to love the three months. I know my idea is great and I can make it happen, call me if you want to join in - you have my number.
The "A-List" is the biggest, least interesting, most incestuous wankfest around. Has Scoble ever actually done anything? Why do we care what he says?
Congrats to all who got an interview! Make it count, because once you interview that is your only chance...
We got that e-mail, but I promptly replied that they sent us the wrong one. Still waiting for the Boston invite. ;)

Will be interesting to see who got the invite and goes through to the 3 months. Does any one document this?

Congrats to all who made it!

R.
Also, nobody has said diss in about a decade. Or in hacker terms, nobody has said diss since people wrote web apps in Perl.
This is terrible. I had no idea this had happened till now. I am so sorry. If I had known we'd accidentally sent these people an invitation to interview, we would have just gone ahead and interviewed them.

As far as I am concerned, this is the worst mistake YC has ever made, and we will try never to let this happen again.
We all know what this means, approach them at the end of their fiscal year when they haven't made enough acquisitions to meet their annual quota. Guaranteed buyout :P
Ask News.YC: Difference between web app business and open source?
I've been thinking about the difference between a web app business, an open source project (such as the ones you can find on sourceforge), and just a hack. I imagine the difference between a hack and the other two is that a hack is on a smaller scale, but where do you draw the line of the first two? Any ideas?
Pretty low. 300 people is not 300 programmers.
Well that was fun.

Back to coding.
None of my business, Paul, but you might want to contact the guy and apologize. That had to suck big time.
We're in a similar position. Could you mention sites you found useful for info on incorporation?

Thankyou
Oh, please. Shit happens.
Google Promises Again to Swear Off Binge Hiring
MySpace Needs Internal Not External Developers
Sure does. And when it happens to your users, you'd better be able to do some scooping real quick. But like I said, not my call.
What is important is that YCombinator has already built a community even by rejecting most of applicants.

Don't loose a chance to network, cooperate and succeed, we all are in a great team over here!
I concede, but at least I won the popular vote...
Just treat YC like you would any other VC. I doubt you'd be broken up if one of them rejected you; you'd (ideally) have many more lined up anyway.

There are opportunities all over the place. Keep your hopes up.
Good idea; I just did.
I'm sure RMS is thinking of yet another software license to take care of this.
Are you a VC?
1. good for VCs
2. Failure due to market characteristics as well as team mismatches are simply the result of that Trial period. A consultant would come back after looking into the market and the team, and say " they don't fit" .
3. Because VCs don't want ot be in the Market Research business, they look for young people who have the time and energy and have been researching the market with their product in closed beta. Then if the result of that "market research" is promising, then they invest.
It does suck to be rejected. But there's sucks like "we spent a week with you analyzing your entire team and pulling apart opportunities and leverage you didn't know you had, but we're just going to have to pass because we don't think you'll make it" and then there's sucks like "we looked at fourteen hundred forms people filled out on our web page in the last two days and the matrices didn't line up for you guys.

Hopefully you could handle either of those scenarios, but if I had to take one, the YC one is a pretty easy rejection. Heck, we even got a nice e-mail.
We're going with an ex-Cooley Godward lawyer for our incorporation. It's more expensive but in the big scheme of things, we think it's better to get this done right and have someone experienced to handle equity arrangements and contracts.

There are other YC threads on incorporation. For general information, Wikipedia is pretty good :) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_(business)]
I've definitely seen them say that they read every submission:
http://sequoiacap.com/ideas/

These guys are friendly too:
http://www.tandementrepreneurs.com/
http://www.siliconpastures.com/

http://www.kegonsapartners.com/

http://www.goldenangelsnetwork.org/

http://www.wisconsintechnologycouncil.com/events/earlystage/
How insane would it be if you got a YC rejection letter, but a Sequoia interview... :D
If you're a wireless startup, you might want to check out Austin Technology Incubator (ATI):

http://www.ati.utexas.edu/

Its a non-profit organization of UT profs and apparently has deep ties in the industry.

The problem is being accepted is even more difficult than YC... They only accept a few, but the ones they do have a high success rate.
I think Google could enforce a company wide pair programming initiative and still be way overstaffed.
Seth's Blog: The need to be right
Google Reports Impressive 46% Jump in Q3 Profit
Negotiations: pay me now, or pay me later
When Just Hiring the Top 1% Isn't Good Enough
Every company says that they only hire the top 1%. Joel Spolsky has already ripped the credibility of this to shreds.

Apparently a local Bay Area company is either 1) so arrogant, or 2) really has the goods, that they demand their coders be "one of the best coders in existence."
from a USV analyst at web2.0:

http://twitter.com/andrewparker/statuses/345733572
[SF/NYC/Earth] Heysan! is hiring Javascript developer for iPhone project
MySpace Needs Internal Not External Developers
The Real History of WYSIWYG
It seems to me that YC is more interested in making quick in/out investments and not in real long term projects. Long term projects belong in the hands of those that are willing to go in for the long haul.

I am not too disappointed that our application was rejected on those grounds. Really, who wants to give up so much for a few dollars and a chance to give a presentation?
Old habits may die hard but they will also be detrimental to you. When cars were invented, there must've been people who said "I think I'll stick to horses until they work out the kinks in those car things". Those people probably didn't go on to found IBM or RCA. :-)

I generally strive to embrace new things and new ways of doing things. As long as I believe they're practical. For instance, full OS upgrade over the internet -- brilliant. Ubuntu is the first to offer this to my knowledge. On the other hand, web apps.. I don't see that as being very practical any time soon.

There will certainly be bugs and there's a certain amount of risk in doing an internet upgrade, but this is not major risk. Yet embracing the way of the future early will get you a head start, and I think it's an important mindset to have.
be prepared for some running partners, delivering elevator pitches. ;)
You know, I tried about five times to read this before I finally gripped the edge of my desk and forced myself to finish it.

Not sure what the point of this was, but it comes off as trying to sound 'deep' and actually saying nothing.

So the only reason I'm bothering to post this is to say: use paragraphs so it's at least easier to get from the right side of the line to the left side of the next!
Fair point. YC exists not to be on your board or help run the business, but to help you get to the people that will do those things. Which, I consider, to be a valuable service.

Have you had any contact with Sequoia? If so, what are they like?
Did not see the earnings report today?

Google's revenues grew 56% year over year, they're not overstaffed until they're hiring people without growth.
Huh? You can literally dump photos to it and just upload them across the internet to your desktop, as long as you have a wifi connection (you mentioned writing emails, which would require wifi as well).
If you aren't doing it to make money, and are just doing it for the liability protection, in court that liability protection would be found to not apply to your non-corporation posing as corporation.
Lol. They might read every submission, but only a very tiny fraction of their deals come from that. Maybe one or two percent tops.

No matter what they say, an introduction is the only real shot of success.
Right, but mainly because someone that can't get an introduction is very unlikely to be what they want for their portfolio.
That's not exactly true. They remain involved with you indefinitely. They have a vested interest in your success, it would be silly of them not to.

Their strategy (lot of small investments) does take depend on economies of scale, so it's not as hands on as Sequoias, which depends a few big investments. They obviously won't spend as much time with you as a VC would because of that, but the time they do spend is proportionately more valuable.

You give up a small % of the company, and it's a lot more than a presentation. There are also advice, contacts, and credibility.
I think its more because old habits, like Silicon Valley's gentleman's club, die hard. There are tons of excellent hackers who couldn't get an introduction, including a large number of the Y C companies that went on to get VC funding.
"... Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook needed a "grownup" to run the company. The 23-year-old CEO said,"We have thought about developing a good team rather than hiring a CEO with experience in this space, and I'm not convinced that exists. Instead we are focused on building a strong team." ..." ~ http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6643

Now I think I know why (after doing a bit of reading). Facebook for all its sophistication does not have much to offer beyond the connectivity. Hence the reason to open up to external developers. One problem with that is you'll get a couple of killer useful applications but a lot of pretty ordinary ones. ~ http://www.slate.com/id/2168872/

So while Facebook has had extraordinary growth for it to continue as it's investors (or soon to be investors) expect it needs a continuous supply of "Visicalc", "Word" or Killer Apps to sustain and continue growth. Hence the need to develop a bigger team.
The Wheels on the Bus Make Startup Ideas Go Round and Round
Rick Segal on why it's important to get real and think about how normal people will interact with your idea and incorporate it in their lives.
He went to UNC. I didn't know Adi personally - but from what I hear, he's a great hacker and is working at Microsoft.
Web2: Steve Ballmer Wants To Buy Your Company
Revenue is always lagging indicator. Besides, only Wall Street analysts make decisions based primarily on revenue. You can do a lot better than that. I think they're overstaffed when they hire people and they're bored, and I think that's been the case at Google for quite some time now.
Rejection letter from summer 05
"We're sorry to say that we can't accept your proposal for the Summer
Founders Program. We were surprised by the high quality of the
applications, and wanted to accept more. But since this is the
first year, we decided we'd better force ourselves to keep the
program small enough to manage.

A lot of the proposals we rejected for reasons having nothing to
do with the quality of the applicants. For example, we were very
reluctant to accept any proposals with only one founder, or only
one who could come to Cambridge, because we think starting a startup
is too much work for one person. We also rejected a lot of proposals
simply because we didn't understand the problem domain well enough
to judge them, or because the project seemed too big to start on
only three months of funding.

It's quite likely, in fact, practically certain, that groups we
rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd
appreciate it if you'd send us an email making fun of us; we want
to learn from our mistakes.

If this summer works out, we're probably going to fund more startups.
(Check our site for announcements.) If we do, we encourage you to
re-apply in the future.

Thanks

Y Combinator"

today might be a rough day for some. but if it's any encouragement, i was rejected in summer 05 and two years later (summer 07) applied with a different idea and more experience and was accepted. yc turned out to be mostly right about the problems with my first idea, and i learned a lot in the intervening two years.

so don't think it's the end -- hang in there!
It takes a lot of skill to identify the emerging companies of the future. Why would they say something they do not mean? You see VC's are very competitive. The really good ones realize that there is untapped potential out there that are likely to be missed by the "traditional VC's". Closed mindedness never innovates and this innovation creates the true leaders in any field.

It's a lot like Ivy League universities. They are under enormous pressure to perform and house the next great research endeavors. Have you ever noticed that Ivy League universities never set strict requirements on admission whereas public universities do. This is because they recognize that many innovative minds would be passed over if they set strict criteria. Einstein, the great genious that he was, made lousy grades and was told by his early teachers that he would never make it in school. In fact he was told he should drop out. Einstein was actually told he did not belong in school. Thats the product of closed mindedness. It was not until Einstein recognized his true passions in life that he became the "genious" that he is considered today. Quite frankly, it takes genious to recognize genious. And traditional VC's don't have this genious. That is why they would set more limits on who they fund.

We are all told how ruthless VC's can be and how they will take your company from you. Michael Moritz of Sequoia capital invested a little over 12 million for a 10% stake in Google. In fact, founders in these leading VC backed firms end up being recognized as the most powerful forces in the companies. This is because the truly revolutionary VC's recognize that they do not have the vision of the founders. They are willing to relinquish some control.

But I guess my point here is the leaders in any field are willing to listen to new ideas from new people because they must, to stay ahead in their game. And that is what they want most of all.
Microsoft and Adobe killing SVG
Inside The Matrix for Mobiles
First clues about Windows 7:  Eric Traut talks (and demos) Windows 7 and MinWin
Did anyone that couldn't get an introduction try cold submitting to Sequoia?
Start small. I've already met a great contact locally due to this forum who is in turn helping me to meet others.

You wont be referred to Sequoia right away, but the point is you meet people through people. It is a gradual process.

As my mother used to tell me: "Thin threads". Sometimes a random introduction can turn into something significant.
Sheesh. An administrative error.

Hate to sour this little love-in, though.
What makes human languages so much easier to modify than machine languages?
SocialCalc Engine programmer documentation
The Rise of Crowdsourcing
FSF opposes making TLS-authz an experimental standard
I love this radio series, it really is great. You can get it over iTunes as well. They have a season 4 in the works right now, and seasons 1-3 are all pretty much intellectual candy.

The episode on "Emergence" will be of interest to people here as it pertains to wisdom of crowds/group think/etc. All together an amazing radio series.

Note that they also have seasons 2 - http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/season2_2006.html and season 3 - http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/upcoming.html