skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
3 Reasons You'll Get Funded (That Don't Include your Business Plan)
Ask YC: How do you (or how did you), a start-up, get your first lump sum of cash?
I've talked with a VC friend, who was willing to give me a transparent look inside their process.

Here's what a VC/Angel is looking for when they ask "Do you have customers?" What it really means is, do you have 7-8 employees and $1M in annual sales. It doesn't matter whether a startup is
profitable or not, but can that startup grow from 2 founders to 7 employees and get customers. This proves it's worth taking a look at and may be scalable. Hopefully generating a 10x return on investment over the next 5-7 years.

Investors know that the failure of a startup isn't necessarily because of the idea, but in not having enough capital to keep afloat while figuring out how to make money. My VC friend also says raising
the $500K that's typically needed is a real conundrum for a start-up.

So my question is, How do or did you, as a start-up, get your first lump sum of cash to get started?
I've found RimuHosting to be worth the small premium for sure. I've never had a support request take more than 15 minutes to be fully resolved in a competent and friendly manner... how many hosts can that be said of?

So yeah, I highly recommend RimuHosting for Rails hosting or anything else you might need a VPS for.
A pet feature I wish they had was exposing a way to download the actual Xen image your site is hosted within. Then you could be developing your production server sans internet, and rsync the resulting image.
226 must not be special because it is the smallest number not on the list. I've always thought 226 was useless.
You can do some programmatic drawing in Flex, but for the most part you need to load in external graphics. Flash is one tool for making (vector) graphics, but you could make them in Photoshop/GIMP.

I use Flex, and it's more intuitive than Flash if you're used to OOP and IDEs (and not used to the timeline), but it probably lacks some graphical capabilities for game programming.
Lived there for 5 years, working on 2 software startups. Very nice, though at a different scale and pace than SF bay -- which as the foundread post mentions, has benefits and costs wrt recruiting, turnover, etc. My vague impression is that the attention of investors and teams on opportunities has usually run 12-36 months behind the bay -- putting Austin slightly out-of-phase with bay funding/acquisition/exit cycles, meaning peaks are missed and valleys hit hard. So it's a better place for 5-15 year exit plans than 2-3 year exit plans.

One long-time Austinite thinks the local dominance of Austin Ventures has had a negative impact on the venture-backed software/internet space; you can see his rant in the first paragraph here:

http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20070924/0465...
From my experience, you are correct when you say VCs rarely are looking to lift a startup off the ground.

Most people I know and startups I have been involved in start off with cash from friends and family. One of the most difficult leaps you take is quitting a paying job and taking a small sum of money and trying things out. VCs definitely want to take an idea/product and scale it like you mentioned.

The one thing I would suggest is do you need 500k to start a startup? I would suggest the number is closer to 1/10th of that to survive for a year, at least as an Internet startup.

EDIT: To clarify, I meant 1/10th of that to start a company for a year, not to personally survive for a year. There are many necessary costs for a company that shouldn't total more than about that 50k mark, lets call it "servers and shit" costs. I was completely excluding living expenses!
2 - the number of hands someone has too much time on
Everyone wants to be an editor.
Anyone remember this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo
The one thing I would suggest is do you need 500k to start a startup? I would suggest the number is closer to 1/10th of that to survive for a year, at least as an Internet startup.

You need $50k to live for a year? Where are you living?

People often forget about how many of their costs don't exist if they're not earning income: Obviously you don't have to pay income taxes any more, but also the cost of commuting disappears, and the cost of food might drop dramatically (depending on where you would eat lunch if you had a paying job).

I'd say that YC's $5k + $5k/person funding formula is about right -- $5k is likely to cover startup costs for a company (at least, for the sort of companies YC funds), and $5k should be more than enough to live off of for 3 months.
Synthetic fuel from a solar collector
Introduction to Intellectual Property (IP) for startups
You missed the "other way round" part.
In Rainbows: the top-selling album in the country this week
Election can be stolen in under a minute with Diebold machines
If you're accustomed to an undergrad or grad budget, sure $5K might be enough for 3 months.

But not if you have a mortgage, student loans, a car loan, maybe some credit card debt, etc.

And rounds of funding can take months to close, so it is more like $5K for 7 months, not 3.
I'm currently working on a flash game of my own. I didn't want to pay $700 for CS3 (or even $250 for flex builder,) so I'm doing so using only free tools.

The flex SDK is located here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/sdk/ It looks like the documentation there is quite good, though admittedly I haven't used it much. Any text editor would be fine; I am currently using SciTE with these options files: http://arthurdick.com/projects/as3/

Regarding graphical stuff, SVG graphics can be embedded http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/html/wwhelp/wwhimpl/commo...

I haven't attempted any complex graphics creation yet, but one program I'm looking into is Inkscape: http://www.inkscape.org/

I'd highly recommend the Tweener class for animations. I only recently discovered it, and it has made my life much easier: http://code.google.com/p/tweener/
Ask YC: Are we better off building a flash video framework or using a commercial one?
Are we better off building a flash video framework or using a commercial/opensource one?<p>Build it, like this guy: http://blog.go4teams.com/?p=56 , or create one ourselves?
They claim it meets Bharat Stage III (and Euro IV) emissions standards, which is as good as any other car in India. That statement is in response to fears that as people move up from scooters/motorcycles to this car, the emissions problem would get worse.

The only thing that will get worse is the traffic problem. But that's everyone's "fault": no reason why the poor should sacrifice their safety (relative to carrying a family of 4+ on a scooter) to save commute time for others.
Hmm... the previous link seems to be dead. How do I update it?

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/World_watches_Tata_Motor...

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/tata-nano-the-wor...
Another interesting measure would be of how many deserving startups never did end up getting the initial money together...
And rounds of funding can take months to close, so it is more like $5K for 7 months, not 3.

Sure -- I'm a bit skeptical about the YC model of providing funding for only 3 months, too. My point was more that for someone accustomed to an undergrad or grad budget (which is probably most people here), $20k for a year is far more reasonable than $50k.
And I can't count the number of startups that have at least one other expense than just their cost of living. It's often not just code and coffee that makes a company.
1) New buzzword
2) Rush to start a startup
3) Get VC money
4) ?????
5) Buy a yacht with the loot
In this thread, we've been led from 500K/yr to 50K/yr to 20k/yr (5k for 3 months) and now back to 50K. I think most everybody has loans, credit card debt, and a mortgage. But if you're sufficiently young enough and want to have a startup in the next 5 years, don't get a mortgage, get a normal job to pay off the student loans and credit card debt, and save up some money.

I seriously doubt pg actually expects people to do YCombinator with $0 saved up and tons of debt and live on 5k for 3 months. Or worse, with an illness or surgery that needs to be done. Get all that out of the way, pay off your loans and credit card debt, and save up some money by working corporate. Plus you'll have experience, good references, friends, and maybe good contacts from working at a company.

I used to think I was old when I turned 21 and 22, but if you're 25 or 30 when you start a startup, that's fine! But before you work at corporate, make sure you do your own startup with customers and everything in college so when you're hired, you're respected and management wants to hear what you're saying, rather than HR placing you in a "trainee" program like two high school acquintances my age will be at the same company for the next two years. That gives you credibility from your coworkers, experience leading your own project from your startups, and a degree you've been able to pay for. Maybe you could even get a Master's degree in Business or Computer Science that the company will pay for while you work.

This means you won't be a "millionnaire by the time you're age 25" like everybody our age who's heard of Bill Gates during the late 90's has wished for, but getting out of debt by the time you're in mid-twenties is the new "being a millionnaire", with the cost of everything these days.
Try right clicking on their picture :)

-Greg from Xobni
What tools are you using exactly? What generates the flash files?

..Actually maybe start over at the begininng :-) I have no idea how flash works or how one makes it.
$20k? Just after my student loans, that leaves me only $6000 for the year to divide up for food, rent, health related, transportation... Even if I move back to Eastern Europe, there's no way.
I wrote some Java code back in 2000, but then I stopped using the language. I picked it up again in 2003 or so, and found that it had changed.

Today, Java has generics, which I haven't studied and therefore don't understand. I believe the consensus is that you can't really be a Java programmer without understanding generics, so -- oops! -- I'm not a Java programmer anymore. My knowledge is oh-so-2003.

Tomorrow Java may get closures -- the debate rages. If it does get closures, all the Java programmers will have to update their skills or fall off the wagon.

The other day I heard a guy on a podcast talk about his disastrous attempt to test-run Drupal 3.0 (god knows why). That software is about three or four years old. Apparently it doesn't work anymore. PHP and/or MySQL and/or Apache have evolved right out from under it.

The names of all the programming languages used today are at least 10 years old. Just as the name of the English language dates back to Chaucer's time and before. Have you tried reading Chaucer?
I don't think you're looking at it from the point of view of the target market, low income people who so far could only afford a two-wheeler for the whole (large) family.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_02/b40660330...
The wireless industry doesn't look very blown up to me; in fact, the iPhone appears to be a step back since it is only available on one carrier, while most other phones are non-exclusive.
+1, hilarious cat metaphor

And, yes, the disk space and the IP, and apparently the percentage of CPU that you get, are all static. Very nice service, although I haven't automated my downtime monitoring so I can't speak to that.
You must have some pretty huge student loans if you're paying $14k/year in interest...
They do. And they don't put any ads on the domains, and give the domain back to the pool after 5 days.

It's a fair deal to save you from the unwanted domaingrabbing through whois!
The flex sdk contains a program called mxmlc, which is what I use to compile actionscript into the flash swf files. I did a search for an introductory guide, and found one I remember from when I was starting out. It's for the Windows version of flex, but I think it's pretty obvious what needs to be modified if you are using a different OS. http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/as3withmxmlc/
Hey Matt, I just wanted to pass on to guys a big thumbs up.
Yesterday, I invited a bunch of people around the office to download xobni. A few minutes ago, Steve came by my desk. He was using your search to find stuff from 5 years ago. You should've seen the shit eating grin on his face when he started talking about how cool it was that he could find stuff so quickly.

Kudos!
I don't think they think it's enough, but it isn't really about the money. You get in the right mindset when you start asking yourself, "well, how little can I live on?"

That is the right question to ask. People will made due -- not all the money needs to come from YC. Personal savings, credit cards, friends & family (both money and spare bedrooms), etc. make up the difference.
I don't. I prefer to create content-type websites that require no up front capital (aside from time and hosting coosts) or "investors" and build quality backlinks, focus on SEO, and continue the process until I have 5-10 good websites. From there, the money slowly comes in month after month.
Spare bedroom can save a tremendous amount of money for you, and it isn't much of a sacrifice if you are a good guest.

An underrated startup technique :)
Total payment of 1160/mo means $160K at 8% for a 30 year term. I'm sure there are many people in that situation.
Lets take it outside, in the alley, right now!
Its quite reasonable to have a simple and appropriate name for a broad and powerful set of emerging technologies. And if they live up to a tenth of the promise, it would be reasonable for there to be a lot of buzz about them.
ING Direct Acquires ShareBuilder
Mjt: an In-browser Web Framework (open src from metaweb)
Mjt is a Javascript application framework that runs entirely in a web browser, based on a HTML templating engine. It was built for the Freebase service, but it can be used for many other web services. It is distributed as open source.

If you can get your data from a JSON-aware web service, creating a Mjt application is the quickest way to get that data displayed in a browser with complete control of the HTML formatting. You can run the application from your local filesystem or share it on any web server as static files. No server-side support is necessary - all the work takes place in the browser using Javascript.

Mjt is particularly useful with "JSONP" services that return JSON values and accept a callback= parameter, such as the Freebase service and the Yahoo JSON API. With these services you can use mjt to build "mash-ups" that incorporate data from services on multiple hosts.
AboutUs Launches a Business Plan; I'm Still Not Sold
Granted its ambiguous, but million closer to the top than money. Its also easier to say :-).
The Meanest Thing Gizmodo Did at CES (bring a TV-B-Gone and film resulting chaos)
Crazy how the top-selling album this week only moved 125k units.

More proof that the record industry is really going to have to find a way to make money outside of CD sales.
You need CS3, unfortunately.

You can try to do it with free tools (I did) but your game will ultimately be second-rate.
Couldn't you just use mod_lisp? It's not actually lisp-specific, IIRC.
I just deployed two applications for a client using mod_ruby and eruby. You can just upload rhtml files, and they just work. I may be missing something here, but it seems to me that you can use mod_ruby just like mod_php.

Is this the best way to develop most applications? Probably not, but it's good for simple, quick and dirty projects. I'm a big fan of the application continuously running inside the web server as is usually done with Hunchentoot.
This is like the astronomy geek's version of a "Your Momma's so fat..." joke.
You could also get the same effect using mod_proxy and not have to modify mongrel or webrick to speak the mod_lisp protocol. mod_lisp doesn't solve the problem as it requires a continuously running process to handle requests, and per-app additions to the Apache config. You can't just upload the files and go on typical shared hosting.
Ask YC: Kingmaker- Our Political Game Site
You are right about the spam angst.

economist.com uses the procedure I have outlined above - and I think it works for them because they are seen as respectable to begin with.
I really hope news.yc doesn't fill up with a bunch of "the election was stolen" posts like reddit has.

That said, I do think the issue of electronic voting security has a place here.
Somehow I knew that an NDA would be required.
We launched this product with Politico (our media partner) a couple weeks ago, and we wanted to get YC opinion on it. Think office pools for the presidential primaries and the winners earn Amazon.com gift certificates and a trip to the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

This product was not our YC submission because we had already inked the deal before submission.

What do you think of the app and the market? Be honest, we want criticism more than anything. We've focused on political games, but found that political consumers are huge news hounds (see huffingtonpost and drudgereport). Should we spin off as stand-alone site and not be a vendor with other internet media?
How do you mean? What happened to you?
Biz plan competition, some family and friends, and we work out of a house. We pay for food and servers, haven't even reached the $500K mark yet. You don't need much when you're hacking.
Earthquakes may hold clues for treatment of epilepsy
25 UC Berkeley Courses Available via Free Video
- Get CS3. You would waste more time figuring out how to get the stuff done using free tools. Plus you might not be able to avail use of adobe's help lists/groups.
Your time is valuable.

- Instead of trying to create from scratch, get .swf/.as files for some free/open source flash game and hack your way through. With your strong coding skills, it would be a lot easier to hack through an existing piece of code.
Some student loan programs have minimum payments enforced after the interest-free period, similar to some credit card payments. So, I would not assume that the payment is entirely interest.
Nice! I think politics is a smart thing to get into in terms of sites. It's easy to get people hooked, has broad appeal, and you have a bunch of new content all the time in terms of what's going on, beyond just the user generated stuff.
Sys Admin Gets 30 Months For Planting Logic Bomb
Interesting. I had brought up the issue of student debt as being one significant impediment to startups happening at the pace that pg had predicted they would.
Just like Web 3.0
SoftLayer always has specials running, and their salespeople are happy to work out competitive pricing on multiple servers. We don't get the reseller discount per se, but I don't think any of our boxes are at list price.
By the way, for those who are not aware of Tata, its a group of companies based in India - who has also been in talks to buy Ford's Jaguar and Land Rover units ( http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=acGt... )

Here's another intersting read: The Ultra-Lite Car From Tata (TTM): Why Not For US? - http://www.247wallst.com/2008/01/the-ultra-lite.html
digg.com got $50k from the founder of textamerica.com. We did some cross-linking at the time. Before that it was all Kevin's savings.
It's ok Dreamhost, we didn't like you much anyways.
it's only on one carrier now, because this is apple's first foray into the wireless world. but the repercussions are already being felt. after its initial success in the u.s., all the carriers in europe fell all over themselves trying to get the iphone. when at&t's exclusive deal is up in five years, it will be a very different ballgame.
One of the commonly stated advantages of "not Silicon Valley" is that one isn't competing with Google, Yahoo, and the like for employees.

If your startup can't successfully compete with such companies for talent, doesn't that say something important about your startup?

If you can't compete with the best, you're not the best.
Why did they even think it was funny?
Yes: as consumers, we're still captive to the wireless carriers. The difference is that now we're captive to the wireless carriers on Apple's terms. That change might seem insignificant for consumers. ("Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!")

But the article isn't (directly) about consumers; it's about the power relationship between wireless carriers and device manufacturers. The wireless industry is "blown up" in the sense that it lost a power struggle with the manufacturers.

Remember: five years of exclusivity is virtually the only thing Apple had to offer Cingular. (Plus a tiny slice of phone and music sales, but that's not huge.) Contrary to the old system, Apple retained full control over the development and marketing of the iPhone.
If Rails works reliably with SCGI but not FastCGI it can't be that difficult to fix. That's probably the easiest way to get it working for them. Dreamhost could just pledge $10k to have any FastCGI bugs fixed. They're the crappy shared host trying to live in a VPS/dedicated world. I agree with DHH that they should put up or shut up.
From my experience so far doing http://www.rocksolidarcade.com

A few people in this thread have said to, but do NOT buy Flash. Trust me on this. If you're a programmer, you won't be able to use the IDE - it's just not up to scratch. It's great for doing animation and such, but for structured code writing games more significant than pong, you'll want to use Flex.

The Adobe Flex IDE is pretty cool, however, the new version which I feel is worth getting is still in beta. Flashdevelop is fine for the most part. Flashdevelop + Flex is all you need to create .swf files.
I wasn't criticizing it. The Yugo's reputation as a POS was at least partially undeserved. As great as it is that poorer families will get cars, I seriously doubt its long term reliability.
How To: Use GMail as your mail server for Rails 2.0
When I was getting my undergrad degree, one of the best student in my class dropped out of EE to study math.
There is no 'Sign up' next to the login. Are you guys still in private beta/alpha?
I am using flock 1.0.5.
It's also India's largest conglomerate, with revenues equaling 3.2% of India's GDP. Tata Consulting Services is also India's largest IT firm with 100,000 employees.
The reason I posted is that In Rainbows was released earlier under a "pay what you want scheme". Many more people downloaded the album that way. They also solve an $80 disc box with a ton of stuff for fans.

They also make money touring, because fans love live shows.

That is exactly the way artists will continue to make money: give fans what they want, in convenient formats. Let the fans directly support the artists.

As for the record companies, they are going to have to agree to creative distribution models that NIN and Radiohead are pioneering.
How many people here run open wi-fi networks? I live in a semi-urban environment and wouldn't mind sharing my bandwidth, but I then I have to put passwords on my shared printers/network shares/etc.

I've been meaning to set up an additional, open wireless network....but I've just been too lazy to open up my router and install another wireless card.
Another underrated small car was the geo metro - more than 50 mpg in the cheapest configuration, and very reliable (the early ones were made in Japan, and could easily make it to 200k miles if the driver wasn't very heavy).

That said, in the USA you would almost certainly be better off buying a ~10-15 y/o honda or toyota - slightly worse mileage, but probably much more reliable.
Users just click Play Now. They don't need to sign in to make their initial predictions. We only make registration occur until absolutely necessary so we can save the prediction.
"DHH's opinion appears to be that shared hosts should put up or shut up, but I disagree"

Ugh. He said it should be solved by people who need a solution. He doesn't used shared hosting, so it's not his priority.
Recession? R-word Index