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comment
danielha
1,173,741,367
I'm not just saying this because Jason is a good buddy of mine, but this is an excellent walk-through of Django. If you're building a web app and had a nagging curiosity in Django, this one will get you going.
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danw
1,173,741,564
I would like a plastic rocket and a pony..
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staunch
1,173,741,596
Sure they do. One or all three of them will just buy a startup and rebrand its product.
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danielha
1,173,742,288
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[ 4009 ]
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/12/gorb-taking-personal-reputation-to-a-new-low/
4
Gorb: Taking Personal Reputation To A New Low
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3,805
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pg
1,173,742,650
I think most people who invest in startups do it in the hope of actually making money. And while the average return may be negative, the best investors make a lot. You just have to be honest with yourself about whether you're a good investor.<p>At YC what drives us to make money is not wanting to be bad at what we do. If all the startups we fund fail, then we look bad, and we are the kind of people who really hate to look bad. That's arguably one of the unseen benefits of YC: if someone takes funding from us, they put themselves in a position where if they fail, we fail. YC is so public that we work much harder to make sure companies succeed than we would if we cared only about the returns.
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pg
1,173,742,805
Believe it or not, some may. Several top-tier VCs have told me (truthfully or not) that some lower-grade VCs know their funds are never likely to make money, and they're just doing it for the fat management fees.
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[ 3828, 3816, 3837 ]
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juwo
1,173,742,921
You have to start somewhere!
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bootload
1,173,744,299
Worth the read. Don't confuse 'simplicity' with lack of features. Read Simplicity[0] by Joel for an explanation why.<p>[0] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/09.html
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lupin_sansei
1,173,746,069
"Because of this, the computer programming industry within the United States is an industry with a shrinking number of jobs"<p>Is this backed up with any numbers? People have been predicting the demise of programming jobs in the US for years, yet it never seems to happen. I suspect because the claim is based on the fallacy that there's a finite amount of programming to be done.
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lupin_sansei
1,173,746,209
"I think that, if you can't get into a Top 14 law school or a top graduate business schol, then public accounting probably provides a better career path than computer programming."<p>If you have a desire to make things being an accountant will hardly compare with being a programmer.
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danw
1,173,745,905
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[ 3980, 3924, 3815, 3925 ]
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_the_figures_behind_top_web_apps.php#more
17
The Figures Behind The Top Web Apps
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brett
1,173,749,510
It's cool how even though there is a lot of noise surrounding advice about startups a bunch of precepts have an air of unanimity. "Release early and iterate" would be one of those.
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lupin_sansei
1,173,746,413
"No one cares if you know how to program in COBOL for example. It's completely useless knowledge."<p>Well Monster lists 1055 Cobol jobs: http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?q=cobol&fn=&lid=&re=130&cy=us&JSNONREG=1
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brett
1,173,749,188
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[ 3827, 3814, 3832, 3860 ]
http://www.uie.com/articles/fast_iterations/
13
The Freedom of Fast Iterations: How Netflix Designs a Winning Web Site
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brett
1,173,749,604
This is precisely the kind of data I always am hoping to hear about but almost never do.
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mikesabat
1,173,754,253
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http://mikesabat.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/great-new-products-are-harder-to-sell/
2
Great New Products are Harder to Sell -- Life and Life Only
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pg
1,173,753,710
dupe http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1015
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AlfredNgeno
1,173,753,292
null
true
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[ 3818 ]
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,2082921,00.asp
1
Inside Myspace.com
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0
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brett
1,173,750,451
If that's true then question then is how bad off are you if you take money from such a lower-grade fund. In the long run is it not even worth it to take their money?
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pixcavator
1,173,755,924
Makes sense to me. But my guess is that time would be an issue.
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amichail
1,173,754,626
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[ 3824, 3823, 3821, 3826, 3839, 3838, 4075, 3822 ]
10
Y Combinator-like without funding but with advice, connections, and stock in the startup (what would happen?)
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amichail
1,173,754,774
Since advice and connections are the major benefits of Y Combinator, why not take on many more startups without funding most of them at all? <p>I suspect that many people would be happy with such an arrangement and Y Combinator may end up making quite a lot more money as well.
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danw
1,173,757,578
Sound good in principle but there are a lot of people who want advice. You need to find a way to prioritise who would benefit most from your advice and connections. What better way to decide than to ask yourself "Who would I invest in?". Then you're back at the YCombinator model.<p>If someone can figure out how to make this work then great. I'm not sure YC will work without you narrowing applicants down and giving them money. <p>Perhaps instead of having a single team who advise founders you could have a self supporting community. Put all the startups in a coworking/barcamp like environment for a summer and tell them to help each other out and to share connections. It would be interesting to see how well they could do on their own. You still have the problem of where they would get money to stay alive without funding.<p>[sorry if this is incoherent, I'm sleepy. Will edit to make sense in the morning]
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acgourley
1,173,758,538
Thats pretty amazing actually. It sounds like these lower-grade VC's could only be so cynical due to past experience, but if that is the case, who is putting them at the helm of large funds again and again?
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jwecker
1,173,757,687
While it sure is generous and I'm sure the founders appreciate it, a couple of months worth of rent and ramen noodle money isn't really funding a company. What you describe is already what YC is- it's just making sure that you are available full-time to really do something about the advice and contacts. :)
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jwecker
1,173,758,450
You want a great example of this, look to the man who more or less invented the principle- as I've used news.YC over the past couple of weeks it seems every few days, as simple as the site is, very nice features keep popping up. Nothing disruptive, nothing gaudy, just smooth and steady increase in value. In fact, if you want a great example of a site that's responsive, that knows how to grow a community, that knows how to fill itself with quality community content, that does something people want and does it simply and well... Thanks for leading what you preach.
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volida
1,173,757,902
I don't think the money is the issue here, which results to many companies being funded because of the relatively low cost for them to bring up to life startups, comparing to VCs. <p>So, they invest enough money to get u going. Their actual contribution is their network and their guidance, which isw hat consumes their time and what everyone applying wants.<p>So, the quantity and the limit of the "many people" is relevant to how big YC is and how many people they find worthful to invest.
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brett
1,173,757,864
Yeah, given the amount YC gives it's as if they just want to make sure poorer founders won't have to get day jobs in the time they've alloted to impart advice.
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naish
1,173,758,582
Very cool; however, for those unaware, it may appear more impressive than it is...<p>From what I can see, it is essentially a teleoperated hand/arm mounted on a (tethered, top AND bottom!) Segway-like base. The latter is a well-publicized Trevor Blackwell hack from several years ago. Watch for Trevor from about the 2 minute mark onwards, standing in the background and wearing a blue shirt. He is in front of a massive control panel, operating the robot's hand with an instrumented (haptic?) glove. <p>To be fair, this is still an impressive piece of engineering. Undoubtedly, it will serve as an important platform for future development efforts.
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danielha
1,173,767,568
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http://www.sun.com/emrkt/startupessentials/events.jsp
2
Michael Arrington/Timothy Bray debate on Web 2.0 -- 3/19, Sun in Menlo Park (free admission)
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pg
1,173,762,585
That's exactly how we look at it: the most important thing we offer is advice and connections, and the money is just to pay your living expenses so that you can focus entirely on the startup for long enough to get it properly launched.<p>It always annoys us when people say YC is a ripoff because we want an avg of 6% of a co for $15-20k. One reason we don't argue (much) with people who say that is that we treat the question as a sort of preliminary IQ test in the application process.
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RyanGWU82
1,173,762,873
Two hypotheses:<p>1.) Y Combinator's advice and connections are a limited resource. There are only so many phone calls their partners can make in a day. Y Combinator's business is not scalable unless they generate more y combinators.<p>2.) Y Combinator's application process allows them to invest in startups that are most likely to succeed. If they spread their resources around a larger base of companies, they would be investing in startups less likely to success. With more failures, their return on investment would fall, not rise.
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zaidf
1,173,761,972
I would have appreciated if the article covered few common pitfalls and how NetFlix wrestles them when using the fast iteration cycle.
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staunch
1,173,763,657
The way VCs raise their funds and get paid seems horribly broken. I think most of them hover between borderline fraud and out-right fraud.<p>YC should kill all the sub-par VCs by scaling up massively and taking their billions in funding away.
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danielha
1,173,767,901
I would not run unnecessary risks just to avoid being "average". Would you? <p>Sometimes being a rebel-without-a-cause isn't the best approach.
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jamongkad
1,173,764,090
I myself rank advice and connections a little more important than the money itself. That's what really pulled me here to Y Combinator in the first place.
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jamongkad
1,173,769,053
And what would that be?
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pg
1,173,762,709
Because (a) putting our own money in is a test of our commitment and forces us to pay attention, and (b) a lot of the founders would be distracted by money issues and wouldn't be able to focus on their startups.
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zaidf
1,173,761,849
MySpace.com...because it "works."<p>/goes back to throwing up.
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brett
1,173,768,391
The earlier you set up your own servers and take care of them the better you'll be at it. If your seriously strapped for time maybe you can put it off, but it's a skill you want to have.
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danielha
1,173,766,875
YC-organized Startup School supplies advice to a larger audience, along with a chance for connections. I'd also contend that news.yc is another such tool offered by YC.<p>The summer/winter batches are a chance for picked companies to receive specialized attention. YC can't do that for everybody.
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pg
1,173,770,772
You can't talk about VCs generally because there's such a difference between the good ones and the bad ones. The good ones serve their investors pretty well.<p>We'd never compete with VCs, incidentally. It's a completely different world from ours. They invest on behalf of other people (or more often, institutions). So while they have huge resources at their command, they have to answer to their investors, and this makes them excessively conservative. We much prefer using our own money, even if it limits what we can do.
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danielha
1,173,769,203
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[ 3867, 3848 ]
http://www.xobni.com/blog/2006/07/23/release-early-or-release-big/
4
Release Early or Release Big?
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3,830
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story
AlfredNgeno
1,173,759,226
null
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[ 3831, 3996, 3894, 3908 ]
6
Your best web 2.0 site design and why?
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pg
1,173,763,187
Actually the scalability of YC is a fascinating question. As hackers we're always thinking about that. And of course as hackers we have ideas about how to do it. We've been gradually growing the number of startups in each batch. But we often speculate about what we'd have to do to fund, say, 1000 startups per year. There has to be some way to do it. Whatever the answer is, it would be something to see, wouldn't it?
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[ 3975, 4001, 3883, 4000, 3886, 3869, 3866 ]
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imp
1,173,767,577
Microsoft expanded quite a few markets before it shrunk the encyclopedia market.
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danielha
1,173,769,255
Some lead-in discussion in here: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=3813
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danielha
1,173,768,302
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http://gigaom.com/2007/03/12/tellme-price-800-million-or-more/
2
TellMe Networks may fetch more than $800 million in acquisition by Microsoft
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danielha
1,173,769,173
Here's a blog post by Aaron Swartz: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rlrr<p>In there, he proposes that "release early, release often" works in open source, but is less applicable to a wide public who are not expecting something unpolished and incomplete. When you only get one chance to make an impression, the unveiling might need a lot more consideration. Of course, then your product might never even see the light of day because it's been tied up for so long. <p>This is a different view from that in PG's essay, and it just shows the added complexity in decision-making a startup must go through.
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pg
1,173,770,995
Interesting question. It might actually be ok to take money from a firm like that, if you didn't have any better alternatives. You wouldn't have the brand or connections of a top VC, but you'd at least have the money, which is not nothing.
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pashle
1,173,772,768
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[ 3852, 3871, 3957, 4041, 3876 ]
4
"How I Met My Cofounder" Story?
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story
kul
1,173,773,005
null
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[ 3855 ]
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/04/the_art_of_the_.html
4
Guy Kawasaki's The Art of Exec. Summaries/1 pagers
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kul
1,173,773,060
This advice is like gold dust. Has never let me down.
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brett
1,173,774,722
He seems pretty well respected due to his writings, but I don't have any sense of what people think of Garage. I recognize a few names: http://www.garage.com/portfolio/index.shtml, but they're not on the list that Paul compiled: http://ycombinator.com/topvcs.html<p>Does YC have a relationship with them?
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jamiequint
1,173,772,976
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http://www.inc.com/magazine/20030101/25049.html
5
Secrets of a Master Networker - Keith Ferrazzi
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story
python_kiss
1,173,778,715
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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_scaling_your_community.php
4
"How to scale your community" by Wordpress Founder
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3,856
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story
python_kiss
1,173,773,460
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http://gigaom.com/2007/03/12/free-sms/
2
5 Ways to SMS for free on Web 2.0
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0
3,857
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brett
1,173,774,512
null
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[ 3858, 4234 ]
6
Where IS Guy Kawasaki's Garage Ventures in the pecking order?
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Harj
1,173,776,322
hoarding your equity like it's gold dust is a typical mistake of inexperienced founders. we did exactly the same and it got us nowhere. when we realised our equity was worthless unless it was held by the right people, with the right connections, things moved far more smoothly.
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jward
1,173,779,247
I don't know if the visa thing messes it up, but as a generic Canadian you can own American companies with no issues. I believe the issue is in you paying yourself a salary or the like from the corp. However you should be able to collect dividends just fine. It's been a while since I looked into it for myself, so don't trust me on this. Personally I ended up going for a private Alberta named limited corporation for several reasons.<p>The tax rate starts at 16% if you're poor poor poor like me and maxes at 33% or so total for both federal and provincial. Check into the US corporate tax rates. If I remember doing my research right, you might be better off being a Canadian.
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danw
1,173,790,019
Thousands of little YC hatchlings would be incredible. I suppose YC news could be seen as one way of trying to scale the process of information sharing. It also covers advice in that you can pose a question to the community and get good answers usually. <p>Now how could the connection sharing be scaled? I wonder what would happen if someone was to post "I need introductions to VC's" or "Know any good lawyers?" to YC news. Would they get the help they needed?
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ced
1,173,778,651
Adding features is one thing, changing the app metaphor is another. I'd say that the latter has to be right at launch.
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clintonforbes
1,173,780,264
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[ 4027, 3995 ]
http://clintonforbes.blogspot.com/2007/03/do-you-still-buy-computer-books.html
5
Do you still buy computer books?
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davidw
1,173,779,849
"The problem is what happens when someone else comes along and offers all of your features for free?"<p>I created Stuff To Do (stufftodo.dedasys.com) as something we needed for work, but on my own time, so I decided to experiment with it a bit. I came up with what I thought was a pretty good separation of pay/free versions: the group-enabled version costs money because if you're working in a group, you're probably in a company, and companies have money...<p>However, it is also a space that's got a lot of people in it, and while I think I have a few compelling features (the time tracker is the easiest out there) free is tough to beat.<p>Not sure what I'll do with it, because it's not really the sort of application that lends itself well to advertising (I'd find it pretty annoying to have ads on my todo list).
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vikram
1,173,784,512
It'll save you from reading the applications :-))
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jwecker
1,173,789,700
The one VC firm I've ever actually worked with was all about "go big or stay home." However, they had the pre-launch checklist that included things like making sure the product was complete and a perfect fit for a specific vertical.<p>If you have an app that can exist in isolation and plenty of money, you can achieve that product perfection (not really of course, but enough to make some money) by conducting formal user-tests, focus group junk, exclusive invitation-only beta-testing, etc.<p>If you don't have the money or if your application requires or is fundamentally a social network, releasing early and having the very early adopters is the only way (it seems) to get that product to the ripe stage where you can then "go big."<p>Another nice thing I see about launching with YC's blessing is you automatically get enough buzz to be visible to the early early adopters.
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pashle
1,173,772,779
This is for you, looking for your cofounder. It's a story about how the original two guys in a garage met each other. If you have a founder story, it's my hope that you also share it here, for all of us. From 'The HP Way', by David Packard:<p>"Largely because of (Fred) Terman's classes, the four of us - Hewlett, Porter, Oliver, and I (Packard) - became fast friends. It is not a coincidence that a few years later this group would become the management team of HP. Our (Bill and I) common interest in the outdoors first manifested itself in our junior year. There is no question that a shared love of the outdoors strengthened our friendship and helped build a mutual understanding and respect that is the core of their successful business relationship lasting more than a half century."<p>At the start of Dave's junior year as a Stanford electrical engineer, he demonstrated an interest in ham radios that caught Terman's eye. This led to his invitation to join Terman's graduate course on ham radios, which also included Bill and others, who were crucial to starting and building HP. And the rest, as they say, is history.<p>I hope this story (and the story you have to share) inspires you and the YC faithful, helping you with THE question: how do I find my cofounder?
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agentbleu
1,173,792,313
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http://startupcrunch.org
2
Launching StartUps Everyday
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bigtoga
1,173,780,172
Why is this here though? This is more of a reddit article, isn't it? What does "How to build a simple blog application using Django" have to do with startups?
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python_kiss
1,173,791,890
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http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/13/wikiseek-launches-community-edited-search-engine/
2
WikiSeek Launches Community Edited Search Engine
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python_kiss
1,173,789,856
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[ 3958 ]
http://gigaom.com/2007/03/13/free-a-tactic-not-a-business-model/
9
Free: a Tactic, not a Business Model
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python_kiss
1,173,794,047
It seems the lawyers take away more money than the development process! eek
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jamongkad
1,173,794,466
Not with all but yeah they do take away a sizeable chunk of the budget. What I want to know is who funded these businesses...
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eliasbaixas
1,173,792,074
I met my cofounder at 7 in the morning while having a beer walking down "Las Ramblas", in Barcelona. He came to my friend asking for a cigarrette, we started talking, and we inmediately realised we shared the passion about technologies, web 2.0, social networking and Open Source, so in 15 days we had our vision of what could we do to change the world :)<p>elias
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jwecker
1,173,792,536
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http://jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/closures.html#clClose
7
Javascript Closures
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wbornor
1,173,795,731
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[ 3930, 3964, 4154, 3933, 3895, 3889, 3897 ]
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/03/13/viacom.youtube.reut/index.html
9
Viacom slaps Google with $1 billion lawsuit
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jamongkad
1,173,794,817
I hope to ride on this soon as I'm still looking for a cofounder :(
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jwecker
1,173,795,539
Fun exercise- think of a large company- one whose products you know. What new product / package would terrify them? Not just show up as a competitor, but really make them sit down and say "well, we're going to have to reinvent ourselves, because this [whatever] makes our product completely obsolete." For software companies in particular it's not impossible to come up with a product that you could start working on now...
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jwecker
1,173,795,754
same with "registering" in the first place, even if it is free. Just knowing that you have to make a decision whether or not you can use your real email address, the nagging question of what they're doing with the information, etc...
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sszhou
1,173,798,733
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http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.9662
5
Is Computer Science Dead?
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mattculbreth
1,173,795,835
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[ 3970, 3966 ]
http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/2007/02/nonfounder_equity.html
6
Deciding on equity % for non-founders
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e1ven
1,173,798,589
Seth Godin suggests (paraphrased) - Look at an industry as it exists currently.. Think of the Sacred Cows- "This industry ALWAYS....", and then question what would happen if they weren't there. <p>What would happen if "Enc. Britannica didn't need door to door salesmen to deliver a product"?
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python_kiss
1,173,799,014
Last question from YC's FAQ:<p>Q. Are you looking for investors? A. Not at the moment.<p>I always wondered why YC was reluctant to take outside investment. Now we know why :)
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sszhou
1,173,798,857
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http://forum.belmont.edu/cornwall/archives/006713.html
1
The Entrepreneurial Mind: Instilling the Entrepreneurial Spirit
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python_kiss
1,173,798,745
The issue with scalability is the same problem many corporations faced 50 years ago. This was before Ray Kroc turned McDonalds into a "turn-key" operation. This model provides the franchisee licensed trademark along with tried and proven methods of doing that particular business; which, in our case, involves establishing mini-YC companies to fund startups.<p>For scalability, YC will need to experiment with establishing several offices around the country and then provide guidance, connections, and resources from the central office to all the smaller branches. The essence of turn-key operations is to work on building a business rather than the product.<p>I don't claim to know much about this. So if anyone is interested, they should check out "The E-Myth Revisited".
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nostrademons
1,173,799,431
How about hooking up previously-successful YC entrepeneurs with new applicants? At this point, I'd value the Reddit guys as much as mentors as you or RTM (no offense).<p>YC would then grow like a B-tree. In the beginning, all founders are on the same "page". As the page grows beyond its size limits, the page is split, successful founders are promoted up to the parent level, and there's more room to new founders at the leaves.<p>You'd need to run it by former YC-entrepeneurs, and it'll probably be a few years until their startups are self-sustaining (or bust) enough for them to take on other projects. But if they're like other entrepeneurs at all, they'd probably love to take a role in mentoring new YC applicants.
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msgbeepa
1,173,799,740
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http://www.wikio.com/webinfo?id=14670396
1
Social Network For High School Sports
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danielha
1,173,799,770
In addition to venture capital, co-founder searching, and ROI numbers, there's another aspect of startups that we really should not forget.<p>Building the product.
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danielha
1,173,799,878
Looks like partnership negotiations completely fell through.
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sharpshoot
1,173,800,146
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[ 3901, 3904, 4339, 3909, 3892 ]
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How many summer Y Combinator fundees decided not to continue with their startup and go back to school? and what were the reasons?
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Readmore
1,173,800,061
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http://valleywag.com/tech/advertising/independents-lose-a-third-of-share-243775.php
4
The 'Big Four' have 92% of online ads - Maybe it's time for a new business plan
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sharpshoot
1,173,800,202
I know pollground decided to go back to school after getting y combinator funding
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pg
1,173,802,634
We already do this. We actively introduce new founders to "alumni" that can help them. There are now a lot of them. At the first dinner, instead of having an outside expert speak, we invite all the alumni. This time there were more speakers than audience at that dinner. <p>The peer-to-peer aspect of YC already scales. The hard part to scale is what we partners do.
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Readmore
1,173,802,403
Begun the copyright war has... Yoda
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pg
1,173,802,252
That's not my list; that's just the list of names I got from asking people I know. There are a few firms on it that I haven't met partners from personally, and quite a lot of partners I know who didn't make the list. We don't have an official relationship with any VC firm, but we did invite GK to Demo Day.
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pg
1,173,803,146
Going back to school is not identical with giving up. Some founders go back to school and keep working on the startup while there. However, those do so much worse than the people who work on the startup full-time that going back to school seems, in practice, not too far removed from a death sentence for a startup.<p>Off the top of my head, I'd guess we've had about 8 startups where the founders went back to school. It doesn't only happen with summer batches. Founders from winter batches do it too.<p>Usually the reason is that the startup isn't doing very well. However, that judgement depends a lot on how determined the founders are. One reason we now shy away from funding people still in school is that they often unconsciously want the startup to fail, because the idea of dropping out frightens them.<p>A lot of startups look bad after 3 months. Someone who's out of school and has to make it work or get a job in a cubicle will say "don't worry, we'll figure out how to make it successful."
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pixcavator
1,173,802,827
What I meant is that you should base your decisions on your own situation, not statistics. You are likely to end up average anyway - that's the nature of statistics. If you don't, that shouldn't bother you..
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sszhou
1,173,801,056
flickr and netvibes... clean and simple makes it fun
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immad
1,173,802,444
hmm, but the Big Four are like advertiser aggregators (probably a real term for that, reselllers?) since they resell the advertising. So this doesn't seem that surprising to me, the people it affects are other people providing a similar service as a startup. Or am I missing the point?
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joshwa
1,173,803,585
To PG: Please, when visiting already-submitted-stories via the bookmarklet, DON'T consider that an upvote. I'm just using it to find the comment thread.
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