Matt Mazur

I recently returned from a four day trip to California to attend Y Combinator’s Startup School ‘09 and to explore the Silicon Valley area. I had a great time and its definitely something I would recommend to anyone interested in pursing a startup.

Some highlights:

On the connecting flight from Vegas to San Francisco I was inclined to think that every 20-something guy on the plane was also headed to Startup School. I was a bit disappointed to discover that the geeky Asian guy sitting next to me was not also a startup groupie.

Northern California is quite something from the air:

After my flight got in I headed over to the YC office in Palo Alto. I got to meet Paul Graham, a few YC alumni, and a few dozen aspiring founders who, like me, hope one day to earn that opportunity. A few people recognized my name from this blog and my work with Domain Pigeon, which was kinda cool.

One thing that was really amazing was the robot they had in the back, which Trevor and his team were showing off:

The next day were the Startup School talks. Chris, a Rails developer I met through Philly on Rails meetups, attended with me. I won’t go into much detail about the talks, as they have been written about pretty extensively, but I thought they were all very well done. I liked Jason Fried’s a lot. His style and adherence to his principles are inspiring.

Afterward, Chris and I bounced around three of the post-Startup School meetups: the one immediately after a law firm in Berkeley and later, Dropbox and AirBNB in San Francisco.

Dropbox was awesome. I kept thinking, “This is how a startup should be.” Their office, located in downtown San Francisco, was a hacker paradise. Two to four 27″ monitors per desk, comfy Aeron chairs, a room-size dry erase board with scattered calculations, and, of course, Rock Band and a ping pong table. What more could you need?

The AirBNB guys and gals put on a great party too–the air crew outfits were a nice touch.

The next day (Sunday) Chris and I wandered around northern San Francisco. We started off walking, and later wound up biking around Fisherman’s Wharf. We biked over the Golden Gate bridge, through Sausalito, around to Tiburon, and took a ferry back. San Francisco is such a beautiful area, especially compared to New Jersey. The air is cool, the sky golden, and best of all, people know what a startup is. None of this “So you want to make websites?” business I hear over here.

On Monday, I spent the day sightseeing around the Silicon Valley area. I asked for advice on HackerNews as far as what to check out and wound up following most of the suggestions, with the exception of the Computer Museum, which sounded too intense for me. I started out with brunch at the Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto, and then walked around Stanford for an hour or two. Palo Alto is a beautiful area:

And Coupa did not disappoint. I enjoyed a delicious breakfast crepe while trying to make out what everyone else was working on. I overheard an older well dressed guy, presumably a VC, mention Ron Conway in a conversation with a a young, jeans-and-tshirt startup guy. It was kind of funny because that’s exactly what people said it would be like.

Speaking of VCs, I eventually found myself on Sand Hill Road of Silcon Valley fame. I took a picture of the street sign and sent it to my wife, who replied with something about how I was lucky to have a wife because I’m such a major geek. She’s so sweet.

Tired of walking, I drove up Page Mill Road to Skyline blvd, which offers an amazing view of the valley.

At the main scenic overlook I met a shirtless electrical engineer named Mike whose startup recently went busto. It was a much-needed reminder not to forget about the inherent survivorship bias of the Startup School speakers. Most were there because at least one of their companies had done spectacularly well; you don’t hear much from many startups like Mike’s who quietly fail. Anyway…

The rest of the day consisted of Google (not even a keychain?), Fry’s (wow), and In & Out Burger, which lived up to its name.

I flew back to Jersey on Tuesday. It was raining when I arrived, and had been for several days.

###

One thing that people kept asking me during the trip was “Working on anything right now?” to which I had to answer “Not at the moment, I’m between projects” which sounded OK until I heard someone else say it, and then I realized it was pretty lame.

I also had an epiphany of sorts. I had planned on doing my next project in Django. Domain Pigeon was a Rails project and I figured as long as I’ve got time, I might as well learn a new framework with each new web app. What I realized is that the language and framework don’t matter as much as identifying something people want and executing on that idea. Meaning, if I eventually succeed as a startup founder, its not going to be because I used Rails or Django or whatever. It’s going to be because I create something amazing. And what I’ve come to realize is that that’s what I should focus on, not on learning a new framework. Customers don’t care about your framework; they care about the product. And so I ought to be building and launching sites because ultimately that’s what’s going to matter in the end, not the framework that powers it.

With that in mind, I started working on a new project on the flight back from Startup School.

And I’m really excited.

Startup School was a blast.

Some highlights:

On the connecting flight from Vegas to San Francisco I thought was inclined to think that every 20-something guy on the plane was also headed to Startup School. I was a bit disappointed to learn that the geeky Asian guy who sat down next to me was not also a startup groupie.

The get-together at YC on Friday night one of the best part of the trip. I got to meet Paul Graham, a lot of YC alumni, and a lot of aspiring founders who, like me, hope one day to earn that opportunity. A few people recognized my name from this blog and my work with Domain Pigeon, which was cool.

Chris, a Rails developer I met through the Philly on Rails meetups, attended with me. I won't go into much detail about the talks, as they have been written about pretty extensively, but I thought they were all good presentations. I liked Jason Freid's a lot. His nonconformity and adherence to his principles are inspiring. 

Afterwards Chris and I bounced around three of the post-Startup School meetups: the one immediately after XX Law Firm in Berkeley and later, Dropbox and AirBNB in San Francisco. 

Dropbox was awesome. I kept thinking, "This is how a startup should be." Their office, located in downtown San Francisco, was a hacker paradise. Two to four 27" monitors per desk, comfy Aeron chairs, room-size dry erase boards with scattered calculations, and, of course, Rock Band and a ping pong table.

Chris and I spent in Sunday in SF, first walking and later biking around Fisherman's Wharf. We eventually biked over the Golden Gate bridge, through Sausalito, around to Tiberon, and took a ferry back. SF is such a beautiful area, especially compared to New Jersey. The air is cool, the sky golden, the people liberal, and, best of all, and people don't look at you funny if you say you want to work on a startup. 

On Monday I travelled around the Silcon Valley area. I asked for advice on HackerNews as far as what to check out, and wound up following most of the suggestions. I started out with brunch at the Cuepa Cafe in Palo Alto, and then walked around Stanford for an hour or two. Cuepa did not disappoint. I enjoyed a delicious breakfast crepe while trying to make out what everyone else was working on. I overheard an older well dressed guy, presumably a VC, invoke "Ron Conway" in a conversation with a a young guy in jeans and a t-shirt. It was kind of funny because that's exactly what people said it was like.

Speaking of VCs, I eventually found myself on Sand Hill Road of Silcon Valley fame, which was neat. Tired of walking, I drove up Page Mill Road to Skyline drive, which offers an amazing view of the valley. At the main scenic overlook I met a shirtless electrical engineer named Mike whose startup recently collapsed. It was a much-needed reminder not to forget about the survivorship bias of the Startup School crowd. Most were there because at least one of their companies had done spectacularly well; you don't hear as much from the ones that fail or achieve mediocre success.   

Next, I then headed over to Google, but, alas, there isn't a gift shop or welcome center or anything like that to browse around. I couldn't even get a keychain =/. Finally, I stopped by Fry's, which was easily the largest electronic store I've ever seen.

Tuesday I headed back to New Jersey. 

It was raining when I got in, and had been for several days.

###

One thing I kept getting asked during the trip was "What are you working on right now?" to which I had to answer "Nothing, I'm between projects" which sounded OK until I heard someone else say it, and then I realized it was pretty lame. 

I also had an epiphany of sorts. I had planned on doing my next project in Django. Domain Pigeon was a Rails project and I figured as long as I've got time, I might as well learn a new framework with each new web app. What I realized is that the language and framework don't matter as much as making something people want and executing on that idea. Meaning, if I succeed as a startup founder, its not going to be because I used Rails or Django or whatever. It's going to be because I create something amazing. And what I've come to realize is that that's what I should focus on, not on learning a new framework. My point is that I ought to focus on building and launching sites because ultimately that's what's going to matter in the end, not framework I use. 

With that in mind, I wrote the first line of code for my new project on the flight back from Startup School. I'm excited.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Startup Bootcamp at MIT yesterday, a one day event that featured talks from a diverse group of entrepreneurs and VCs on how to start a company.

These are the notes I took from the presentations. A lot of it is verbatim, but enough is paraphrased that you should check video recording on Justin.tv before quoting anybody directly. If there are any glaring mistakes please let me know.

P.S. : I’m flying out to California for Startup School on Oct 24. Shoot me an email if you want to grab a drink sometime.

Robin Chase, founder and former CEO of ZipCar

There are these huge giants out there that are toppling or are getting ready to topple.

It’s a great time to start a company.

A lot to do, a lot to be done.

Every single thing you’ve done since you were two comes into play. Two founders: twice as much. Three: three times as much.

Everyone you come in contact with is your free consultant. They’re not a jerk for not getting it. You’re a jerk for not explaining it to them so they get it. They’re an amazing resource. You should hone your idea and the way you express it and move forward.

Be honest with yourself about what sucks.

Execution is everything.

Keep your eye on your own stuff. You want to be best at your particular thing.

Start light. Listen, iterate, improve. Become a learning organization.

The one thing we have going for us is we are nimble, we can turn on the dime.

Making mistakes is OK, not learning from your mistakes is a problem.

We are the stories we tell. We could have created this list of ten thousand dos and donts, but instead we created a culture. We created a very strong sense of the company and what it was.

Being the CEO of a startup is very lonely. Can’t be intellectually honest with others. Make sure you’re telling stories that you want repeated. Ripple effect when you produce a high value product.

Goal #1: Sustainable (Profitable)
- A needed product or service
- Intellectual honest to get right
- Learn fast. Be a learning organization
- Listen to your customers
- Values and consistency
- Your team should reflect the world you want to live in
- Watch the cash! Focus. Manage risk, You are start up!
- Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
- Problems are opportunities.
- The status quo is open they often this amazing opportunity.

Zipcar Stats:

325,000 people.

6,500 Zipcars.

100,000 cars not bought.

300,000 parking spaces not needed.

500,000 tons CO2 not emitted.

Sharmesh Shah, created OnStartups and founder of HubSpot

Maximize your odds of a modest outcome. HubSpot, $17 million funding, 90 employees.

Don’t like the process of taking funding. Thinking about founding a startup? Congrats, you have a genetic flaw. Admit it to yourself. Take the leap.

Why are you waiting? Your idea stinks. Get over it. The idea of finding an idea that’s going to win dramatically improves after you startup.

Stealth mode is for fighter jets, not startups. Most of you should not have a stealth startup. You have this idea. You’re going to spend years convincing people to pursue your idea. The odds that someone else being convinced: slim to none. The best barrier to entry: its really hard. The next best thing is marketing. You can build a barrier to entry with marketing. It’s very hard to pull that off. Once you run through the process and get something working its very hard to replicate.

Outbound marketing is about pushing messages out. You spray the world as best you can with that message and hope that a fraction of people come back to your site. Inbound is about pulling people in. Instead of spending all this money trying to go out and get people to come back, make it easier for people that do want it to find you. Your job should be to connect to that market. Make marketing about creativity, not cash. Inbound is good for startups because it turns out it gives us leverage.

It’s impossible to hate a speaker that has a photo of a kitten on his slides.

Places to get found: Google, blogs, and social media. “As ye SEO, so shall ye reap”. Single largest source of free traffic.

WebsiteGrader.com – analyzes your website for SEO. Keywords: Don’t pick a fight with a ninja, unless you are one. 1) Relevant to your business, 2) How many people search for that keyword. Steep decline for click-throughs for results. (No one checks the long tail). If you have a new website, don’t go after the keywords with heavy competition.

Google Ranking Algorithm: f(n) = Context + Authority. Authority = # of inbound links.

The page title is the strongest indicator to Google what your page is about. Don’t just put your name, describe your site too. Don’t waste it. Put the description first. The earlier the keyword, the stronger the signal to Google. “iPhone Blackjack Software | Itsosoft” is better than the opposite. To rank well, get powerful links. Don’t get too obsessed with SEO though, don’t forget about the humans.

Write a blog, not a business plan. Writing a business plan? Please stop. No one is going to read your business plan, especially VCs. If you need to articulate your thoughts, write a blog. Build a following before you build a product. Get a dummy website out there. Start saying something interesting. Start marketing the day you decide you might someday start a company.

For a blog, don’t be afraid to polarize. Sitting in the middle doesn’t help. Take a stand on something you believe in. Use Facebook ads to do market research. Use Twitter.

Look deep into your data. Marketing has turned into a geeky, data driven business.

Not having fun? You’re doing it wrong. Build a team. The hardest thing to do is building a team. If you’re in the area start connecting to people.

Be a superhero. Find your superpower. Find what you’re exceptionally good at and go do it.

Blog: should have a personal tone to it. Part of the value of blogging is self discovery. People think social marketing is another way to blast your message out. Trickle launch. The sooner you get it out there the sooner you get good feedback. On average we tend to overestimate the impact of that first impression. Be apologetic. Say this is what it is. Get it out there. Charge early. It’s OK to suck early on.

Dan Bricklin, founder of Visicalc

Check out the Justin.tv link at the top of the page to watch Dan’s excellent presentation on VisiCalc.

Angus Davis, founder of Tellme Networks

Inspiration books: Memos from the Chairman. Selling the Invisible.

Which vignettes matter the most? WWSBD? What would Steve Blank do? Four Steps to Epiphany. Customer Development. Before you go out spending $200M on a product, talk to the customers and find out what they really want.

Think first like a shareholder. What’s going to optimize my value as a shareholder? What if you’re the CEO… what if the VC’s want to kick me out? One of the last things they want to do. It’s probably one of the best ways to screw up a company. The CEO has attachment to the employees and the idea. It’s a disruptive thing for them to do. If you have the opportunity to hire a Jim Barksdale… do it.

If you want to do a Yahoo vs a Wufoo you need to prepare to make some major sacrifices.

Drew Houston, founder of DropBox

Everyone starts out clueless. It’s easier to go from engineer to business than vice versa—how can we take advantage of this?

You’re clueless about a large number of things that are essential to starting a company. Drink from the fire hose: sales, marketing financing. Product design. Psychology influence negotiation. Startup stories. Management and leadership. Business strategy. HN, VC and entrepreneur blogs, MIT EClub, WebInno, BarCamp, etc.

Take on responsibility; Build people skills; get out of your comfort zone. Join a startup; Learn on someone else’s dime. Take on positions for which you are completely unqualified. It’s a lot easier to start on your own when you have already seen the road ahead. Surround yourself with kindred spirits.

Forgotten USB drive → Dropbox. Some of the best startups are ones that solve your own problems.

Technically 1) challenging, 2) Large market, 3) Explain to normal people so they can understand what you’re talking about.

Passion for the idea is whats going to carry you through.

Not shown: 2.5 years of crazy hours, equal parts terror, panic, and elation, and a savage obsession with making a product people love.

A startup CEO:

Idea: assess the market, prototype the product

Early: Hire a few engineers, build and launch the product

Growth: Hire exec team, prove business model

Scale: Inspire and lead, build an enduring culture

Beginning: Tech & Product Skills most important. Later: Management and leadership skills most important.

As founder/CEO, your job description is rewritten every 12 months. Less coding, more leading and managing. Two challenges: scaling your company while scaling yourself. Immense personal growth. Opportunity to create something from nothing, put in millions of people’s hands.

Failing is irrelevant; you only have to be right once.

Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit

One overarching principle: no one wants to use your website. Only your mom wants to use your website. It’s a constant struggle to build your app… you need evangelists. Google… you didn’t hear about it from an ad campaign. Google didn’t need advertisements because it was good. That’s called organic traffic. Investors absolutely love it. You don’t need PR firms. If its good enough, its only a click away.

At the day of our acquisition our biggest expense was rent: $1,500.

Keep it real. Businesses in general have set the bar so incredibly low. Especially online… you don’t expect that kind of humanity there.

Don’t be exceptionally good… just be exceptional. T-Shirts: do it.

Facilitate serendipity – frankly a lot of it is luck. Work… intelligence… yes, but luck is important. We like to believe we can control it.

People love underdogs. People want someone to root for. Be root-for-able. Karma matters.

You will fuck up. Being good is insurance for when you’re dumb. Often times it makes things happen.

Make something people want.

Make something people love.

Do something you love.

Adam Smith, founder of Xobni

If we can improve email just a little bit we can create a lot of value.

What was most important is that it was something people wanted. We created something people wanted and there’s a market for it.

Before you reach product market fit its important you stay small; that you don’t grow past 5 or 6 people. Once you get big its no longer about creating a product people want… its more about real raw execution. You have something people want but don’t have a clear proven business model. There’s a lot of execution to do.

You have to hire a team. It took Google from 1998 to 2004 to go from product market fit to IPO. For the first year and a half of our company, 7 days a week all waking hours. It was too much looking back. Xobni Analytics was like Google Analytics for your email. They might look at it once a quarter. It doesn’t create enough value for the user. So, enterprise software analytics or come up with something completely different. It’s a brutal fact of startups you have to be completely nimble. Paypal went through four product ideas before settling on online payments. These other successes went though several evolutions…

The most important thing is to be nimble.

How to execute well: Hire good people. You want people that get things done. Fire and forget.

External deadlines are very useful. Work tends to expand to fill the time allotted. Sign yourself up for something like TC40. Put the onus on action. Barring a reason not to do something always do it. Otherwise you’re not going to be experimenting enough.

Risk. Expect ¼ of your projects to fail. If everything you do is working you’re not taking enough risk; you’re not being ambitious enough.

Focus on the user. Have lots of experience but make sure they’re strategically focused. Yahoo: spread too thin. Xobni does not solve the email triage problem. There are lots of dead bodies in the battlefield. Not something a lot of people think about, but its key.

Hire an outsider.

Build your DNA explicitly into the company. You don’t get to build your own DNA, but you can for your company.

Get people with diverse experience.

If you can find things that only you can do well, thats awesome.

Raise barriers to entry.

Wow your users at the same time. 90% of execution is keeping going.

Half of experienced people say Boston or SV doesn’t matter, but I do think the west coast is the center of all life in the startup universe. Investors… lawyers… startups… the culture… all out west. Center of the startup world. Generally speaking its great to be in California. Investors are all looking for great details.

Founders at Work. High Stakes No Prisoners. PG’s essays… going to be my kid’s first readings.

Aaron Swartz, founder of Infogami and Jottit

What type of startup are you?

Regarding big launches, DHH style: is Hollywood really the type of industry you want to emulate? If not the Hollywood launch, then what? The Gmail launch. Get people from day 0. Even if it is just you and your cofounder. What’s the smallest possible piece of this I can make? Every single day he had something he was using; something he was improving.

While your software is annoying, fix it. Keep sanding away all the edges that make things annoying. While people are happy, get more users, then repeat. Grow slowly but strongly. Do not underestimate how much users will help you define your product.

Every time we slacked off, traffic went up. Less changes = more traffic? When you make changes, people get mad.

Hemant Taneja, VC at General Catalyst Partners.

Harvard Square, 75 companies, $1.7 billion under management. Eight partners. All entrepreneurs. Early stage investments in consumer, IT, and energy.

Backing great people with big ideas.

- Social Media is a key enabler for consumer businesses

- Mobile computing is finally here thanks to the iPhone

- Tech innovations will solve global climate and energy crisis

- Major changes in healthcare and financial services sector

- Synthetic biology is in its infancy

- Such a fertile area in terms of great ideas and big problems we could be solving.

Startups we love…

- Have brilliant founder(s)

- Solve very hard problems

- Address very large markets

- Are ahead of the curve

- Are capital efficient

Should you raise VC money? Only if you have to. You’re inviting another partner into your ecosystem. If you’re doing consumer internet site, launch, eat a lot of peanut better and jelly, and see what happens. Might as well create something, show some data, get some data about how consumer are interacting with your product, and then go raise money. You have to weigh the options.

Choosing a VC. Smart… good listener. You want somebody who is open minded who can bring their experiences and understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. Easy going. Make sure its the kind of person you can reasonably resolve and work though issues. Bandwidth to help. Have to do due diligence. Will they have time to devote to being partners with you? To really engage. The more they engage the more they can open their resources to take advantage. Transparent. You want the type of VC who will be open with you. Somebody who can really sit down and engage you. Somebody who doesn’t already have their mind made up. You want someone you can have those easy transparent conversations with. Relevant network. Stable VC firm. That they’re going to be around to work with you for the next 5 – 7 years. Ask them for their CEO references. Talk with the people they have worked with in the past.

Spirit of a good termsheet…

- Let’s make sure there’s enough capital for significant milestones.

- Legally simple.

- Balance of ownership for VC, founder, and management. There’s no magic answer to this. Figure out what your goals are. Work the numbers from there. There’s a balance between founder and VC incentives.

VC not focused on downside.

Board of directors with domain expertise. The more they can bring smart people around you the more you can scale and the more interesting business you can grow.

Daniel Theobald, cofounder of Vecna

You really have to think for yourself. You really have to question everything.

Never hire anyone. As soon as you hire someone you become a manager. And if that doesn’t work: hire the smartest people you can find and take good care of them. A great engineer is 10x as productive as a good engineer who is 10x as productive as an average engineer. If you can’t find the right person don’t just hire anybody.

Other people’s money: it does make you stupid. … it can really cause you a lot of trouble. Avoid it as long as absolutely possible. Make sure you’re doing the math. Make sure that that is actually going to get you what you want. You want to do a really good job taking care of your employees and your customers. When you have to worry about start to take care of your investors… how do you avoid other people’s money?

Read this: On the Folly or Rewarding A, While Hoping for B. If you reward a behavior that is the behavior that will be exhibited. It really is worthwhile to get this right. You have to reward the behavoirs you want from your employees and your customers.

Do something you’re passionate about. Have fun. If you’re not thinking about something while in the shower, while laying in bed at night, thinking about it in all different ways you’re just not going to make it happen. Find something you’re really passionate about.

Don’t put a lot of stock in what other people tell you. I’ve always been surprised by what people can make a success of because they’re passionate about it. Make a difference in the world. It’s hard to know who is providing value in your company. We don’t give bonuses if there are no profits. Taking outside investments: like pushing the self destruct button at the end of the Alien movie. You’ve got one hour to get out or blow up. Spend less than you make. It requires sacrifice. You have to be creative.

So much of the success you have is because of luck. Something other than the effort you put into it.

Kyle Vogt, founder Justin.tv

Trough of sorrow: are you doing the right thing? Should I go back to school? You start questioning yourself. Once you hit that magic inflection point things start to take off.

Startup Productivity Hacks:

1. Buy catered lunch. If you keep lunch in the office, it increases the number of hours you get in from people. With 10 people, its equivalent to an extra employee.

2. Use Google Apps. Better than emailing around attachments, don’t need to worry about all the IT tasks that you usually need to get started.

3. Use Data Driven Development. It’s tempting to try to predict what users what and what features the customers need. The best way to do it is to throw it out there, A/B test it with something like Google Web Optimizer.

4. Use hiring screeners. One thing that works really well is making people do the thing you want them to do before you hire them. Helps you not hire people who are not qualified.

5. Keep job interviews short. The goal when you’re hiring someone is to find out if they can get the job don’t in a reasonable amount of time. Prove their competence by getting them to do what you want to do. It takes 10 minutes to develop your instinct. Anything more than that you wind up second guessing yourself. Use the screeners. Make sure they fit the company culture.

6. Don’t hire a PR firm. It seems good on paper. Educate customers to buy your product. Increase sales. Brand name recognition. The PR form will pitch you on how they’re going to develop your company. Once you sign, you have to spend a lot of time teaching them about your company. Hire someone who is a marketing associate. He spent all his time absorbing their product and working his contacts.

7. Put one guy on fund raising.

8. Work from home. Especially if you’re bootstrapping. Save the money until you run out of room in your apartment or it gets too distracting. Need a separate room to make phone calls. An office lowered their productivity.

9. Use hosted servers. Don’t try to build or buy your own hardware. If you just use hosted stuff. If its too expensive, you can build out. The thing you have to factor is the resource it takes to build and run your servers.

10. Listen to your users right away. They can reliably tell you what goes wrong. The best way to figure out what you need to include is to watch them use your product and see what they use. Watch for their pain points. Not fonts and colors.

11. Stick to .com’s. JustinTV.com for sale for $2M. People get confused.

12. Be transparent with employees. People need to know how much money is in the bank. Are we profitable? Are we hiring people? If employees know about it they’ll be happier and contribute things back up the chain.

13. Don’t outsource core products. If you’re building a website and you want to outsource the video site if your video website, you’re going to run into problems. Draw a line. Write out the things you want to build and what you don’t and draw a line down the middle. Figure out what you can outsource.

14. Hire specialists when needed if no one on your team has the domain knowledge.

15. Hire people smarter than yourself. One bad person can pull your entire company down.

16. Have a plan for actually making money. This was our biggest lesson learned. It seems obvious that you need customers and revenue. It’s a painful process to turn a company with no business model into one so you can survive.

Ken Zolot, founder MIT’s Innovation Team.

What makes tech the basis of a viable company. What happens before you know its time to startup a company? Ask “who cares?” figuring out who cares and then how you’re going to get to them is something founders often overlook.  One of the first rule of business school: IRR: internal rate of return. Most investors are only interested in a land grab. Does it work yet? Is it special? Who cares? What do I have/know? Who can help?

Team technology and market. “Progress is about taking and managing Risk” – Cooper.

You have to be somewhere and bump into people in order to continue this process of iterations.

General Mills dumps strawberry seeds into mix, but no nutritional value because parents buy 10x as much. What is that magic strawberry seed that conveys credibility?

Engineers like to know how processes work. Machine learning: cognitive model or sense of environment? Roomba figures out where it is and responds. Stimulus. That’s the model for a good entrepreneur. Watch ants move a crumb across a room. They don’t plan with a conference. Sometimes responding to stimuli from the environment and knowing how to act is the magic.

Knowing how to move forward. Wanting to move forward. Really wanting something. The will to take that step.

Propulsion and will: 1. Do something. 2. Sense; reflect. 3. Do something else. Not complicated. If you look at really interesting engineering problems this is often how they are solved as well. “Man who waits for roast duct to fly into mouth must wait very very long time” (thanks to Woodie Flowers).

Presentation and advocacy: public speaking, advocacy, “enrollment”, relationship building. Getting folks excited about what you’re doing. The power of enrollment and evangelism and becoming really enthusiastic about what you’re doing. Knowing your passion and being able to convey that to something else is one of the most important skills of an entrepreneur. Take 90 seconds try to get someone you don’t know interested in something you’re doing. Find something that activates you. Something that you’re passionate about. Never underestimate serendipity, magic, luck.

Remember: Do something.

Today was the first day of the annual Philly Emerging Tech conference. Here’s a quick rundown:

I left about an hour and a half early to allow plenty of time for Philly traffic but despite my GPS’s estimate of a 40 minute commute, I wound up arriving 15 minutes late. The bad weather and a wrong turn into Camden didn’t help anything either.

Today’s keynote speaker was Michael Tiermann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat and President of the Open Source Initiative. To give you an idea of his vision, here are a few quotes from his presentation:

“Lots of innovation results in an increase in productivity”

“Now that we can do anything, what should we do?”, quoting Bruce Mau

“How can we be better?” quoting JP Sloan

“Leave your system open to innovation”

Did you know… Somebody did a study of contributions to Apache and calculated that 1 developer did about 20% of the work, 5 did about 50%, 15 about 80%, and an amazing 388 people to do all 100%? Also, proprietary software averages 20-30 defects/1000 lines of code. Open source: less than 1. The linux kernel is about 5M lines of code. An automated software scan came up with 985 errors and with the help of the community, they were all fixed within six months. Now compare that to Vista, which is estimated to be about 50M lines of code, which does not have an extensive community to help fix what must be at least a few hundred thousand lines of defective code.

He said something else that I thought was good. I forgot the context, but it was something like “The cost to the developer is less than the value to the customer.”

When he finished I went to an introductory presentation about iPhone software development by Bill Dudney. I never really appreciated how easy it is to create an application’s interface. I thought you had to program the behavior of the tables, the sliding buttons, etc. Turns out most are just customizable controls. He walked a packed room through the creation of a simple app in under 40 minutes. He was very well spoken and definitely knew his stuff.

I bounced around a bit during the next hour. I started off in a presentation about Android development then went to Exhibitionism in Software Development and finally wound up in a talk being given on the importance of accessibility in web development.

After that was lunch. I thought we would have to leave to go get lunch, so when I came out of the accessibility talk and a buffet was already set up, it was a pleasant surprise.

I ate with a few other people from the Philly on Rails meetups–Chris, Jon, Angel, and Randy. Colin, Alex, Aaron, JP, and a few others were around too. Also met Chris, the CTO of a Philly startup called Vuzit that has created a novel Ajax-based document viewer.

After lunch was a talk called Innovation in Ruby given by Jason Seifer and Gregg Pollack of Rails Envy fame. Their presentation was excellent both in terms of content as well as how they spoke and interacted with each other. For some reason I kept thinking “Batman and Robin” the whole time. Anyway, a lot of it was over my head, but I left with a much greater appreciation for the brilliant work being done in the Ruby and the Rails communities. I also briefly met Ezra Zygmuntowicz, who apparently founded Engine Yard and created merb. Nice guy.

Next was John Resig of jQuery glory. Before the talk I asked the guys why use jQuery over Prototype. I don’t remember what Randy said, but it was something poetic about how code just flows from his hands or something to that effect. John’s talk was good, despite the Public Address problems that resulted in us hearing the presentation being given in another room and eventually a full blown rock song. Next project is going to be with jQuery. I’m convinced that it kicks ass.

Last but not least was Mike Culver from Amazon Web Services who spoke about and demoed Mechanical Turk. I thought his presentation was the most interesting one all day. What an amazing technology.

Tomorrow: Day 2, where I continue to learn more about just how much I don’t know. :)

I make it a point not to quote Paul Graham too often, simply because there’s a lot of good quotes and it seems a bit artificial when done too often. That being said, I found today’s article on credentials to be particularly insightful:

Large organizations can’t [accurately measure performance]. But a bunch of small organizations in a market can come close. A market takes every organization and keeps just the good ones. As organizations get smaller, this approaches taking every person and keeping just the good ones. So all other things being equal, a society consisting of more, smaller organizations will care less about credentials.
…
In a world of small companies, performance is all anyone cares about. People hiring for a startup don’t care whether you’ve even graduated from college, let alone which one. All they care about is what you can do.

For those unfamiliar with his work, check out his online essays, which are extremely good. Or, if you prefer book format, try Hackers & Painters.

For many reasons I hope that my career path (for lack of a better word) leads me to a startup one day.

Time will tell.

Rather than studying business, what about starting a company from scratch? If history is any guide, a significant number of people who are laid off over the coming year will do just that. Carl Schramm, the head of the Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit organisation that promotes entrepreneurial activity, points out that start-ups tend to flourish in the year that follows a sharp downturn. Rather than head back to another corporate bureaucracy, some of those made redundant will take a shot at being their own boss.

from The Economist

One of the ideas I’m considering working on is a project to help people find great domain names for their websites.

Before I start (if I start), its important to evaluate the competition. Based on my research, here are the major players and what they bring to the table.

Bust a Name – Created by Ryan Stout, this is one of the top places to find unregistered domain names. The application lets you enter multiple keywords then it will search for different combinations and display the unregistered ones. The site was made with Ruby on Rails (!) and makes heavy use of JavaScript. What differentiates this from the other sites is that it’s not searching a precompiled list of available domain names. You can search for uncommon keywords and it’ll still test the combinations.

Nameboy – Similar to Bust a Name but without the great interface. I don’t think they offer anything important that Bust a Name doesn’t.

Ajax Whois – My personal favorite – you type in a domain and they will show you which extension are available. Some of the other sites do the same, but I really like Ajax Whois’s clean interface. GoDaddy bought this site from the original owner, Carl Mercier. He might have been the first to use Ajax for domain searches.

123finder – Unlike Ryan’s site, 123finder has long searchable lists of unregistered domain names. You can sort by category, such as “Frequent Words”, “Scrabble Dictionary”, and “Italian Words”. Most of the names listed are garbage and their site is ugly.

PickyDomains – This is clever. You describe what kind of site you’re making and for $50 they find a domain for you. People can suggest domain names too and if it’s chosen, that person gets half of the $50. If you’re not satisified with your results, they’ll refund your money.

DomainsBot -You type keywords and they search their database for matching domains.

MakeWords – Pretty much the same as DomainsBot. It’s amazing how much their cold white and grey interface impacts my desire to search their site. It’s possible they have a much better selection than DomainsBot, but because of their design, I have no desire to play around with it.

Domainology – Type in a keyword and this’ll search for your keyword + various other common words. For the ones you’re interested in, you can then ask it to check the availability of the .com, .net, .org, and other extensions. Ugly site too.

Freshdrop – This is another great site. They compile a list of all the recently expired ‘dropped’ domain names and let you search them using lots of easy to use filters. I think all the listings are auctions, so you have to bid, but most are $10 and it looks like you can find some pretty good domains that way.

Summary: This is a saturated industry, but there’s still room for improvement.

I had the day off today, which gave me with some much needed time to think about what project to work on next. I finished Simply Rails 2, which has given me a foundation for starting a Rails application. There’s a lot I don’t know, but I feel like I’ve got a good enough foundation now that I should just go for it and learn along the way. It’s time to just do it.

There are four projects I’m considering and I haven’t been able to decide which one to pursue. So I headed to Barns & Noble and spent a few hours there this afternoon writing about the pros and cons of each project. There’s something about the atmosphere in book stores that I find very conducive to thinking, writing, and of course, reading.

Making the decision is tough and I don’t want to make it hastily. I didn’t put enough time into thinking about my last project, ALL IN Expert, and realized after I launched that there wasn’t a market for the product I had just spent three months developing (more on that in another post). For this one, I want to spend my time working on something that has potential to be big.

Armed with an asiago pretzel, some tea, and a notebook, I set to work detailing the pros and cons of each endeavour. I spent several hours there, doing this, perusing their selection of Rails books, and talking a 75 year old small business owner named Dave about politics and business. At the end, I still had no idea which project to go after, but was a little bit closer ;)

Dave was an interesting guy. A little overweight with thick white hair, I saw him reading Michael Moore’s guide to the 2008 elections and started a conversation with him. He told me that McCain had just picked a VP and we discussed the merits of his choice for a while. I don’t know much about politics, but I find other people’s opinions fascinating, especially when they are passionate. When that conversation died down I asked him what he did, and he said he was a business owner.

He was a minister till 40, then got into the wholesaling crafts and eventually jewelery. He traveled to Mexico a lot for the crafts, but eventually determined the margins were too small and the inventory too large, so he transitioned into jewelery. He’s been to Tailand, which apparently is a big jewellery hub, many times, but he said in recent years because of all the travel regulations he had to stop. I guess its harder to just carry $15K worth of jewellery into the United States these days. Anyway, I asked him if he had any advice for an entrepreneur and he said above all else, “Be dogged“.  He said you’ll run into a lot of problems along the way and you just have to take the hits and keep going. He said once a guy wouldn’t pay him $5K that he owed him from some jewellery sales. So, Dave went to the guy’s house and sat in the guy’s driveway till he came home. The guy, who had been at a casino, was furious when he got home. He got out of his car, cursing and threating Dave. Dave explained politely to the guy that he wanted his money and wasn’t going to leave until he got some. He said he got some of it that night and eventually got all of it. (This is Jersey – was Dave a mobster?) When he left he wished me luck. Nice guy that Dave.

Anyway… moving on…

Later on while browsing HN, I came across angelsoft.net, a site that helps link entrepreneurs with angel investors. One of the sites led me to an Executive Summary template for companies seeking an angel investment. Here’s my summary of each section on the template:

1. Business Description – quick summary of business including product, vision, and business model

2. Management – why our people are going to kick ass

3. Company Background – what problem are we trying to solve and why

4. Technology/Proprietary Rights – what hurdles do we have to overcome to get our product out

5. Marketing, Sales and Customers – who is our audience and what are the current trends in your market

6. Competition – where do you stand and what will set you apart

Then it asks about some of the more technical aspects of the company including:

* Type of financing sought

* Pre-money valuation

* Professionals (account firm, corporate legal, IP, bank)

* How you will use your funds

* What type of entity (S Corp, C Corp, LLC…)

Part of me says not to start working on something that wouldn’t make a legitimate business with a clear source of revenue. The other more persuasive part of me says don’t worry about that, just get traffic and worry about the money later. I think whatever I wind up doing will probably have a freemium business model, which is a great compromise which has worked well for a lot of web 2.0 companies.

I’m going to relax a bit this weekend, which’ll hopefully provide the clarity I need to make a good decision.

Below you’ll find a list of the top posts on Y Combinator’s Hacker News, first organized by number of points and then by number of comments.

This list covers October 9, 2006, the day of Paul Graham’s first post, through May 21, 2008, which was as far as I got before I had to stop indexing the site. SearchYC.com also has a list of the top submissions, which has a few that aren’t included here, such as the all time #1 post: Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund.

I hope you’ll find these as enjoyable to browse as I did.

Happy hacking.

Top 200 by Points

1. PG Arc’s Out
239 points | posted by pg on 1/30/2008 | 124 comments

2. PG You weren’t meant to have a boss
229 points | posted by dfranke on 3/21/2008 | 291 comments

3. Number of founders – statistics
187 points | posted by fauigerzigerk on 11/9/2007 | 38 comments

4. New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It’s Spooky
187 points | posted by paulsb on 3/17/2008 | 91 comments

5. Startups Wiki: Ask YC Archive
183 points | posted by epi0Bauqu on 5/8/2008 | 25 comments

6. PG Lies We Tell Kids
181 points | posted by mqt on 5/13/2008 | 387 comments

7. PG Be Good
175 points | posted by vsingh on 4/20/2008 | 199 comments

8. Hacker News Site Guidelines
171 points | posted by pg on 3/11/2008 | 35 comments

9. PG How to Disagree
171 points | posted by PieSquared on 3/29/2008 | 219 comments

10. “Finally, voting without refresh”
170 points | posted by pg on 6/13/2007 | 42 comments

11. Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm
170 points | posted by naish on 4/22/2008 | 61 comments

12. PG How Not to Die
167 points | posted by subhash on 8/31/2007 | 138 comments

13. PG Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
166 points | posted by Darmani on 2/16/2008 | 112 comments

14. Why we made this site
161 points | posted by pg on 2/20/2007 | 57 comments

15. Hacker News
153 points | posted by pg on 8/15/2007 | 76 comments

16. “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus”
152 points | posted by bdfh42 on 4/26/2008 | 55 comments

17. PG Why There Aren’t More Googles
149 points | posted by ecommercematt on 4/14/2008 | 151 comments

18. PG PG: Disconnecting Distraction
147 points | posted by Darmani on 5/17/2008 | 189 comments

19. Genius hack by PhD candidate (with source code): Turn any monitor into a 3D display using a Wiimote
143 points | posted by thorax on 2/22/2008 | 26 comments

20. PG Holding a program in one’s head
142 points | posted by eposts on 8/24/2007 | 126 comments

21. Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too
136 points | posted by chaostheory on 5/20/2008 | 37 comments

22. PG PG on trolls
135 points | posted by sharpshoot on 2/17/2008 | 170 comments

23. “Codepad.org, a pastebin that executes code”
135 points | posted by sah on 3/5/2008 | 57 comments

24. TC Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine
135 points | posted by jsjenkins168 on 4/8/2008 | 113 comments

25. Pmarca: If Microsoft goes fully hostile on Yahoo
135 points | posted by rantfoil on 4/28/2008 | 27 comments

26. Why Not To Do A Startup
134 points | posted by rms on 3/19/2008 | 83 comments

27. TC Dropbox launches (YC summer 07)
133 points | posted by sharpshoot on 3/11/2008 | 65 comments

28. Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor
132 points | posted by naish on 5/1/2008 | 43 comments

29. Tell YC: Answers from John McCarthy
132 points | posted by mgummelt on 5/9/2008 | 72 comments

30. Workplace Experiments at 37signals
130 points | posted by mqt on 3/5/2008 | 46 comments

31. Architecture astronauts take over
130 points | posted by mqt on 5/1/2008 | 75 comments

32. News.YC open-sourced
127 points | posted by pg on 2/25/2008 | 20 comments

33. Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
127 points | posted by drinko on 5/7/2008 | 232 comments

34. “The mortgage crisis, in cartoon form (has cursing, maybe NSFW?)”
126 points | posted by yummyfajitas on 3/18/2008 | 25 comments

35. CMU professor gives his last lesson on life
125 points | posted by amichail on 9/20/2007 | 33 comments

36. My experiment with smart drugs: Viagra for the brain?
122 points | posted by robg on 5/15/2008 | 114 comments

37. “Smjörið er brætt og hveitið smátt og smátt hrært út í það, þangað til það er gengið upp í smjörið.”
118 points | posted by pg on 2/8/2008 | 153 comments

38. How to Lay Off Your Developers the Right Way
118 points | posted by edw519 on 3/28/2008 | 21 comments

39. PG: Arc Likely To Be Open-Sourced This Winter
117 points | posted by kirubakaran on 1/15/2008 | 88 comments

40. More advice for new Y Combinator founders
116 points | posted by sama on 1/8/2008 | 28 comments

41. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient?
115 points | posted by dangrover on 4/18/2008 | 95 comments

42. Code’s Worst Enemy
114 points | posted by mqt on 12/20/2007 | 42 comments

43. Coding Horror: Paul Graham’s Participatory Narcissism
113 points | posted by sharksandwich on 3/22/2008 | 129 comments

44. Paul Buchheit: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain
113 points | posted by paul on 3/31/2008 | 42 comments

45. Learning Math
112 points | posted by dwaters on 2/4/2008 | 73 comments

46. PG Some Heroes
111 points | posted by mqt on 4/5/2008 | 86 comments

47. “Google releases free, detailed, HTML/CSS/Javascript encyclopedia by Mark Pilgrim”
111 points | posted by nickb on 5/14/2008 | 23 comments

48. Sign Up Forms Must Die
110 points | posted by jyu on 3/25/2008 | 34 comments

49. Processing ported to JavaScript
109 points | posted by tzury on 5/9/2008 | 25 comments

50. Why to Apply to YCombinator
108 points | posted by palish on 10/10/2007 | 36 comments

51. DHH: Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco?
108 points | posted by johns on 4/22/2008 | 108 comments

52. PG Why to Not Not Start a Startup
107 points | posted by palish on 3/27/2007 | 139 comments

53. PG The Future of Web Startups
107 points | posted by byrneseyeview on 10/5/2007 | 167 comments

54. PG A New Venture Animal
105 points | posted by mqt on 3/11/2008 | 58 comments

55. The Coolest Business Plan Ever
103 points | posted by jraines on 5/6/2008 | 11 comments

56. We didn’t start the Fire (2.0)
102 points | posted by raghus on 12/5/2007 | 57 comments

57. Joel explains how a new monopoly will emerge around AJAX
101 points | posted by herdrick on 9/19/2007 | 82 comments

58. Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
101 points | posted by techcrunch on 3/26/2008 | 91 comments

59. Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?
101 points | posted by cousin_it on 5/12/2008 | 120 comments

60. PG Paul Graham: News from the Front
100 points | posted by mattculbreth on 9/6/2007 | 124 comments

61. PG Stuff – Paul Graham
99 points | posted by samb on 8/1/2007 | 92 comments

62. TC Little Known Hacker News Is My First Read Every Morning
98 points | posted by hwork on 3/11/2008 | 81 comments

63. The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment
98 points | posted by nreece on 4/28/2008 | 82 comments

64. Amazon EC2 gets static IPs.
97 points | posted by ptm on 3/27/2008 | 33 comments

65. I Dropped Out of Grad School Today
96 points | posted by sam on 2/20/2007 | 49 comments

66. The most important thing to understand about new products and startups
96 points | posted by dfens on 2/17/2008 | 26 comments

67. Disagreeing with Paul Graham
96 points | posted by gabrielroth on 3/31/2008 | 72 comments

68. TC Fleaflicker (solo founder) Acquired by AOL
96 points | posted by fleaflicker on 4/25/2008 | 55 comments

69. Facebook Is Not Really That Special
95 points | posted by mqt on 4/11/2008 | 119 comments

70. Joel: How Hard Could It Be?: Lessons I Learned in the Army
94 points | posted by luccastera on 2/29/2008 | 23 comments

71. Hire Family People
94 points | posted by breily on 4/24/2008 | 152 comments

72. Would you have answered this job ad?
94 points | posted by dhotson on 4/29/2008 | 55 comments

73. “Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!”
93 points | posted by BitGeek on 11/8/2007 | 94 comments

74. You Can’t Soak the Rich
93 points | posted by epi0Bauqu on 5/20/2008 | 109 comments

75. y combinator news bookmarklet
92 points | posted by phil on 3/8/2007 | 12 comments

76. Paul Graham convinced me to drop out of school / quit my job [Vote up if true]
92 points | posted by Alex3917 on 3/28/2007 | 58 comments

77. The importance of launching early and staying alive
92 points | posted by drusenko on 2/26/2008 | 29 comments

78. TC Bringing OpenID To The Masses: Clickpass (YC summer 07)
91 points | posted by immad on 3/11/2008 | 37 comments

79. TC “Communicate Acquires Y Combinator Startup Auctomatic, Unveils New Business Strategy”
91 points | posted by paulsb on 3/26/2008 | 39 comments

80. PG How to Do Philosophy
90 points | posted by samb on 9/22/2007 | 221 comments

81. Scaling Facebook Chat to 70 Million Active Users Almost Overnight
90 points | posted by edw519 on 5/15/2008 | 42 comments

82. Arthur C. Clarke has died at the age of 90
89 points | posted by rms on 3/19/2008 | 16 comments

83. Lessons of Y Combinator: Things I’d do differently after 2 startups
89 points | posted by marcus on 4/2/2008 | 32 comments

84. “Teenage Girl’s MySpace Layouts Worth Millions, Drops Out Of High School”
88 points | posted by vlad on 8/28/2007 | 34 comments

85. Interview with Paul Graham at Imperial College London
88 points | posted by sharpshoot on 1/4/2008 | 31 comments

86. “The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6″
88 points | posted by sharksandwich on 3/25/2008 | 20 comments

87. Get that job at Google
87 points | posted by comatose_kid on 3/13/2008 | 74 comments

88. The boring truth about why groups don’t get invited to interviews
87 points | posted by pg on 4/10/2008 | 48 comments

89. TC Kiko guys back as reality tv stars
86 points | posted by gaz on 3/19/2007 | 25 comments

90. Rails is a Ghetto… [NSFW for Language]
86 points | posted by raju on 1/1/2008 | 68 comments

91. Is it down for everyone or just me?
85 points | posted by dedalus on 3/17/2008 | 45 comments

92. Everything I want to do is Illegal
85 points | posted by smanek on 5/14/2008 | 78 comments

93. SICP – summary of 10 months working through the entire book
84 points | posted by pchristensen on 4/18/2008 | 39 comments

94. Code on the Road: Laid off? The one thing you absolutely need to do on the first day
84 points | posted by tjakab on 5/8/2008 | 35 comments

95. “Storage Space, The Final Frontier: Amazon EC2 adds persistent disks”
83 points | posted by RyanGWU82 on 4/14/2008 | 16 comments

96. “Essential Python Tips, Tricks, and Hacks”
83 points | posted by rockstar9 on 5/21/2008 | 25 comments

97. Seven steps to remarkable customer service
82 points | posted by beau on 2/19/2007 | 8 comments

98. 7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails – O’Reilly Ruby
82 points | posted by luccastera on 9/23/2007 | 27 comments

99. Absolutely Unbelievable: Richard Stallman Crankin’ Dat Soulja Boy in front of the Green Building at MIT [video]
82 points | posted by pius on 1/17/2008 | 41 comments

100. Programmer Destroys Seven Billion Dollar Industry With A Single Software Application
81 points | posted by iamelgringo on 4/5/2008 | 39 comments

101. Y2 Combinator launches: the startup starter starter.
80 points | posted by pc on 4/26/2007 | 31 comments

102. How to be a genius
80 points | posted by brl on 11/4/2007 | 37 comments

103. Microsoft bids $44.6 billion for Yahoo
80 points | posted by surya on 2/1/2008 | 80 comments

104. The Thing About Git
80 points | posted by mqt on 4/8/2008 | 31 comments

105. Vote up if you want YC to remember your cookie for longer than a few hours
79 points | posted by lupin_sansei on 5/1/2007 | 15 comments

106. Aaron Swartz: How to Get a Job Like Mine
79 points | posted by rms on 10/6/2007 | 40 comments

107. Live video from startup school
79 points | posted by abstractbill on 4/19/2008 | 14 comments

108. Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder
79 points | posted by mcxx on 4/28/2008 | 96 comments

109. Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element
79 points | posted by Alex3917 on 4/30/2008 | 40 comments

110. Dynamic Languages Strike Back
79 points | posted by bdfh42 on 5/12/2008 | 34 comments

111. Getting Real: Free Book by 37signals
78 points | posted by keesj on 2/22/2007 | 8 comments

112. Git is the next Unix
78 points | posted by oxyona on 2/2/2008 | 19 comments

113. Interview with Donald Knuth
78 points | posted by johnm on 4/25/2008 | 24 comments

114. TC Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal
78 points | posted by raghus on 5/3/2008 | 58 comments

115. PG Microsoft is Dead
77 points | posted by kkim on 4/6/2007 | 445 comments

116. It’s official: Google buys Zenter
77 points | posted by drusenko on 6/20/2007 | 47 comments

117. Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?
77 points | posted by terpua on 1/19/2008 | 53 comments

118. How do you learn?
77 points | posted by abstractbill on 2/6/2008 | 54 comments

119. What are worthwhile problems: Feynman’s moving letter
77 points | posted by hhm on 3/12/2008 | 13 comments

120. TC Snaptalent Launches (YC Winter 08)
77 points | posted by jamiequint on 3/13/2008 | 31 comments

121. Martian Headsets
77 points | posted by bdfh42 on 3/17/2008 | 31 comments

122. An Ingenious Video Game That Looks Like It Was Designed by a Third-Grader
77 points | posted by gensym on 3/20/2008 | 18 comments

123. “Joel Spolsky’s talk at Yale, part 1″
75 points | posted by gensym on 12/4/2007 | 36 comments

124. “Every time you search for a domain on Network Solutions, they register it themselves.”
75 points | posted by nickb on 1/9/2008 | 42 comments

125. Standing Still Predicts School Success Better Than IQ
75 points | posted by curi on 3/15/2008 | 38 comments

126. “So you “”just need a hacker”", huh?”
75 points | posted by carpal on 3/25/2008 | 102 comments

127. Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)
75 points | posted by oldgregg on 4/15/2008 | 78 comments

128. “A list of deals one VC firm passed on — Google, eBay, Apple, Intel, Fedex, Paypal, etc.”
75 points | posted by smoody on 4/22/2008 | 23 comments

129. This Psychologist Might Outsmart the Math Brains Competing for the Netflix Prize
74 points | posted by elq on 2/28/2008 | 24 comments

130. David Heinemeier Hansson’s Speech about Making Money at SS2008
74 points | posted by vlad on 4/19/2008 | 48 comments

131. How I built a poker-bot
74 points | posted by run4yourlives on 5/9/2008 | 37 comments

132. Unix Command-Line Kung Fu
74 points | posted by __ on 5/10/2008 | 21 comments

133. “Forget VC Money, Fund Yourself”
73 points | posted by BioGeek on 2/23/2007 | 24 comments

134. Don’t Become a Scientist.
73 points | posted by aneesh on 2/24/2008 | 91 comments

135. Quick – is 91 prime?
73 points | posted by bdfh42 on 3/12/2008 | 24 comments

136. Anywhere.FM acquired by imeem
72 points | posted by iamwil on 1/29/2008 | 27 comments

137. Optimize for now!
72 points | posted by naish on 3/6/2008 | 34 comments

138. “Facebook knows who you are, and that’s worth more than you think”
72 points | posted by mattjaynes on 4/17/2008 | 50 comments

139. Surprisingly useful new page: Web Developer’s Field Guide
71 points | posted by thorax on 1/26/2008 | 16 comments

140. Lockhart’s Lament: On Mathematics at School
71 points | posted by hhm on 3/6/2008 | 20 comments

141. PG You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss: The Cliffs Notes
71 points | posted by brlewis on 3/23/2008 | 74 comments

142. “Startup School videos on Omnisio, synchronized with slides and questions”
71 points | posted by tlrobinson on 4/20/2008 | 30 comments

143. The Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet
71 points | posted by marrone on 4/30/2008 | 19 comments

144. Programmers Need To Learn Statistics or I Will Kill Them All – Zed Shaw
70 points | posted by jamiequint on 8/30/2007 | 19 comments

145. How I lost my faith (in Lisp)
70 points | posted by bootload on 2/1/2008 | 97 comments

146. Poll: Ban Valleywag?
70 points | posted by pg on 4/11/2008 | 102 comments

147. Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder’s Co-op)
70 points | posted by brfox on 4/16/2008 | 49 comments

148. Ubuntu 8.04 is out
70 points | posted by mcxx on 4/24/2008 | 48 comments

149. Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
70 points | posted by jdale27 on 5/15/2008 | 19 comments

150. “On Having Balls, Part II: Staying Hungry”
69 points | posted by matt on 2/19/2007 | 1 comments

151. Arc Ported to JavaScript
69 points | posted by rms on 2/7/2008 | 23 comments

152. So You Hacked Our Site!?
69 points | posted by muriithi on 3/1/2008 | 22 comments

153. IBM building Blue Brain (full brain neuron simulator)
69 points | posted by andr on 3/4/2008 | 55 comments

154. Google putting up fence and gate to keep execs from leaving
69 points | posted by foemmel on 4/3/2008 | 22 comments

155. Ask YC: What are the going rates for consulting gigs?
69 points | posted by iamelgringo on 5/6/2008 | 105 comments

156. Ask HN: Subscription web sites: How did you get your first customer?
69 points | posted by bkovitz on 5/16/2008 | 50 comments

157. “It’s not exponential, it’s sigmoidal”
68 points | posted by terpua on 11/27/2007 | 8 comments

158. TC Reddit Adds Ability to Create your own Reddits
68 points | posted by hwork on 1/23/2008 | 29 comments

159. Do it Fucking Now.
68 points | posted by ajbatac on 2/23/2008 | 30 comments

160. Every Piece of Startup Advice is a Lie
68 points | posted by ericwan on 3/9/2008 | 15 comments

161. Why we disagree with Don Norman
68 points | posted by __ on 3/11/2008 | 10 comments

162. Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression
68 points | posted by poststartup on 3/26/2008 | 58 comments

163. Using Microsoft Excel as a 3D Game Engine
67 points | posted by hhm on 3/7/2008 | 8 comments

164. TC Y Combinator Demo Day Roundup
67 points | posted by nextmoveone on 3/14/2008 | 51 comments

165. This talk puts the eccentric absent-minded professor stereotype to rest once and for all.
67 points | posted by amichail on 3/28/2008 | 29 comments

166. We need a Wikipedia for data
67 points | posted by bootload on 4/9/2008 | 54 comments

167. “Zed Shaw: “”rails-core ripped off the idea for Campfire from NextApp Echo2 ChatClient Demo”"”
67 points | posted by rob on 4/9/2008 | 34 comments

168. New Feature: get kicked off News.YC on demand
66 points | posted by pg on 11/8/2007 | 45 comments

169. OpenDNS is hijacking Google requests (For what they claim is a good reason)
66 points | posted by e1ven on 3/14/2008 | 24 comments

170. URLs Are Totally Out In Japan
66 points | posted by nreece on 3/26/2008 | 23 comments

171. The Young Man’s Business Model
66 points | posted by zinxq on 4/14/2008 | 17 comments

172. StackOverflow.com : the new venture from Joel Spolsky
66 points | posted by pibefision on 4/17/2008 | 32 comments

173. Quit your job
66 points | posted by breily on 4/23/2008 | 46 comments

174. Notes from Del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter
65 points | posted by wbornor on 2/22/2007 | 14 comments

175. 10 Lessons of an MIT Education by Gian-Carlo Rota
65 points | posted by hhm on 9/12/2007 | 14 comments

176. Evan Williams: Will it fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea
65 points | posted by staunch on 12/17/2007 | 23 comments

177. Ask 37signals: How do you process credit cards?
65 points | posted by dawie on 12/29/2007 | 10 comments

178. TC My 23andMe DNA Results
65 points | posted by aneesh on 3/3/2008 | 19 comments

179. “Come stay at the hacker house in San Jose, Free”
65 points | posted by samwise on 3/19/2008 | 55 comments

180. Please tell us what features you’d like in news.ycombinator
64 points | posted by pg on 2/21/2007 | 571 comments

181. PG Why to Move to a Startup Hub
64 points | posted by samb on 10/11/2007 | 94 comments

182. Success [pic]
64 points | posted by papersmith on 12/15/2007 | 13 comments

183. UNIX tips: Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits
64 points | posted by luccastera on 1/25/2008 | 17 comments

184. Bill Gates demos Xobni
64 points | posted by gaborcselle on 2/12/2008 | 32 comments

185. Why a School Banned Legos
64 points | posted by kirubakaran on 2/21/2008 | 90 comments

186. Ask News.YC: How to re-motivate yourself?
64 points | posted by qwestion on 2/22/2008 | 42 comments

187. Why bother having a resume?
64 points | posted by comatose_kid on 3/17/2008 | 60 comments

188. “Take the Next Step, Paul”
64 points | posted by brlewis on 3/24/2008 | 44 comments

189. More data usually beats better algorithms
64 points | posted by toffer on 3/31/2008 | 15 comments

190. Free is Killing Us. Blame The VCs
64 points | posted by llimllib on 4/4/2008 | 67 comments

191. “Cross Browser Testing. Pick a browser, Pick an OS, Test website”
64 points | posted by drm237 on 4/11/2008 | 47 comments

192. Interview with reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian
64 points | posted by Sam_Odio on 4/14/2008 | 9 comments

193. Python Generator Tricks for Systems Programmers
64 points | posted by dood on 4/17/2008 | 13 comments

194. “99designs: Need something designed (logo, …)? Crowdsource it.”
64 points | posted by chaostheory on 4/27/2008 | 47 comments

195. Malcolm Gladwell: Who says big ideas are rare?
64 points | posted by danohuiginn on 5/5/2008 | 26 comments

196. Scipy – the embarrassing way to code
64 points | posted by dood on 5/6/2008 | 37 comments

197. PG The Hacker’s Guide to Investors
63 points | posted by byrneseyeview on 4/30/2007 | 45 comments

198. Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says
63 points | posted by rwalling on 11/7/2007 | 39 comments

199. Five whys
63 points | posted by jmorin007 on 1/23/2008 | 21 comments

200. TC Heroku Lifts Ruby on Rails Development into the Cloud (YC Winter 08)
63 points | posted by danielha on 2/8/2008 | 35 comments

Top 200 by Comments

Grey items indicate it also appears in the Top 200 by Points

1. YC Please tell us what features you’d like in news.ycombinator
64 points | posted by pg on 2/21/2007 | 571 comments

2. PG Microsoft is Dead
77 points | posted by kkim on 4/6/2007 | 445 comments

3. PG Lies We Tell Kids
181 points | posted by mqt on 5/13/2008 | 387 comments

4. PG You weren’t meant to have a boss
229 points | posted by dfranke on 3/21/2008 | 291 comments

5. YC Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.
127 points | posted by drinko on 5/7/2008 | 232 comments

6. PG How to Do Philosophy
90 points | posted by samb on 9/22/2007 | 221 comments

7. PG How to Disagree
171 points | posted by PieSquared on 3/29/2008 | 219 comments

8. PG Be Good
175 points | posted by vsingh on 4/20/2008 | 199 comments

9. PG PG: Disconnecting Distraction
147 points | posted by Darmani on 5/17/2008 | 189 comments

10. YC Ask YC: How many people here have a degree and are programmers?
34 points | posted by gregp on 2/8/2008 | 187 comments

11. PG PG on trolls
135 points | posted by sharpshoot on 2/17/2008 | 170 comments

12. YC Ask: What would you do/make if you never had to monetize it?
55 points | posted by icky on 3/21/2008 | 170 comments

13. YC Startup idea list
53 points | posted by deltapoint on 9/18/2007 | 168 comments

14. PG The Future of Web Startups
107 points | posted by byrneseyeview on 10/5/2007 | 167 comments

15. YC How old are you and what is your education level?
34 points | posted by nextmoveone on 10/5/2007 | 163 comments

16. YC Ask YC: What are you working on right now?
27 points | posted by robmnl on 4/1/2008 | 157 comments

17. YC Why Lisp Is Unpopular
58 points | posted by mnemonicsloth on 4/3/2008 | 156 comments

18. YC “Smjörið er brætt og hveitið smátt og smátt hrært út í það, þangað til það er gengið upp í smjörið.”
118 points | posted by pg on 2/8/2008 | 153 comments

19. Hire Family People
94 points | posted by breily on 4/24/2008 | 152 comments

20. PG Why There Aren’t More Googles
149 points | posted by ecommercematt on 4/14/2008 | 151 comments

21. PG The Equity Equation
58 points | posted by rams on 7/19/2007 | 151 comments

22. YC Ask YC: How do you lose weight?
24 points | posted by Flemlord on 4/18/2008 | 150 comments

23. PG Why to Not Not Start a Startup
107 points | posted by palish on 3/27/2007 | 139 comments

24. PG How Not to Die
167 points | posted by subhash on 8/31/2007 | 138 comments

25. Coding Horror: Paul Graham’s Participatory Narcissism
113 points | posted by sharksandwich on 3/22/2008 | 129 comments

26. YC YC News Unavailable…
26 points | posted by gibsonf1 on 9/28/2007 | 129 comments

27. YC Ask YC: How many hours do you sleep on average ?
37 points | posted by VinzO on 2/14/2008 | 127 comments

28. YC Ask YC: Are there *any* startups using ASP.NET?
24 points | posted by kilik on 11/21/2007 | 127 comments

29. PG Holding a program in one’s head
142 points | posted by eposts on 8/24/2007 | 126 comments

30. YC How good were you at college?
24 points | posted by ptn on 11/13/2007 | 126 comments

31. PG Arc’s Out
239 points | posted by pg on 1/30/2008 | 124 comments

32. PG Paul Graham: News from the Front
100 points | posted by mattculbreth on 9/6/2007 | 124 comments

33. YC Ask YC: Have you built a good website that nobody visits?
101 points | posted by cousin_it on 5/12/2008 | 120 comments

34. Facebook Is Not Really That Special
95 points | posted by mqt on 4/11/2008 | 119 comments

35. YC What programming language should I start with?
24 points | posted by zenobo on 8/21/2007 | 116 comments

36. My experiment with smart drugs: Viagra for the brain?
122 points | posted by robg on 5/15/2008 | 114 comments

37. YC Tell YC: Summer 08 decisions out
42 points | posted by raghus on 4/10/2008 | 114 comments

38. TC Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine
135 points | posted by jsjenkins168 on 4/8/2008 | 113 comments

39. YC Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?
45 points | posted by kirubakaran on 3/8/2008 | 113 comments

40. PG Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
166 points | posted by Darmani on 2/16/2008 | 112 comments

41. YC Ask YC: Django vs Ruby on Rails
58 points | posted by notdarkyet on 5/20/2008 | 112 comments

42. You Can’t Soak the Rich
93 points | posted by epi0Bauqu on 5/20/2008 | 109 comments

43. YC Ask YC: What are starting salaries for CS grads this year?
43 points | posted by iamelgringo on 5/1/2008 | 109 comments

44. DHH: Are you sure you want to be in San Francisco?
108 points | posted by johns on 4/22/2008 | 108 comments

45. YC Idea Week. Post ideas you don’t plan on implementing.
41 points | posted by ivankirigin on 10/9/2007 | 107 comments

46. YC Ask YC: What are the going rates for consulting gigs?
69 points | posted by iamelgringo on 5/6/2008 | 105 comments

47. YC Ask YC: Do you watch TV?
25 points | posted by daniel-cussen on 2/13/2008 | 105 comments

48. juwo beta is released (at last!). Please use it and help improve it!
5 points | posted by juwo on 4/18/2007 | 105 comments

49. YC Ask YC: Best ways to become socially adept?
55 points | posted by yters on 4/21/2008 | 104 comments

50. Breaking News: Girls don’t become engineers because they don’t want to
51 points | posted by aggieben on 5/19/2008 | 104 comments

51. YC Is Aaron Swartz the Paris Hilton of Web 2.0?
48 points | posted by qwertyy on 11/15/2007 | 104 comments

52. YC Ask YC: What new technologies are you exploring?
36 points | posted by iamelgringo on 11/20/2007 | 103 comments

53. YC Ask YCNews: Any lady hackers using the site?
24 points | posted by pchristensen on 1/21/2008 | 103 comments

54. “So you “”just need a hacker”", huh?”
75 points | posted by carpal on 3/25/2008 | 102 comments

55. YC Poll: Ban Valleywag?
70 points | posted by pg on 4/11/2008 | 102 comments

56. Why is 37signals so arrogant?
58 points | posted by rglullis on 3/8/2008 | 102 comments

57. “Aaron Swartz: Perfectionism (and his new startup, Jottit)”
48 points | posted by abstractbill on 9/1/2007 | 102 comments

58. YC Ideas to monetize new artifical intelligence
26 points | posted by marcus on 11/14/2007 | 102 comments

59. YC Ask YC: Are there any black or latino founded startups?
14 points | posted by wumi on 1/27/2008 | 102 comments

60. YC Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding
59 points | posted by pg on 7/3/2007 | 101 comments

61. YC “I have a great idea for a webapp, but hardly any programming knowledge. What should i do?”
31 points | posted by thehigherlife on 9/25/2007 | 101 comments

62. YC “Ask YC: Mid-sized, livable, hacker-friendly towns?”
23 points | posted by davidw on 2/8/2008 | 101 comments

63. How I lost my faith (in Lisp)
70 points | posted by bootload on 2/1/2008 | 97 comments

64. YC Hackers’ screen shots
48 points | posted by davidw on 11/1/2007 | 97 comments

65. Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder
79 points | posted by mcxx on 4/28/2008 | 96 comments

66. YC Vote up if you’re refreshing your email once a minute today
50 points | posted by blader on 4/10/2007 | 96 comments

67. My Mac Mini
24 points | posted by ashu on 4/29/2008 | 96 comments

68. YC Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient?
115 points | posted by dangrover on 4/18/2008 | 95 comments

69. YC Ask YC: What’s the best advice you ever got?
38 points | posted by edw519 on 5/8/2008 | 95 comments

70. YC “Absolutely, DO NOT, get a co-founder!”
93 points | posted by BitGeek on 11/8/2007 | 94 comments

71. PG Why to Move to a Startup Hub
64 points | posted by samb on 10/11/2007 | 94 comments

72. YC Are you going to change the world? (Really?)
54 points | posted by Shooter on 9/20/2007 | 94 comments

73. Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
41 points | posted by edw519 on 3/27/2008 | 94 comments

74. YC “Poll: Should this site be visible to Yahoo, MSN crawlers?”
39 points | posted by pg on 4/16/2008 | 94 comments

75. YC Looking for a co-founder? post here (3 rules apply)
31 points | posted by sharpshoot on 2/17/2008 | 94 comments

76. How To Get Your Own Fanboys
25 points | posted by mqt on 5/1/2008 | 94 comments

77. Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism
32 points | posted by robg on 9/15/2007 | 93 comments

78. PG Stuff – Paul Graham
99 points | posted by samb on 8/1/2007 | 92 comments

79. YC Ask YC: Has anyone switched from OS X to Ubuntu?
30 points | posted by rob on 4/12/2008 | 92 comments

80. Asking for Feedback on Our Startup: Coordinatr.com
25 points | posted by drm237 on 2/22/2008 | 92 comments

81. New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It’s Spooky
187 points | posted by paulsb on 3/17/2008 | 91 comments

82. YC Would this community prefer to be under the radar?
101 points | posted by techcrunch on 3/26/2008 | 91 comments

83. Don’t Become a Scientist.
73 points | posted by aneesh on 2/24/2008 | 91 comments

84. YC Ask YC: Status of your startup
47 points | posted by robmnl on 2/2/2008 | 91 comments

85. YC “YC Analysis: “”37signals/DHH style”" companies?”
45 points | posted by davidw on 4/21/2008 | 91 comments

86. San Jose is hell on earth
42 points | posted by henning on 5/19/2008 | 91 comments

87. YC Where is your startup? (for me Atlanta)
21 points | posted by rokhayakebe on 8/13/2007 | 91 comments

88. YC Ask YC: Why is YC’s layout table based?
13 points | posted by german on 1/19/2008 | 91 comments

89. Why a School Banned Legos
64 points | posted by kirubakaran on 2/21/2008 | 90 comments

90. YC PG: Arc Likely To Be Open-Sourced This Winter
117 points | posted by kirubakaran on 1/15/2008 | 88 comments

91. Aaron Swartz’s Jottit has been officially released
51 points | posted by rob on 9/16/2007 | 88 comments

92. YC What books would you recommend reading? Why?
37 points | posted by aswanson on 9/19/2007 | 88 comments

93. YC What is the average startup entrepreneur age? ie your age (I am 26 almost)
18 points | posted by rokhayakebe on 9/6/2007 | 88 comments

94. YC Ask YC: do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend?
13 points | posted by btw0 on 3/28/2008 | 88 comments

95. YC What do hackers think of PHP?
38 points | posted by amrithk on 5/5/2008 | 87 comments

96. YC Ask YC: AI
36 points | posted by Novash on 12/18/2007 | 87 comments

97. YC Bored with no ideas for next startup
18 points | posted by bored_dev on 3/2/2008 | 87 comments

98. PG Some Heroes
111 points | posted by mqt on 4/5/2008 | 86 comments

99. Obama’s Victory Speech
49 points | posted by chengmi on 1/5/2008 | 86 comments

100. YC Is it bad if I don’t want to work at a C++/Java startup?
19 points | posted by gregwebs on 7/17/2007 | 86 comments

101. YC Ask YC: (< (/ signal noise) too-low)
42 points | posted by BrandonM on 3/30/2008 | 85 comments

102. YC Startup crisis. Dorm room style.
32 points | posted by jfornear on 5/8/2008 | 85 comments

103. YC Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world?
40 points | posted by ericb on 3/11/2008 | 84 comments

104. Why Not To Do A Startup
134 points | posted by rms on 3/19/2008 | 83 comments

105. YC What can you do with money?
28 points | posted by some on 7/29/2007 | 83 comments

106. Joel explains how a new monopoly will emerge around AJAX
101 points | posted by herdrick on 9/19/2007 | 82 comments

107. The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment
98 points | posted by nreece on 4/28/2008 | 82 comments

108. YC “Ask YC: So, why are you doing a startup?”
21 points | posted by hhm on 1/25/2008 | 82 comments

109. YC One (programming) language for the rest of your life. Which one?
19 points | posted by watmough on 1/10/2008 | 82 comments

110. TC Little Known Hacker News Is My First Read Every Morning
98 points | posted by hwork on 3/11/2008 | 81 comments

111. Microsoft bids $44.6 billion for Yahoo
80 points | posted by surya on 2/1/2008 | 80 comments

112. Ruby’s not ready
53 points | posted by glyphobet on 4/8/2008 | 80 comments

113. Why Programmers Don’t Like Relational Databases
44 points | posted by mqt on 9/27/2007 | 80 comments

114. YC Ask YC: favorite books
41 points | posted by cellis on 12/4/2007 | 80 comments

115. Just launched! Asking for news.yc feedback.
49 points | posted by tx on 10/4/2007 | 79 comments

116. YC Ask YC: What’s the most inspiring sci-fi book you’ve read?
37 points | posted by moog on 3/19/2008 | 79 comments

117. YC Ask YC: Why would someone leave his/her cushy job to join a startup?
22 points | posted by popat on 5/2/2008 | 79 comments

118. YC Ask YC: C++
20 points | posted by kashif on 4/16/2008 | 79 comments

119. YC Ask YC: What was your first computer?
18 points | posted by altay on 10/18/2007 | 79 comments

120. Everything I want to do is Illegal
85 points | posted by smanek on 5/14/2008 | 78 comments

121. YC Tumblr security hole (the gaping kind)
75 points | posted by oldgregg on 4/15/2008 | 78 comments

122. “‘Second Earth’ found, 20 light years away”
56 points | posted by pg on 10/17/2007 | 78 comments

123. “New Languages Considered Harmful: “”Learning new languages is a waste of time.”"”
53 points | posted by tb on 4/4/2008 | 78 comments

124. TC Twitter Said To Be Abandoning Ruby on Rails
51 points | posted by jsjenkins168 on 5/1/2008 | 78 comments

125. YC “Y Not – YC rejects of the world, unite!”
22 points | posted by mdemare on 10/20/2007 | 78 comments

126. YC “Advice needed: “”friend”" stole my idea…what to do?”
20 points | posted by pissedoff on 4/27/2007 | 78 comments

127. YC Which Programming Language did you pick for your idea?
19 points | posted by theoutlander on 4/9/2007 | 78 comments

128. Design: Voting up or Down is Dead
38 points | posted by DanielBMarkham on 10/15/2007 | 77 comments

129. YC “Ask YC: Mac virgin wants to know, what would you install?”
38 points | posted by ericb on 3/7/2008 | 77 comments

130. YC Ask YC: What Is Your Favorite Board Game?
16 points | posted by xirium on 3/10/2008 | 77 comments

131. YC Hacker News
153 points | posted by pg on 8/15/2007 | 76 comments

132. The world’s most toxic value system
48 points | posted by akkartik on 12/27/2007 | 76 comments

133. College Board drops AP comp sci & latin for racial diversity reasons
25 points | posted by Alex3917 on 4/8/2008 | 76 comments

134. Architecture astronauts take over
130 points | posted by mqt on 5/1/2008 | 75 comments

135. Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product full-time. What’s your brutal feedback?
32 points | posted by arooni on 2/7/2008 | 75 comments

136. YC “Ask YC: Hacker moms & dads, what do you read?”
26 points | posted by rodrigo on 3/3/2008 | 75 comments

137. YC Hacker Music?
24 points | posted by nextmoveone on 10/2/2007 | 75 comments

138. YC Ask YC: What’s the most hacker-friendly keyboard?
21 points | posted by ComputerGuru on 5/9/2008 | 75 comments

139. Get that job at Google
87 points | posted by comatose_kid on 3/13/2008 | 74 comments

140. PG You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss: The Cliffs Notes
71 points | posted by brlewis on 3/23/2008 | 74 comments

141. YC “OK, you’ve convinced me. I’m coming to join you.”
44 points | posted by cubicle67 on 9/10/2007 | 74 comments

142. YC “Ask YC: Development-wise, what do you do that’s unconventional and why?”
34 points | posted by ericb on 3/13/2008 | 74 comments

143. “Y Combinator Clone in Vienna, Austria launches”
22 points | posted by enki on 4/23/2007 | 74 comments

144. YC Learning Math
112 points | posted by dwaters on 2/4/2008 | 73 comments

145. Phase 3: Profit
57 points | posted by mqt on 4/11/2008 | 73 comments

146. What I.Q. doesn’t tell you about race
49 points | posted by papersmith on 12/11/2007 | 73 comments

147. Why Arc is bad for exploratory programming
28 points | posted by mqt on 5/15/2008 | 73 comments

148. PG PG on Unions
27 points | posted by chwolfe on 5/8/2007 | 73 comments

149. “PG cites Ron Paul proliferation on Reddit as “”evidence of design flaw in version 1 of social news”"”
26 points | posted by brett on 9/9/2007 | 73 comments

150. YC “Ask News.YC: Proposed experiment to test “”The PG bias”"”
21 points | posted by randomhack on 4/17/2008 | 73 comments

151. YC Tell YC: Answers from John McCarthy
132 points | posted by mgummelt on 5/9/2008 | 72 comments

152. Disagreeing with Paul Graham
96 points | posted by gabrielroth on 3/31/2008 | 72 comments

153. Is poverty self-perpetuating?
58 points | posted by kradic on 4/6/2008 | 72 comments

154. YC Ask YC: what is your favorite startup related quote?
45 points | posted by deltapoint on 3/16/2008 | 72 comments

155. YC I built it but they wouldn’t come!
44 points | posted by hashbucket on 4/14/2008 | 72 comments

156. YC “Ask YC: “”Can a 40 year old, married with 3 children, start a start-up?”"”
27 points | posted by whiten on 5/15/2008 | 72 comments

157. Facebook’s fail is going to be epic
55 points | posted by nickb on 2/22/2008 | 71 comments

158. My YC app: Dropbox – Throw away your USB drive
53 points | posted by dhouston on 4/4/2007 | 71 comments

159. 40 percent of college students say their next computer purchase will be a Mac
58 points | posted by pg on 4/1/2008 | 70 comments

160. YC Ask YC: What’s a reasonable share of equity to get as the first developer?
32 points | posted by myoung8 on 10/29/2007 | 70 comments

161. YC I’m giving away my startup idea to a deserving Haxor
17 points | posted by poppysan on 3/14/2008 | 70 comments

162. YC Ask YC: Mac Text Editors
14 points | posted by nomad on 5/16/2008 | 70 comments

163. College is a waste of time and money for kids
34 points | posted by ranparas on 2/14/2008 | 69 comments

164. YC Ask YC: Where do you work?
20 points | posted by trekker7 on 1/29/2008 | 69 comments

165. Rails is a Ghetto… [NSFW for Language]
86 points | posted by raju on 1/1/2008 | 68 comments

166. Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
59 points | posted by markovich on 4/5/2007 | 68 comments

167. YC Where does a wannabe hacker begin?
38 points | posted by Perry on 3/29/2008 | 68 comments

168. YC What sites would you pay to use?
31 points | posted by pchristensen on 4/16/2008 | 68 comments

169. YC “Ask YC: are you a UK-based hacker, or working on a startup in the UK?”
25 points | posted by dood on 11/14/2007 | 68 comments

170. Free is Killing Us. Blame The VCs
64 points | posted by llimllib on 4/4/2008 | 67 comments

171. “JPMorgan buys Bear Stearns for $2/sh, ~$236mm total”
56 points | posted by ctkrohn on 3/17/2008 | 67 comments

172. YC “Goodbye, Hacker News. I’m going back to Reddit.”
46 points | posted by jmpeters on 8/18/2007 | 67 comments

173. The Real Reason there are no Silicon Valleys in Europe
37 points | posted by lupin_sansei on 3/4/2008 | 67 comments

174. PG “It’s Charisma, Stupid”
28 points | posted by mqt on 2/12/2008 | 67 comments

175. YC Ask HN: Why be an option/futures/day trader when it is zero-sum?
27 points | posted by hashtable on 5/15/2008 | 67 comments

176. “Brain Enhancement Is Wrong, Right? “
22 points | posted by robg on 3/9/2008 | 67 comments

177. YC Ask YC: Who’s your favorite domain registrar and why?
39 points | posted by pius on 3/31/2008 | 66 comments

178. YC Ask YC: What music do you listen to when hacking?
31 points | posted by moog on 3/9/2008 | 66 comments

179. YC Ask.YC: Spammers have finally hit News.YC — what do we do about them?
30 points | posted by pius on 2/14/2008 | 66 comments

180. YC “Ask YC: Ruby and Lisp devs, please answer this (Not a flame war)”
28 points | posted by Readmore on 1/15/2008 | 66 comments

181. YC Ask YC: What is your preferable development environment?
22 points | posted by tzury on 3/6/2008 | 66 comments

182. A YC Clone in India
21 points | posted by aneesh on 4/8/2008 | 66 comments

183. YC Ask YC: Best undergraduate college for hopeful startup entrepeneurs
17 points | posted by deltapoint on 2/28/2008 | 66 comments

184. TC Dropbox launches (YC summer 07)
133 points | posted by sharpshoot on 3/11/2008 | 65 comments

185. YC How about this idea to save Hacker News from fluff?
51 points | posted by kirubakaran on 2/23/2008 | 65 comments

186. Signs You’re a Crappy Programmer (and don’t know it)
34 points | posted by hhm on 11/23/2007 | 65 comments

187. YC What are the best non-database solutions you’ve seen? What did Viaweb use?
33 points | posted by mattjaynes on 4/19/2007 | 65 comments

188. YC Food Ideas for Startup Guys
33 points | posted by majimojo on 9/21/2007 | 65 comments

189. YC Ask YC: What is your favourite paradox?
29 points | posted by moog on 3/11/2008 | 65 comments

190. Paul Graham is too arrogant
12 points | posted by infirstlive on 5/16/2007 | 65 comments

191. YC Ask YC: What software makes you happy?
11 points | posted by kulkarnic on 3/4/2008 | 65 comments

192. YC Ask YC: What do you spend on health insurance?
11 points | posted by rrival on 5/5/2008 | 65 comments

193. YC Ask YC: Would YC.Newsers try a web service that works only on IE?
6 points | posted by eusman on 2/5/2008 | 65 comments

194. YC Ask YComb: Should I quit to do a startup during a recession?
38 points | posted by eventhough on 1/22/2008 | 64 comments

195. YC Everything’s Blub All Over Again
37 points | posted by raganwald on 3/24/2008 | 64 comments

196. YC Is anyone working on something that is not a website?
22 points | posted by palish on 5/11/2007 | 64 comments

197. PG: What’s your current take on reddit’s comment system?
20 points | posted by brett on 7/13/2007 | 64 comments

198. YC Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch
18 points | posted by socalsamba on 4/25/2008 | 64 comments

199. “We wanted it, so we built it…feedback?”
17 points | posted by rwebb on 9/6/2007 | 64 comments

200. YC What services would the perfect government provide?
11 points | posted by rms on 8/19/2007 | 64 comments

Been slowly reading LLC or Corporation by Anthony Mancuso, not because I expect to form either soon, but because I’d like to one day and want to be prepared.

As I’m reading I’ll take notes, which serve to help me understand and might benefit some of you too. I encourage anyone interested in the material to pick up the book, which is excellent so far.

—-

General Partnerships – 2 or more people, no limit legally, but it often leads to problems if you have a large # of people because of managerial disputes. You can designate someone as a managing partner, but doing so is risky because everyone is still personally liable.

You should create a written partnership agreement early to avoid complications later. A lawyer might cost $1K-$5K, but you can do it yourself using some free online tools.

Beware: all the general partners are liable for business debts. In bad cases, you and the partners might have to mortgage your house, sell your car, empty your bank accounts, sell your children (jk) and other nasty things. And this is regardless of what your % ownership – creditors can come after your shit regardless. So, General Parternships are risker than LLCs, corpoerations, and limited partnerships which offer at least some limited liabilities for the owners.

The tax burden passes through the partnership to each of the partners, who have to pay their fair share of taxes on their profits (on their individual income tax return). This is regardless of whether you choose to reinvest it or distribute it to the partners. That’s allocated profits vs distributed profits. Oh, and you have to pay self-employment taxes too. Each partner must fill out a IRS Form 1065 U.S. Partnership Return of Income and the partnership much give each partner a filled in IRS Schedule K-1 (Form 1065 (?)) Partner’s Share of Income, Credits, and Deductions which shows what proportion of profits or losses carry over their their 1040.

LLCs – Income tax passes through to the partners (like a partnership), but you have limited personal liability (hence the “LL” in “LLC”) for business debts. If you start making more $ than you need to take home you can convert LLC -> Corp so you’re taxed at a lower rate -or- you can have an “IRS Election” (?) to have the LLC taxed as a corporation, but it still stays an LLC. You can have one person for an LLC and don’t have to be a resident of the state where you form the LLC.

The owners aka members manage the LLC. In some cases, you can appoint a nonmember to manage the comapany’s affairs.

To form an LLC, it takes some paperwork (surprise!). You have to file a legal document called articles of organization with the state business filing office. If the LLC will have a presence in another state, you have to do even more.

You should prepare an operating agreement with the other members detailing how it will be owned, how the profits and losses will be split, how departing/dead members will be bought out, and other important things. If you don’t do this then your state’s default provisions will apply, which could get ugly. Create an operating agreement.

At this point, I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t form an LLC vs a General Partnership.

Next up… Corporations.

I wandered over to HackerNews with the intent of asking how important it was to come up with an original idea vs building on other peoples ideas and products. Sitting in the top 10 was an article by Alexander van Elsas titled Early adopters and Silicon Valley Are The Easy Way To Failure. His main points are:

• Most startups fail because they don’t solve normal people’s problems
• Instead, they get a lot of hype from within Silicon Valley, but that’s not whats really important
• When they do this they get stuck in the Silicon Valley vaccuum, so called because their product never goes mainstream
• Stay away from Silicon Valley — develop a service that has an impact on mainstream users
• If you can do that, Silicon Valley will notice

There isn’t a single mainstream user problem or value being addressed.

You are better off with early adopters that aren’t asking for cool new features, but instead tell you about their experience to try and integrate your service into their daily patterns.