abracar

It's not just for online transactions - it says "debit cards, credit cards, bank transfers and ecommerce".

Don't despair, it's going to improve eventually but it takes time. Those companies need to put effort into training their services specifically for accented speech - in the same way they do it for child voices etc. I'm pretty sure it's already on their roadmap!

True, some people use a different address for each service (ie. yourservice@mydomain.com), and they tend to be the the kind of people one would want to hire as engineers! I wonder if Sourcing.io figured it out somehow, but at least compared to option 1 it seems better to look them up manually.

from HN's FAQ: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I also liked how Heidi Roizen tried not to extrapolate on her own experience now that she is a VC. When you get older, more assertive and less of a 'target', it's too easy to forget what younger women might encounter. [edit: grammar]

Thanks for saying that. Still, it may not be how applicants see it. For instance my take from PG's "How to apply" (http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html) was that posting here could definitely be a plus — and that's one of the reasons why your role is so important. I know sama mentioned improving the quality of HN comments as part of the roadmap for YC to get to fund more women and I couldn't agree more.

I can't downvote yet so I'm not one of those who did - I was trying to give an explanation. I don't know the exact rules for downvoting but I assume some use it to say " not helpful".

That some of us don't find these resources that useful or relevant?

I don't see how that would be a rebuttal, but from what you say it could be interesting to read.

Right - I also find it helpful to judge them for their actions in general, and not just for one stupid thing they may say.

Come on, I'm European too and that's not an excuse for hurting people's feelings or worse.

Seems killing HR and management is not always a good idea... Nor is pretending that hierarchy doesn't exist when it still does (i.e. Theresa Preston-Werner's "I was the wife of the CEO, but that never entered my mind when I hung out with any GitHubbers.")

Infant mortality is definitely one. There's a team from Stanford who developed a baby warmer for areas where electricity is an issue http://blog.ted.com/2010/07/09/fellows_friday_4/ http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_chen_a_warm_embrace_that_saves... Even if you go for a different problem, it's an interesting case to look into method-wise - I read somewhere else about how they iterated based on feedback from local community but I can't find it...

India would be a good place to test it: "Of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind, over 15 million are from India."(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-has-largest-b...)

"innocence and naivety are really no excuse for robbing other people of their paycheck." Says the guy who once failed to pay contributors... http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/sep/12/the-kernel-sued...

See the document, it is phrased as "Upon formation of the Start-Up Company, the entire issued share ownership of the Start-Up Company will be split as follows..."

For some reason this reminds me of Google's Prizes.org (RIP) - too bad it never really took off, bounty-based crowdsourcing is an interesting approach for projects like this one.

You should definitely sign a founder agreement right now, even if incorporation is still a few weeks/months away. For my own startup we used a custom version of this template: http://www.docracy.com/103/founder-collaboration-agreement Did you guys already agree on equity split?

I encourage you to reconsider speech therapy, it would be time and money well spent. Even if you don't do many sessions, they could give you exercises and tips to use on your own later. Plus you may be able to find some affordable options, some quick googling brought this up: http://www.sfsu.edu/~comdis/clinic.html

Under-representation doesn't only have to do with "women being wired differently". See, even women who have studied STEM are more likely to drop out from STEM jobs - for a series of reasons, but sexism seems to be one of them, so it's not off-topic here.

By the way, I do think we should also support diversity in some jobs where men are underrepresented, like teaching - I was reading a psychiatrist explain how the "girlification of elementary school" can be damaging for boys. (http://www.esquire.com/features/drugging-of-the-american-boy...)

I am not sure at all it's a joke, too much effort for that... The address they put in their ToS is the same as a co-working space in SF.

You're not crazy but I'm not sure to see the added value over a normal "company builder" (where the fund comes up with the idea). Are you sure the idea/market opportunity was the most interesting thing about those failed startups in the first place? They might have raised money for other reasons (team, momentum) which are now gone.

From the leaked convo, HR person wasn't sure to be in town and suggested Preston-Werner was the one who could decide to postpone the meeting or not.

Outsourcing design/dev doesn't sound like a good idea (nor does credit card debt)

I keep hearing this book is a must-read: http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/07/venture-deals-be-sma... If you don't want to buy it, you should check out the Venture Hacks Bible: http://venturehacks.com/friends I'm not sure any of them mentions SAFEs because they're very recent, you can read more details in YC's announcement: http://ycombinator.com/safe/

Clever move from HBO to create that page...

There's a Spanish initiative called Negobot that seems to rely on AI much more than Sweetie does — as its name suggests, it's a bot, not just a decoy. (Article in English: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/11/negobot-virtual-lol... and paper: http://www.esi.uem.es/~jmgomez/papers/cisis12.pdf)

One of the things I learned on HN back when Amit's story first came up was that many people who register as donors for a specific person end up declining to make a donation when they get contacted in a different context a few months/years later, and that's really a shame - so huge kudos to Scott for going ahead with this after all that time, because that's a crucial part of the equation.

Not sure about mobile site but it's probably on the roadmap, they've launched an iPhone app this week: https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/id599502670

To answer your question, there's at least one company that believes there's money to be made out of this: https://urbanbellhop.com/. I read about them on Springwise a while ago, and they handle all the check-in/check-out process for Airbnb and VRBO hosts. They don't provide cleaners, but it would make sense for them or another company to do so. I think there could definitely be a market for that kind of all-around vacation rental management services, at least in cities like SF and NYC. Edit: Airenvy mentioned somewhere in this thread seems to do just that.