code

Bad mentality. This community should not make or break your decision to move forward with an idea. There are good reasons to swing one direction or the other but this is not one of them.

I grew up in Portland. Moved to Seattle after Portland. Finally to San Francisco after Seattle.

I will say the article is full of bullshit. Yes, cost of living is drastically lower and the quality of life and the surrounding is not bad at all in any way. But a Silicon Valley / SF? It is not.

If you're like me and you've lived in all 3 areas and grew up spending a huge chunk of your life in each of the 3, you'll quickly realize it's not even close in terms of the culture and resources the bay offers. I can understand the sentiment if you have a family (spouse and kids) and want to find affordable housing and all but lets not kid ourselves, that's not the same as arguing a tech centric hub worthy of comparison to the valley.

Here are some recommendations from True Ventures: http://www.trueventures.com/recommendations/

Disclaimer: I am not associated with True Ventures in any way.

However, I have been a long time customer of Wells Fargo and would vouch for them. I love their customer service and have done both personal and business banking with them. They're headquartered in San Francisco as well and are available almost everywhere nationwide. Hope this helps.

I vote 'No' simply because it's not my first startup but I am working full time on one

For apartments or housing, look on PadMapper. If you like city living and the likes of it, and those things are important to you, stick with San Francisco. If you don't care, don't drink, don't do any of those things, startup life is better in the Valley but that's about all there is in the Valley (personal opinion of course). I live in the Valley (disclaimer).

That said, if you choose San Francisco, the city is small enough so that it doesn't matter where you are but if you want to be as close to the startup scene as possible, SOMA (district) is probably your best bet. If you want convenience, Richmond is close to a lot of food places that you can walk to on foot.

If you opt for the valley route, being as close as possible to University Ave in Palo Alto is probably what you're after.

Install all that and your browser is gonna crawl like a snail. Only some are worth having, the rest you can live without.

The window of opportunity to sell a company is narrow and if he waits, the buyer may move on and another one may not come for awhile or offer the same term. Of course it depends on how far off he is from closing the deal but I assume OP is asking because its not anywhere near the one year mark.

Started at 16, wasn't an "app", but was an online business that generated more than enough money.

Are you looking specifically just for YC companies? Which position?

I save the HN post itself, not the endlink. It's better in case you want to comment rather than go straight to the article. And since you saved the HN link, you can always easily navigate to the article later. I don't read in instapaper itself, I go direct to link. Instapaper is just a really efficient bookmarking tool for me.

Instapaper is your best friend. It'll avoid upvoting links unnecessarily and allow you to read stuff later perfectly fine.

OS X aka Mac for me. Run Parallels for other OS testing.

Google Chrome Dev v12. something

Had several problems, can't remember them all. One that I do remember is it being extremely problematic or slow loading Google Maps mashup base stuff where Safari perfectly just worked.

Post it on https://flippa.com/ with specific site details, analytics stats, and actual revenue figures (monthly). The more detail the better. Flippa is a marketplace for people to buy and sell websites, including ones that produce revenues, etc...

You need to be honest with him and tell him things aren't working out and that he was originally brought on as a technical cofounder and he hasn't been working out for that role and he wants to switch to being a business cofounder which is not what you need.

Talk to an attorney about something called the Termination of Service agreement, have him sign this agreement along with the Convention Invention Assignment agreement. You'll need to compensate him some dollar amount for signing the agreement in good faith but it'll be the cleanest way to separate and vitally important moving forward.

I completely agree here. There are limitations with the micro and even running on a small server is insufficient in most cases with memory limitations. For development purposes before launch, AWS is probably not ideal.

On the other hand, after launch, AWS is amazing to scale with. I use AWS in conjunction with Rightscale which I highly recommend. Much easier to deploy.

I'm not a YC alum and I don't intend to be and what I'm about to say is personal opinion so take it as is.

As an entrepreneur, and someone who've successfully sold his own startup, I would gladly help out other entrepreneurs but I wouldn't invest in any. Others have ask if I'd be interested in investing and simply put, I don't enjoy investing nor is it something in my nature. What I love to do and what I'm passionate about is building a company.

I'm not the type that can invest in others and casually give advice on the side lines. I am the type that is very hands on and you can't be an investor and do that unless you plan on doing very limited investing and that's it. My opinion of course. That said, that doesn't mean I'm not interested in helping people, make introductions, and give valid advice freely.

Paying it forward doesn't necessarily mean having to put in money. Everyone is different. Just because they don't want to invest doesn't mean they aren't trying to help. You need to clearly distinguish the two. As a matter of fact, I wish most people who look for investors to invest make better choices on the investors they would accept rather than focus on just the money they would get. Mark suster says it best that taking on an investment is worse than marriage as its a heavy commitment. Get to know the people who are investing in you behind preliminary meetings and understand the value in which they can provide beyond the money. Even YC are selective of who they accept.

Dropped a gang last fall for the most badass build I can get, and was glad I did. The SSD speed is amazing.

Would be nice to add an option for both (for people who can design and code but may want to connect with others anyway).

That doesn't address his question. It addresses what every "founder" should have, not what determines a technical cofounder...

OP, I think as long as you can build what you're trying to build and it's solid without serious issues, you're good enough. Most founders will end up hiring more technical people on to help with complex algorithms and such down the road. Not every technical founder have say, a PhD in Machine Learning for example, to build a complex semantic search engine (random example). As long as you're confident in your code to an extent to get the company up and running and be able to lead a technical team, you're probably good enough to call yourself a technical cofounder.

http://www.fullsail.edu/degrees/web-design-development-bache...

Fullsail has a web design and web development program but I don't know if you'd consider them elite. Web development is generally self-taught and not really something most people pursue degrees for.

There's no option for 'None of the above' or 'Other'

Newly created HN accounts

Very nice idea. The site is well done. I like

Check for potential trademark issues.

My general rule of thumb, don't do it. Not worth the potential problems. Instead, get a basic letter of intent from them showing proof a few of them are willing to invest and approach others who are accredited to invest.

I guess the first question off the top of my head is how is different than current competitors (i.e. indinero, etc)? Would love to suggest but would also make it a lot easier to know what you already have.

It's an extremely tough spot to be in if your significant other isn't the type who understands or is willing to put up with startup life (mostly the lack of time for each other). While it can work, often it doesn't.

I've been down this road quite a few times. To me, it really is more of a matter of asking is this person right for me if our lifestyle choices conflict. So in essense, the startup almost always win.

Working at home may not solve all your problems or be beneficial. It can become a tremendous distraction. And with your financial picture in critical status, I would not recommend risking it to start a new company. Rather I would recommend finding a better paying job if your skills really do justify it (lots of places are hiring devs) and work on stuff on the side from home to see if you can gain traction.

Like many others have said here, majority of the best designers I've personally had the pleasure of working with or encountering were all self-taught and had little to no formal design education. The few people I've known that did go to design school, weren't very good. Of course that's not to say that people who go to design school can't be extremely good. That's just personal observation from those I've work with (which isn't representative of designers everywhere).

Having said that, I've always been impressed with the Design School each time I've been there (don't actually know if its related to what you're looking for): http://dschool.stanford.edu/

Disclaimer: I am not a design major, my design skills are self-taught, and I'm a former Stanford student.