dbul

A shocking data point about how things are going is that the median real net worth for households headed by someone under 25 dropped 68% from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662.

I remember hearing this on NPR a couple days ago. It's actually 35.[1]

To all who write blog posts: please cite your stats.

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...

This is unbelievable: it looks like they are faking child births, too! The rate is up a whopping 15%.

http://web.archive.org/web/20120203092942/https://www.cia.go...

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

Also, from my experience smoking seems to be rare both in Tokyo and the countryside, so I'd like the see some statistics about Japanese being "smoking fiends" before I assertTrue().

Both of you seem to think he said "instead." Consider the clauses rephrased: "Maybe we should start by examining our own community, before ..."

Why? I'd guess because the blog post refers to celebrity hackers bullying another hacker. The community -- more than just these few guys -- can't even behave civilly. It's a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

From https://balancedpayments.com "no redirects. no iframes. no external accounts." That's the unqiue, killer feature right there. If some M&A were to happen between those companies, the existence of this feature is imperative. Specifically, if I have a marketplace I don't want my customers to do any more than a) type their paypal email or b) type their bank account details.

Edit: if you happen to seriously be confused by what I've written, please visit the url and ctrl/cmd f for the quote. Then, take a look at what is below. That is,

  curl https://api.balancedpayments.com/v1/credits \
    -d amount=10000 \
    -d description="Math lesson" \
    -d bank_account[name]="Johann Bernoulli" \
    -d bank_account[account_number]=9900000001 \
    -d bank_account[routing_number]=121000358 \
    -d bank_account[type]=checking \
    -u 7b7a51ccb10c11e19c0a026ba7e239a9:

Excellent. Not too long ago I asked a partner at a very well known VC firm if they would consider investing a small amount ($x00) in many "startups" to see if the founders would use the money effectively and follow up with a more serious investment if so. He looked at me as though I was asking sarcastically rather than sincerely.

I'm confident that these six new Pinboard/Ptacek/A16Z companies will have excellent return on investment.

Humor aside, there are many smart founders but being brilliant and being money-minded are orthogonal.

The "working with people" comment makes me wonder if they are working with Rethink Robotics.[1] That would be an even more interesting take on this shift.

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/industrial-robots/rethink-...

Translation is as much of an art as it is a science, so I wonder where this project is headed. Le Ton beau de Marot is a great book for illustrating this point.

In college I had studied Japanese and a friend introduced me to the anime cartoon Initial D. His copy had the original Japanese with English subtitles, and so I could assess the translation to some degree -- it was very good. On Netflix you can watch Initial D, but after 2 minutes I had to turn it off because the English dubbing really failed to capture the characters.

As someone noted in this thread, the presenter's synthesized voice in the linked video doesn't seem to reflect his own. If he could have said something like "Wo hui shua putonghua" and had the machine output say the same, it might have been more convincing.

In theory, I absolutely agree; however, in reality I disagree unless you can show some data that indicates money being spent this way is more ethical than inhibition. Considering the competition for apparel, ample supply of workers, and what actually goes on in factories, if I have the option I will buy from a place that is more likely to uphold human rights.

If you would like a glimpse into my position and haven't already watched the PBS documentary China Blue, I recommend it.

The focus seems to be on pricing, and understandably so considering the nature of people. The implied ethics behind the manufacturing is something I appreciate: I've bought clothing from only countries with better than not labor laws for the past several years. Recently, Burberry has retired their UK-made products in favor of more dubious manufacturing locations; so I've stopped buying Burberry.

I hope this becomes a mainstream designer brand. American Apparel had their own target audience. But I just couldn't understand why no one was able to develop aesthetically pleasing clothing made in the US on par with other designers you may find in Saks.

Create a new email account. Sign up on every form you come across on websites selling various products and services. Get ready to be spammed. When the sales guys get in touch, get them on the phone using a blocked number or a temp. While they are trying to make a sale, instead try to ask questions to get them to admit they have the problem you are solving and you can instead pitch them your solution.

Set up a stripe account today. Ask people to donate an amount that they would pay assuming a monthly rate. Analyze their usage data and payment data to assist you in coming up with payment plans.

So it happened that in my junior year of college, I came across the web site of one of the many finals clubs on campus, the Fly Club.

It's "FINE-UHL clubs" not "FINE-UHLZ clubs."

And he shockingly did not understand why information privacy might be a controversial issue.

And then

He had been searching the houseSYSTEM Facebook for the twins' profiles

So much for privacy.

Aside from the Facebook, the sites had overlapping features for course schedulers, photo albums, message boards, digital posters for student groups, and eventually exchanges for buying and selling on campus and mapping your network of friends.

Irrelevant. People only used Thefacebook for obvious and simple things: connecting with people they knew, poking, messaging, and photos. No one used mapping your network of friends (which sucked, incidentally, and also was faily most of the time) and no one even used the course scheduler. To state the obvious, facebook was not successful for its features, it was successful because how it was executed!

This was claimed to have been written for historical significance, but I know that every time an article is written by this author and about this subject dozens of people are thinking the same thing: move on. Create a successful company first, then retire and write about this topic. I'd love to see blog posts regarding Think Computer's technology. As it stands, this blog post gained a lot of attention but there isn't even a a sidebar with "Hi, I'm Aaron Greenspan and I'm the CEO of Think Computer. We have this product, click here to learn more." It's a marketing failure to not capitalize on such an opportunity.

Why is your team bad ass?

This is my kind of application. This is similar to TechStars's application question "Why should we accept you?" which is great since you can candidly answer why you are a good investment.

First, your comment is vacuous.

Second, your account is over 1900 days old and it seems you are making personal attacks? Is this true, or have I mistaken "you" for a you general.

Third, my original comment was rhetorical. If someone thinks it is hard to touch base with 500 Startups then it doesn't mean anything other than the person thinks it is hard to touch base with 500 Startups. There are plenty of good investors out there, and if you are going to invest in technology then it only makes sense to, you know, use technology to make it easy to collect potential investments (which as I pointed out, 500.co sucks at doing).

but our MISSION is to groom ugly ducklings.

Then why do you make it so hard to touch base?[1]

[1] http://500.co

One of the reasons Jason Fried needs to yell so loudly...

Another reason: marketing. People don't get that.

For that reason one of my most valuable memories is how lame Facebook sounded to me when I first heard about it.

This is partially why I think the YC application process is flawed. If you think about the idea for 20 seconds or so, what good is that? You may be wasting 20 seconds trying to rectify an idea you can't logically determine to be good.

A better process is a continuous one: you'll get an excellent stream of actual data and not just made up answers to "What is your best non-computer hack?" The YC partners could start out the morning looking at their Twitter-like feed of what have potential startup teams done today? At some point a partner would say, "We have to pull these guys into our next batch."

Incidentally, this would be better for startup teams looking to break the threshold of project to startup. By updating this proposed feed, the startup feels obligated to not only continue to put out data, but good data. Eventually the team would realize they can't cut it or they will keep mutating teams or changing ideas until one has great prospects.

EDIT: I'll buy someone a smile and a coke if the above hypothesis is implemented and tested. The following is exactly why: Instagram is the one we'd most likely have missed. It all depends when we'd talked to them. They were a kind of overnight success in traffic. If we'd talked to them even a day after they launched we would certainly have said yes. But before that it might have seemed too speculative.[1]

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4497561

what do YC see in Everyday.me to make it worthy of being funded?

That they are "ex-Googlers."

It may be disingenuous to say that other applications do the same thing; it's as if you were saying ConnectU and Thefacebook do the same thing. In any case, they are simply launching their product. It's the first step in a long journey.

It's sometimes difficult to notice a great startup unless you've launched. For example, Groupon was a much more modest "tipping point for change" type of startup before they realized they could apply the same concept to small business commerce.

The only disadvantage is that few engineers know it, and few are willing to pick it up because they're afraid of it.

That's the advantage.

"Secure Boot is designed to address the potential for malware to insert itself between the firmware and the operating system on your computer. It accomplishes this by enforcing that only “approved” software is able to boot in your computer by way of a key that recognises pre-approved and signed software."

That's from the linked canonical article on the issue: http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/28/white-paper-secure-boot...

It would be difficult to overstate the impact Elon Musk has had, is having and will have on humanity

I can't count how many times I've seen this debate. I think last week there was a thread debating the triviality of web apps and similarly mentioned Musk.

Elon Musk may very well have developed a cat picture social network to gain the wealth required to fund his companies, but he instead worked on X.com/PayPal. Do you really believe Musk would be where he is today if he didn't gain considerable wealth from that venture? He'd likely be drawing rockets in a sketchbook while working as VP of Advertising at Google.

The Instagram founders are only wealthy enough at this point to have great credit, who knows what great investments they could make post-close?

I'm a fan of taking the simplest, reasonable route to wealth, then investing in something of greater importance, something that critics would agree improves humanity.

Since maximizing return is in the interest of the LPs, as a VC wouldn't you at least have a conversation with PicPlz about investing in an additional round with a competitor? Especially:

Dalton later pivoted out of PicPlz and is now building an exciting new service called App.Net.

If the App.Net concept was on the alternative idea list (likely considering the generalist nature of the entrepreneur [music, photos, whatever app.net does]), maybe the pivot would have happened sooner.

It's funny because most of these are problems I don't have yet affect me because others do have them.

You forget your dreams

Never. I live for my dreams.

ignore your family

Out of college the first startup concept I attempted was a family social network (family tree, photos, blog). How great would it be to use tech to possibly keep families together? I learned that women and new families loved it, but men seemed to be apathetic. "You spend time with your family?" "Of course" "Good, because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."

suppress your feelings

I try to keep people around me who don't mind listening to how I feel. Don't be a complainer, but don't hesitate to express yourself.

neglect your friends

The president of my high school class surprised me when he told me he has to make such an effort to get people to hang out. It is a challenge to know if you have a healthy friendship if you are always initiating the get-togethers.

forget to be happy

Of all, this seems to be the most difficult. If you aren't making progress with the other four, certainly this point will be true.

This is why I probably won't go to another YC Demo Day--on the off chance I get invited back.

Why say this? This post is fine explaining the preference to get to know entrepreneurs well and the apparent mistake entrepreneurs are making by approaching investors whom don't know the entrepreneur at all. But it seems to me that Demo Day is just another opportunity to hear an angle on a product as well as getting to know the entrepreneurs behind it.

And why was he having a conversation with Christina from USV if he wants to get to know entrepreneurs better? Then, why let the entrepreneur finish? Put on the Tom Hagen face and tell him "Now, wait just a minute" and start grilling the entrepreneur with questions to get to know him better. Maybe there is something I'm missing about why as an investor you wouldn't play this to your advantage. (As for the point about learning whether the investor is an asshole, this is Y Combinator: don't be an asshole or it is unlikely you'll have the opportunity to invest again.)

The investor is usually the veteran, the entrepreneur is usually the freshman. School him. That's the duty of the veterans in the game.

It would be great if YC did more of these kinds of experiments that could be to their benefit.

For example, there are people who would pay to be part of YC and also fall in the gray area where it seems they aren't bad investments but it isn't clear that they are likely good investments. A handful of those people may be invited to participate in YC with the exception that their investment is conditional: a don rag would be held half-way through, and if they weren't doing considerably well, they would be cut (otherwise, they would earn the investment).

An argument against that example may be that the applicant ought to prove worthiness beforehand, but that's just the point: maybe all the applicant needs is the right environment (YC) to dominate.

"One might be tempted simply to take the best individuals and ignore the other. However, that would lead to a quick loss of diversity. Those individuals currently not doing as well as the others may have properties that will prove superior in the long run." Understanding Intelligence (ch. 8.2 / pg. 239; Pfeifer & Scheier)

You, diego, et al. seem to have difficulty coming to terms with the author. It is clear from the article that by "frighteningly ambitious" the author means problems people currently have which seem insane to take on. They are problems people have because the author has indicated that he has them or has discussed with others who have them. Search and email are insane to take on because if you succeed with search, you are decimating a company with market cap in the hundreds of billions; succeeding in email means disrupting one of the original Internet protocols which virtually everyone uses. Thus, these are frighteningly ambitious.

You instead see "frighteningly ambitious" and assume your own term which is in the realm of science fiction (cyborgs, personal robots, &c.). Robotics, incidentally, may be a frighteningly ambitious endeavor but only if you are considering something like autonomously scraping and repainting ships or actuation in camera pills: personal (autonomous) robotics won't happen in the near future (see iRobot Corp).

So, assuming the author's definition of "frighteningly ambitious", search and email are important because they are problems people have now. If search weren't a problem, Union Square wouldn't have funded DuckDuckGo, and more to the point, DuckDuckGo wouldn't be growing. (I also have the exact problems the author describes with Google -- for the past 2 years I've had a problem with Google.) If it hasn't been shouted by Fred Wilson and Paul Graham enough: they have pain from dealing with email. They would throw their money at you if you offered a way to make email less painful. Maybe instead of spending two hours every day with email they could spend one hour with new/email and they could have a spare hour a day with their kids -- how valuable is an extra 14 whole days a year to these guys? How many people hate spending so much time on email who have means? Probably enough to make it worth investigating the problem. For what its worth, I'm frugal as Franklin and I would actually pay for email (i.e I wouldn't accept any common free email service because they aren't even worth $0.00 to me for a variety of reasons).

I don't think Mark was discounting it; I'm sure he appreciated Sean's role. He was just saying if he had the kind of knowledge he now has (maybe top HN articles, avc.com would suffice?), he would have stuck around Boston or New York.

Paul's example would better be supplemented by other stories like the telecom startup which was having a rough time, got in touch with Ron Conway who was an investor or FoF, Ron replied that he knew a telcom exec, and the company was saved.

You can absolutely create a scalable startup elsewhere but you have to be the right person with the right business.

http://paulgraham.com/equity.html

Someone I know recently told me about her nightmare when she was collecting money for a class reunion via PayPal last month: she had to register as a non-profit, and PayPal wanted her water bill to prove that they were indeed a non-profit despite being recognized by the government as one. So much hassle; I wish I had known she was going to do that so I could have told her about WePay, especially with this kind of customer service:

  A call to WePay's customer service department quickly
  sorted out the problem. Plus, the company gave him $20
  for the inconvenience.

http://www.jewelryluv.com/WebObjects/Jewelry.woa/Contents/We...

Bing images (where I found that) and Bing maps have been a great resource for me. Google is still empirically top for web search, though.