jmw

Cool to hear… especially in the power specs for that proc. If you don’t mind, What specs does the transcoding machine have and what’s an example of a workload it handles well?

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I had to laugh when I saw the needwant.com guys in screenshots your website.

1) Only half joking question - a) did you ask John/David for permission to use their icons? b) Are they users of Status?

I installed status a while ago and found it really useful for my girlfriend knowing how close I am to home when on a run/driving/...on my way. It saved a lot of "sorry, running 15 minutes late" surprises, but I failed to get my coworkers on it (I last tried motivating them ~4 months ago).

2) Have you seen any ways it helps businesses or groups of people that work together? Had enough positive experiences that "just worked" with my gf where I'd love to be able to motivate my coworkers.

It's worse in the mobile space.

If you're trying to sign a jar to go on handsets, you pretty much either have to go a thawte certificate ($200), or a verisign certificate ($400) in order to guarantee compatibility with most handsets that are out there.

It's interesting to hear an outside view on entrepreneurship at MIT. Inside of MIT, most Course VI (Computer Science) students have gone through 4 years without even having a single conversation about starting a company.

There is a single class with Course 6 that teaches skills for presenting an idea and putting together a project proposal, but it's aimed at seniors going into industry and working at a large company, or students going onto grad school.

There are resources available - but most of them are accessed by MBAs and Alums. Dropping out of school to start a company is something that's considered a huge risk by your undergrad peers. The few that do are definitely given respect, but because the academic program is so tough - dropping out for most things is considered giving up, and not really an option which most people think is viable. Most would-be entrepreneurs wait until after graduation, go to grad school and drop out there - or work at a big company until they get tired of it. The community (of students and professors) just doesn't encourage many students to leave or take time off.

This however, is entirely different from the Institute. MIT as an institute (deans, registrar..etc) let's undergrads in good standing take a leave of absence with a single sheet of paperwork and a single 5-20 minute phone call. To get back in after the leave of absence - the same single sheet and 5 minute phone call are put through, and then any financial aid paperwork has to be renewed. If most undergrads knew how easy it was - I think more would try it.

It's interesting to me that about 2-3 years out of school, 60% of my older friends have consistently started "itching" for something more interested where they can push themselves to their own limits like they did during their undergrad career. This is in sharp contrast to the countless job fairs students go to their junior and senior year which encourage them to take the safe route and work for a "large" company.

NOTE - These comments about MIT and its community are strictly from my personal experience with taking a leave of absence from MIT to start a company, coming back, and leaving again with 2 classes left to start another company. (I did this in the period from 2002-2006). I also think that that the various MIT (entrepreneurship) clubs around the country really help with the community.

Boston's still number 2 (behind silicon valley) in most recommendations of places to start a startup (in terms of available capital, nerds/smart people, and proximity to other growing businesses).

Another part of the argument goes along the lines of: The YC Founders program is a 3 month intense program where the objective is to build as much of something people want during those 3 months while avoiding distractions of the real world.

In my own experience, unless you have a lot of friends in the Boston/Cambridge area - it's a lot easier to whole up down in Central/Harvard Square in Cambridge - than it is anywhere in San Fran or Palo Alto. There's just too much to do in the bay area (startup related networking / yc folks to chill with...etc).

Yeah - thanks for responding to my question on heyletsgo and updating the newest date for it. I'll try to make it this Thurs or next.

From this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=8830 it looks like there are other things like this going on. Anybody go to either of these and can comment on the quality of the people or how things went?

I don't want to duplicate efforts, but I'm still game for some informal chill/hack time on Sunday at ERC.

I think it'd be interesting to hear how teams of founders work. What kinds of team dynamics they have - things like:

democratic vs. dictatorship 1 technical & 1 business ...etc

Woz and Jobs Hewlett and Packard Allen and Gates Sergey and Larry ...

I'm in.

I'm co-founder of a YCombinator startup that hasn't gone public yet. I'm also an MIT student that's living in Boston until at least the end of the summer.

Anyone who's interested in startups/hacking should come. I suggest bringing something to hack on or get feedback on (I'm probably going to be working in Espresso Royale that day).

I don't think it has to be organized by YC at all - this is more about Boston/other city based networking than it is about. Jessica/Paul/YCombinator are busy enough as it is - but that's no reason why there shouldn't be a Boston meetup.

I currently live in Boston close to the Mass Ave bridge, but spend a decent amount of time roaming coffeeshops in both Boston and Cambridge.

I'd propose a meetup this Thursday (the 3rd) evening or Sunday (the 6th) evening either at Diesal Cafe in Sommerville (my favorite coffeeshop to hack in http://www.diesel-cafe.com/ accessible via the T), or the Espresso Royale on comm ave.

I'll bring my cofounder, and maybe 1 or 2 friends if anyone's around and interested.

The traditional claims for success/failure of companies inside/outside of the valley comes from Venture Capitalists who have years worth of statistics coming from their own investments.

The stats point to a change in percentage chance of success for any incremental distance from Palo Alto/Mountain View that a venture funded company is moved. (I don't know the numbers offhand - but it's significant, even down to whole percent numbers per 10 miles if I remember correctly)

From someone who's recently been talking to many people about the choice to live in Boston, Mountain View/Palo Alto, San Fran - or somewhere else, every person (investor/entrepreneur/historian) points to MV/PA.

Many people (and firms like Sequoia ...etc) won't invest unless you're in the valley.

One of the hardest parts of a "seed investor" is having actual successful experience in an early stage company (See PG, Trevor, and RTM in ViaWeb-Yahoo Store), and being able to use that experience when mentoring a young company.

Having talked with all kinds of investors it's amazing how much more you can respect and understand the advice of someone who's been in your place before - and how much more relevant they can make it through their own experiences.

Hardest programming class I could take during undergrad. Spent weeks worth of sleepless nights hacking in a lounge working on a final projects.

I dropped out first, started a company, then came back just in time for him to drop out and start the company we're currently working on.

It's not really a place you'd necessarily network at, but you can at least work in the presence of other geeks (and wannabes) at Ritual Roasters coffeeshop on 21st and Valencia.

http://ritualroasters.com/

Around Cambridge - I personal prefer http://www.diesel-cafe.com/ in Sommerville, Ma.

As someone who'd like to think of himself as a decent hacker, I usually think criticism is a good thing. I don't however, enjoy criticism when it's combined with insults to attract more attention.

I know and like the WriteWith developers, so I'm not really interested in spending time defending a team I have confidence in and a product that will figure itself out with time. I haven't had any long discussions about where they're aiming - but they're smart guys who work damn hard, so I'm sure we'll see new things out of them.

I would however, enjoy helping to filter some of the lower quality posts here on news.ycombinator.com - so let's take a look at the quality of the people behind uncov.com (based on 5 minutes worth of googling). A couple of their articles have made it to news.ycombinator.com in the past few days - and I haven't particularly enjoyed any of them when compared to the rest of the articles posted.

'whois uncov.com - returns "Kyle Shank" with DNS pointing to www.shanksoft.com/

shanksoft.com reports a 404

You can do your own googles for "Kyle Shank", but what's more important to me is the quality of the critic - ie, what software he's written in the past.

A google for "shanksoft.com" returns some old shareware "ASPXEdit" that I would assume does what it should, and is a basic ASP editor. There wasn't an updated version on any of the sites I checked, and I'm assuming this was a failed attempt at "making something people want". It also returned what appears to have been an attempt my the same "group/person" at Shanksoft to make an original p2p client, "Shankster". Also couldn't find a version, but it seemed like yet-another-gnutella client, and never really got much traction.

Point of the story - uncov's team (at least just this one) doesn't seem to be anything substantial, but more some college aged wannabes (aren't we all?) who aren't actually out there doing it themselves.

In hindsight - this comment wasn't really worth my time. The research just proved what I thought before - and Harj's comment.

There were groups in past batches of founders which were non-US citizens.

I'd definitely recommend http://rimuhosting.com

I know of at least 1 YComb startup that has used it in the past - and we're using it now. I've personally been hosting with them for 2 or 3 years now and it's hands down the best virtual hosting I've used (compared with 4 others I've tried).

Other friends are using Amazon EC2+S3 for scaling needs (on the fly load-balancing). Haven't used it myself, but I only hear great things.