madanella

I'd like to take this moment to thank my patient wife and her job at Oracle...

I think the top post on this thread makes it more balanced. Think of pg as an independent label(like sub-pop or Dischord) founder and it all fits well.

What if your idea will consolidate a fragmented industry and provide stiff competition to 'mom-n-pops'? Is it better if the small businesses tend to not serve the customer well?

I am actually talking about providing the tools to a community of users that will create those things to share with one another. arXiv.org and YCombinator address completely separate needs.

I think there's a lot of validity to this model, even outside of tech. I don't get the restriction on non-techies though, is the management afraid of competition?

Looks like it's for existing businesses only and has a very long process... I can't imagine how any startup could reasonably expect to have the same information delivered over such a broad timeline.

I met one in the post office by overhearing his conversation and recognizing a fit. Another I met through linkedin by searching for a specific skillset and a third I met by asking a friend if he knew any good matches for my project.

Should be simply a port of existing software. I imagine a community of people sharing algorithms about many different subjects and at different levels of seriousness. My brother wrote a paper on Math Equations for the Socially Challenged in college that would fit well into this concept.

the Magic Ink article at worrydream.com/MagicInk is the best I've read on interface design.

I hope my startup can someday make similar announcements about the open source tools we use.

Would you pay 20K to be a part of an incubator?

A lot like the VC game in many ways.

This is satire, right?

Interface = the part of the software application seen by the most common user of the application

Best = Most optimal as in fastest or easiest to program, most flexible, has best support for visually appealing and easy to use designs

Of course there's Java, Flash and javascript. What other options are there? Examples please.

This issue is fundamental to the current web 2.0 startup approach of fast and cheap feature development. It becomes more and more about marketing, branding and user experience and less and less about engineering.

I like the potential ability to enable a truly wireless home environment where electronic devices all use wireless tech in place of physical cables. Speakers would be the first thing I would want to receive wireless power in addition to the wireless data signal.

He might have disproved it as a complete axiom but I see the value of this quote in that things must be conceived and believed before they can be acheived.

I'm looking for examples of great interfaces done with Ruby. I want to see visual/graphical stuff that goes beyond dropdowns. Maybe tag clouds taken a bit further?

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can acheive. - Napoleon Hill

Yeah, you're right. I would be interested in hearing the other side of the story. Why would so many people be willing to risk their jobs to get rid of her? Either it was an impressive conspiracy or there were some real problems with how she behaved.

Wilson Sonsini has one. At least they did last fall. They gave me a package deal on incorporation and deferred payment for 6 months. wsgr.com

B players get hired when A players make mistakes. B players also start the company sometimes. Look at Larry Ellison.

If you watch the video closely the story is a little different from that. The hired management forced Sandy out by threatening to quit en masse if she didn't leave. I got the impression that Don Valentine actually wished she could have stayed.

Yeah. I just think about this every time a VC or some pundit says "but it's just a feature". I think it would be interesting to see a combination of these 'features' become a major player.

The goal is to get acquired and have a relatively big payday. But I think it's possible that a group of small players could merge and grow big enough to go public and compete with the big players. Of course the biggest challenge would be deciding who was 'in charge'.

If your company has 200,000 users and you can join forces with a few other similarly sized projects the new company would have more thinking and more manpower and resources and could benefit from some overlap in function and might be able to grow beyond some theshold that increases valuation multiples because of the viability of the company as an independent entity, and maybe even profitability. I think those things could very well outweigh the ease of fit of a feature. I'm sure it would depend on the buyers but it just might open doors to buyers that wouldn't be interested otherwise.

"The founders started their company precisely because they didn't want their product to be averaged together with a bunch of others."

I have never heard that as a reason someone started a company. People start companies because they want to have control and impact and work on interesting things and have more ownership.

I just wonder if it might be interesting to combine a team that's working on online collaboration, for instance, with another that's working on video sharing and a third that is building a community of some sort. Think 37Signals but from the bottom up.

my proposal at http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15163 provides an alternative path to "big enough".

So many of the new services being created and offered online are accused of being features only. Wouldn't there be an opportunity in combining a set of these feature-startup companies into a very interesting acquisition target or a company with more potential for going public?

I'm not proposing that VCs or some company act as the acquirer. I'm proposing that these companies merge their teams and traffic and resources 'equitably' and keep working toward the goal but with greater momentum. Kind of a 'hackers co-op'.

After developing the idea, researching the market and such:

1. What's my business model? 2. How do I get to prototype/alpha/demo? 3. What investors are interested in this stage, industry and business model?

Have you searched Google for "Online Memorial"? Plenty of people think this is a good idea. There are 3 paid placements at the top of the search results so I assume there's some money in it as well.

If you still want to go forward, make sure you are differentiated.