weebro

Did you come up with this idea, or why was doubleblinded registered just after this Reddit post?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/3p0y2x/crowdfun...

https://www.123-reg.co.uk/order/domain?X-CSRF-Token=45b50019...

That doesn't seem very trustworthy

In my opinion it's HUGELY important.

My thoughts; sexy =

1.) Free press, lots of it, results in free traffic and traction SO increased chance of success. As an investor, getting behind an 'animal' capable of producing either viral growth or free press (helping reach users) delivers a product with free marketing built in and that is a huge overhead ticked off with growth potential beyond most ideas.

2.) Investment is easier to raise, you get more of it, faster, at a better deal and from better investors SO increased chance of success.

3.) 'Sexy' tends to attract A Class employee's, who in turn attract and build an A Class company with the potential to execute the idea or pivot SO increased chance of success.

4.) Directly related to No. 3 is the increased retention of staff. Again, hiring, knowledge and skill loss, downtime, etc can kill a startup so this is a huge advantage.

5.) Company moral - It's a lot more fun to work long hours on an idea that could change the world. It is more rewarding and so going the extra mile, maybe even for a lower wage, can result. Maintaining company focus and moral is vital to success.

6.) Finally, Users. If it's sexy it's sticky. If it's 'viral' it can grow fast, become addictive and present users a product they just love.

Sex sells. Really, a better question is what defines 'sexy'. It's the job of the founder(s) (entrepreneur) to communicate the vision to the press, investors, potential employee's, current employee's, etc. The skill is in making the idea appear sexy. Many successful companies simply took an existing idea and put a 'sexy' image on it, sold the idea better, resulting in 1-6 and bang, you got a winner.

As for being new, innovative, it's obvious that's important. And as for Crazy, well, what's sane about any startup?

If you could find the time to appear at that event, it may be more productive it coincide with the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event held in November, or FOWA London on 3-5th Oct, both of which you have presented at in the past.

Move to the Valley, get valley investors. Do deals with American companies, focus your product on the USA more. Try attracting/optimising for American search traffic/users more. Aim to get Americans using your site to find, research, and comment on their travel abroad. America is a test bed for the world and THE BEST at building, then exporting brands. Why make a hard job harder? The above may seem hard, crazy to you even, but the alternative option seems harder and crazier to me.

On a seperate note friend, pick your chin up! I like your site and idea.

I (YC S09) applied about 20mins before the deadline I think. I didn't tell my co-founders. One was living in Malaysia at the time. They had persuaded me to wait till we were 'ready'. We are a UK based company. It was about 2/3am in the morning and I was lying awake regretting that. I felt it didn't fit with the fundamentals of YC mentality - 'screw it just do it'. I was overcome with a great sense of obligation, not just to my co-founders (someone has to make the big decisions) but also to my family and girlfriend who had supported me that far.

I crept down stairs with her phone and mine to video the pitch in the kitchen of the close-to-derelict-renovation job-extraordinaire of a house I'd just bought. Videoing with her phone and timing myself on mine, it took me 15 recordings, fumbling around with 2 phones. You can see the exposed pipe work and partially tiled and stained walls of the filthy kitchen in the back ground; we had no kitchen, bathroom or hot water. The lighting is terrible....it looks more like an interrogation.

A week later our Malaysian based co-founder was on a marathon 7 flight trip around the world only to land into a marathon of meetings I’d set up with YC companies (14 in total) first in London and then in the valley. 5 days later we'd hacked something together whilst meeting these companies and were sat in front of PG having spent the week sleeping on Justin Kans floor with about 5hrs sleep a night.

Live and hope......what better a reason to base decisions on.

The TechCrunch comments on this are ridiculous.

Entrepreneurs are not people who come up with ideas; they are people who successfully execute ideas through further iteration and development.

There is an element of discovery in success; continually questioning the status quo (TechCrunch comments seem hung-up on this point).

I'm sure those who are chosen by YCombinator will be those who seem most capable of iteration and further creativity regardless of the origin of the idea.

Past that, the idea comes from one individual normally. It then takes a team to execute it and they share a passion for that idea. This is just like having PG on your team.

ori_b, please don't take this all so personally. We are trying to keep costs as low as possible in our startup. Is there such harm in asking? If we get someone, great, if we don't there is no damage done.

You make a valid point above. We are not looking to screw people out of money. We were hoping to offer someone a good experience, and begin line up future employees for when we could afford to pay them.

We apologies, we appear to be poorer than the students :)

This is a chance to become a full time employee, the first, with equity and a say in the business. But we have now discovered that European students are more than interested in this opportunity; students from the top Universities, but the commenters here are giving the impression that it's too below American kids and that the only thing they find valuable in return for their time is money. Honestly, I love America but people like you embarrass others and tar everyone with your own opinion.

I know this isn't true of all coders, I know there are some good guys out there who would take a risk and would do this to benefit from the greater reward. Working for equity is clearly not something you are interested in. Nor is the environment of a startup. Why are you here then?

no wise cracks on that comment :) Actually, no give me wise cracks, this should be fun

No, it's nothing like Swoopo, it's not in that space at all. It's also 'like' a reverse auction but it's not. It's not in medical or in military but it is a very big industry. It's actually targeted towards construction initially. But it's NOT in construction.

That was very thorough, thank you. I wish people thought more about the context within which the chose to apply words.

Shall I put out a request asking for someone with very little experience and no previous proven application of that knowledge and skill? Then maybe you will apply.

'day jobs and their stupid managers' This says a lot about your maturity and attitude dude. Your manager is your manager for a reason, one day you'll work it out, I'm not going to help turn the bulb on, you'll find the switch one day. I also note, it's normally people in 'day jobs' that has as negative an attitude in life as you. We're offering the chance to join our dream not to work as a slave!

colin (at) breakie (dot) net

sorry I'm not on the same time zone as you guys I think

marketplace, $100 Billion market per annum USA, kinda reverse auction and no it's not like ebay and it's not something obvious.

How do we save things now though?

Yup, niche market for mining and quarrying: quarrysell (dot) com. We are based in Loughborough (outside Nottingham/Leicester)

Join out network on Facebook if you are around:

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6710636524&topic=3...

What is your alternative; get a lawyer to draw them up? Where do you think they get them from? Only 10% of legal documents are drawn up from scratch. Lawyers have a service called Westlaw. This service allows them to copy entire briefs/submissions made to the court by a lawyer in the past. They don't even need to come up with what to say in court, they just copy the person who was successful in the past. I spent 18 months in a NY law firm cutting and pasting.

IF IT AIN'T BROKE.....

My advice, take it from many websites, piece together the bits you want and use examples from other sites for different ways of saying the same thing. Change its wording slightly and put the sentences back to front sometimes. If it's altered, not in the same format and slightly different it's ok.

Hi Andy, I've been put on to a few resources by YC companies (I'm a relentless networker) so am contacting programmers directly) Our current project (Quarrysell.com) does require a part time PHP, MySQL, Joomla, HTML experienced developer. This is because Quarrysell is only the first stage of a greater concept which you will not be able to guess from it right now.

So yes, Quarrysell needs a part time hacker. Our YC application needs full time hackers of course and we would prefer to have them on board sooner rather than later. If you (or anyone else is interested) drop me an email.

Thanks you America (and those from the UK) who pitched in on this thread. These are the types of things we should discuss in this forum (I find people chat a lot of sh*t on here, none of it related to start-ups or being entrepreneurial)

I also appreciate that Americans appreciate they are the descendants of Europeans. The word entrepreneur is French after all, so we must have had it somewhere along the line.

I have lived in your country and a couple of European countries and even in Saudi. In my experience and, in my opinion, Americans are entrepreneurial due to historical reasons. Those who left Europe went there to set up on their own and escape the 'system' in Europe.

'All men are created equal'. This one line explains it all (first suggested by an Italian). Any country in the world could create what America has in proportion to its population and size (yes that's a caveat of context and proportionality). It has to do with attitudes and these attitudes are, as rightly pointed out by PG, informed by trends, society, accepted norms and experience i.e. examples around you.

Experience has taught me, sadly in a personal sense, that accepted norms and historical attitudes which prevail to this day are the major reason for this differing of opinions. My parents are not particularly happy with my deviance from the legal profession, a traditionally highly respected profession in Europe. I was good at it, I qualified as a barrister and passed your NY Bar exam with 5 weeks study. But it had no creativity to me, I would create nothing but documents and a name for myself (which dies with me) and I began to realise that I did not measure success by virtue of a persons professional position.

In the USA success is measured by your contribution to society not your position within it or control over it.

I will say no more, I've gone on to long anyway. But hey give an Irishman a platform and expect to have warm ears X or sore eyes as the case may be.

I'm a lawyer in NY (where I used to work) and the U.K., I also have a company here (in the U.K.). Cost of incorporation in the U.K. is GBP25 ($50), takes 1 Hour max and can all be done online with the incorporation docs emailed to you after 30 mins. Incorporating a Co. is very, very easy here. Bankruptcy blacklisting also only lasts 3 yrs now (excluding students trying to write off their student debt by incorporating and folding - former loophole).

As for E.U. V's U.S. Corporate (chancery) law it all hinges on a thing called 'The Delaware Effect'. In this E.U. this was tested in the European Court of Justice (our highest court) in 'The Centros Decision' where a Danish couple avoided the $4,000 incorporation fee in Denmark by incorporating in the U.K. and opening an office in Denmark. The ECJ ruled in their favour citing the free movement of persons (corporations are non-natural entities having the rights of a natural person).

The U.K. (Corp tax 22%) and Ireland (Corp tax 12.5%) are the Delaware's of Europe due to a rich body of corporate case law, ideal business law and economic climate and lenient laws on corporate responsibility. Your Sarbanes Oxley Act has resulted in a dilution of the Delaware effect and an uncompetitive business environment due to the expense of compliance. Its introduction has lead to London (and the LSE its stock exchange) becoming the preferred place of incorporation and IPO, and in London becoming the Largest Financial centre in the world. More money was invested in venture capital, and more takeover activity took place, in London this year than in the USA in the past 3 yrs. I was a stockbroker for 18 months after leaving law so sorry for the legal and finance lecture but hope this clarifies a few things.

Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Paypal, Dell, IBM and ebay all have their main base of European operations in the Republic of Ireland where they enjoy a 10% corporation tax (as the got in before it went up to 12.5).

Soooooooo, I'm not sure why YC are still incorporating companies in Delaware.

Yes, that's right David could afford to buy a new 'slingshot' with the spare $1.6 BILLION dollars he had just lying around. What is a Goliath to an American?? Boots - to - big - for, comes to mind.

Thanks for the history lesson. Now, let an Irish man (same former 'colony' issues as you Yanks) who's based in the UK, point out that the largest population in the USA is of German origin and the second is Irish. The closest vote in US Senate history was to vote your national language be German (lost by one vote) and it was the single most important factor in the USA staying out of WW2 for so long (apparently, I'm not sure I agree with that, nor am I here to start a American/Europe historical/factual dispute).

Arguably it was the British who were being entrepreneurial then as, put in historical context, colonising countries was primarily for economic gain - Land equalled money then, through taxes. We replaced the aristocracy with the government, which is now collecting the taxes instead. When we created the government, the Aristocracy had to find new vehicles for wealth creation so the created 'Corporations', hence why all big trade missions were funded by entities like the 'Corporation of London'. This gave the rich a way of passing wealth down the family without being taxed on it.

The David / Goliath analogy is rather paradoxical as it is American companies that lead globalisation and are the largest in the world. Google has a turnover in the BILLIONS; sorry that's not quite mom and pop corner store.....they are a goliath. But I am not here to give business lessons.

Please allow me to try focusing this discussion. I am interested in your brain/personality/experience. I'm asking YOU, as individuals and Americans how you feel. How does starting up make YOU feel? I believe the answer lies in societal norms and, therefore, American attitudes. This, I agree, has to do with historical trends.

Well Vlad you certainly know how to hijack a thread and turn it into your own subject matter. Well done boy. Waiting for the death rattle. Although our averaging and estimates on the numbers may be fair the numbers may be skewed by the fact that numbers alone mean nothing in the face of quality. As YComb gets more 'popular' the quality of applicants will improve and so I would suggest the chances have actually reduced in real terms not increased.

P.S. I am looking for co-founders with amazing hacking skills to join our application team. Any Hackers without an idea or team are welcome to contact me: colinbeattie@gmail.com. I have strong ideas to discuss and am keen to organise a team together or discuss other ideas we, as a TEAM, may propose.

I worked in Boston for a summer once - Joe's American Bar and Grill on the waterfront (next to Marriott and Aquarium). I can safely say that I wouldn't rush back to living in Bean Town. Sorry but the Blue Laws suck, if you're going out you had better know of a party cos 2am is a bit early for a European. I also worked in a Law firm in New York for a yr or so and can safely say Boston, as a business and legal center, has a bad rep for being stuck up for no apparent, earned, reason. The weather sucks, the city doesn't have enough clubs and it's nightlife centers around that square which really is square. There's my tuppence worth. Woohoo Red Sox!!!!!!!

I would suggest that Google's design had a part to play in peoples preference in search engines. I agree Google's narrow focus on search was the defining outmaneuver. I would also suggest that this focus had to transcend their UI. The front page had to be a personification of their concentration on this function. It's subliminal and minimal but it's actually excellent design.

Although there is very little info to design on Google's homepage that is because that is how they designed it - clear, simple, plain, minimalist, yet colourful, memorable and vibrant. They could have had all sorts of ad's or other corporate info on there but they chose the letterbox and logo (which their 25yr old $100,000 a year designer changes on a daily basis so there is a lot of design going on by someone who is regarded as being one of the best apparently).

Google, to my mind, has a whole load of design. Just because you see white and primary colours doesn't mean there is no design. It's like talking, the worlds greatest orators were not masters of articulation and words...... but of silence. The most powerful and effective tool in speaking is the use of silence and pauses. When you deliver the killer bottom line when pitching your startup leave a long pause after. The last thing you said reverberates in the listeners head, over and over. I would suggest that Google's minimalist design does the same thing to users - they remember the brand and site because they never got LOST trying to FIND what they were looking for. I believe these two word are two of the most important to successful search functionality.

I had to outsource my design to someone who produced her best work on my site (Quarrysell.com - please don't laugh I'm new to this game, am a one man band and operate in a niche market). The advertisers I have lined up love my Google white minimalist design because my design (and Google's) does not detract from their logo, advertising and banners i.e. my main source of income (and Google's). Design is bloody important in building a brand and allowing users to easily navigate your site.

Although design is best incorporated at the beginning I do not agree that a designer is integral to hashing out a phase one project, this is not opinion but experience I sadly speak from. Design is a big deep hole of time, money and particularities startup have neither the time nor funds for. Good and excellent designers are obsessive about the smallest of things and this can hinder building the house. My position: Once the foundations are solid, you have a roof over your head and windows to see out of then get the painters and decorators in.