26,409 karma · joined March 16, 2009
pius@alum.mit.edu https://pius.me
Of course there should be state and federal help, but it's nowhere near self-evident that San Francisco should simply sit on its hands.
Citation needed.
Not sure if that's true anymore.
People often seem to get too hung up on what percent they own. While you should pay attention to this, it's more valuable to direct your effort toward how big you can make the pie.
Agreed and I tell friends that all the time. It's orthogonal to the point I'm making.
It's not clear to me how much value that adds over, say, raising from a few reputable angels in the Valley.
As a non-alum, it looks like the YC applicant pool has become so competitive — on maturity, not ambition or potential — that by the time they want you, you don't need them. Not that you ever need anyone.
One exception I can see is that if your startup will mostly have other startups as customers, YC could effectively gift you your first customers.
As a founder of an early stage startup, YC just seems much less compelling than it did, say, 5+ years ago. If you aren't far along yet, makes sense to submit an application for the same reasons you might buy a lottery ticket, but if you're further along, what it takes to be truly competitive seems identical to what it takes to just raise an early round.
I think YC is a huge positive macro force in the ecosystem, but on a micro level it doesn't seem clear why applying makes sense anymore.
Can you post more about what your skill set is exactly? That'll make it easier for people to help.
Getting access to a Cray T3E supercomputer as a high schooler was a beautiful thing. :)
http://www-pgss.mcs.cmu.edu/Publications/Volume18/Rhythmomac...
Hard to imagine someone more black bar worthy for Hacker News, hope we have one up soon.
hyped ≠ over-hyped
Joel started Fog Creek in 2000, but began programming professionally much earlier than that.
The big critique is that you were promised AI but all you're getting are "templates and some algorithms." I mean, what do you think AI is? Magic? I hate to break it to folks, but AI is just "some algorithms" applied to a problem domain.
Also, would love to hear more about your pricing generally.
There's not much of a parallel. Calling on game makers to make more diverse games is the essence of free market capitalism — consumers driving change with their words and dollars.
Of course if you find yourself violently recoiling at that argument, that'll tell you something too.