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chris100on Startups Continue To Attract Funding, Create Jobs

While I hope and believe that the headline is accurate, I'd feel better if the article showed examples of seed and early rounds. A startup that raises round C for $10M is not really sending the same message as 4 YC startups getting angel funding.

The amounts would be less impressive to the uninformed, sure. But much more encouraging for everyone about to start.

chris100on O'Reilly: "We're heading into a war for control of the web."

It's a thought-provoking article.

But I don't embrace the culture of free as much as Tim. If he gets his way, no company would be allowed to profit, everything would be open. Somehow, Google would be the only one to survive in the environment.

Tim is not shocked that Google is giving away for free the GPS software and therefore killing the GPS device makers. It would be anti-dumping if software had a fixed cost, but it doesn't...

Where is the fine-line between playing dirty and being a great contributor to free technologies? Think of it this way: if Microsoft had done the same 10 years ago, they would have immediately been sued for abuse of monopolistic position.

The thought-provoking part of the article is what Tim leaves out. What does an open world look like? Can the world be 100% open, or will there always be large companies fighting to control it? To me, it sounds a little bit utopian to hope or assume that 100% open is possible.

chris100on Don Dodge: fired from Microsoft, hired by Google

Yes, he lost quite a bit of credibility today. He can't find any flaw to google docs as a replacement to Office? I sure can.

I'm not able to use Google Docs as a replacement for Word and Powerpoint yet when I'm doing precise positioning of elements. I'd like to use Google Docs, but it's just too limited for my needs.

chris100on Badda Bing: Microsoft woos newspapers by funding their stick to beat Google

When you visit those 10 newspaper sites a day, how many ads do you click?

And how many ads did I click on when I was reading the paper version of a newspaper or magazine?

[One of] The great downfall of newspapers is that now each action can be precisely measured. We know exactly what our instant return on investment is.

I was one who looked at our company's advertising budget, looked at the return (number of clicks), and said to cut it in half because we could put that money to better use somewhere else.

I know the pain because I had many meetings with editors and people selling ad space in magazines who were desperate to get our advertising budget, to the point where the editor would offer to let us guest write articles...

And then a good reason why I stopped reading those magazines in the first place is the poor quality of the articles. No wonder, if they are just repeats of press releases, I don't need to read that.

chris100on Badda Bing: Microsoft woos newspapers by funding their stick to beat Google

Circulation has been steeply dropping

Yes and no. 10 years ago, at best I'd buy and read one newspaper per day.

Now I probably visit 10 newspapers' websites per day to read various news.

While physical circulation is down, overall exposure may not be.

chris100on I'm in Adwords Hell

What can you do? I don't know, post your problem on a blog to get Google's attention? Maybe even cross-post into HN?

It has worked before (can't find a link right now).

chris100on Cool website startup idea: "How Famous Are You?"

Not a bad idea... If the side would give you a badge to embed on your web site, that says "key influencer", it could spread.

Actually, a bunch of sites do this for twitter specifically, but extending it with a bunch of categories, so that it would show that I'm famous in the bay area, less so in the midwest, and popular among geeks. That could be fun. (must have been done before though?)

chris100on Finding Your Next 'Eureka" Moment

Greg Swartz, director of innovation at the golf company Ping, says he has come up with 36 ideas for better tees and loftier drives by looking at the stars

Isn't that everyone's dream job? Director of innovation... looking at the stars... love it.

chris100on How To Get Into Y Combinator

"charistmatic" or "leadership" may be the words you are looking for?

chris100on My Nightmare Interviews With Google

As a hiring manager, I'll take internship or side-project coding experience over GPA anyday.

Sure, a good GPA is good. But if you back it up with experience, you are ahead.

chris100on The air in the valley

On their way to meet an investor, one of them runs out of gas and pulls up to fill gas. He tries each of his credit cards and it doesn't work as its all maxed out and its the same case with the other founder. Finally they call a family member who drives up to the gas station and fills gas for them so they can drive to the investor meeting.

Really? Isn't that story slightly embellished by the founder? As an investor, I'd be concerned that this guy is taking me for a ride, especially after I read this:

Well unfortunately he doesn't know Cocoa - but that doesn't stop him. He sends an email to the firm who advertised for a bid to code an iPhone app -- then goes ahead and mis-represents to them that he is an iPhone Cocoa whiz

chris100on Ask HN: How to "involve the user" on a consulting type website?

usvisanews.com was the best immigration web site last decade. They had a blog, they had live chats, etc. They provided a great service to everyone who had concerns about immigration.

Especially, the "ask an immigration lawyer" live chat was super-popular. Everyone wants to ask a quick question to a lawyer without paying the fee or entering into a long-term commitment.

chris100on How To Get Into Y Combinator

Have a co-founder from a similar background as yours, and who you've known for a while

While your message is quite tongue-in-cheek, there is some truth to it and I wanted to follow-up on this comment.

From anecdotal experience, it seems that YC favors a team of technical founders. Whereas in a blog post today on VentureHacks, the authors recommend the tech/business pair.

So which is better? Two techies, or a slick biz plus a techie?

chris100on VentureHacks: How to Pick a Co-founder

Excellent post. Also clearly explains why 2 is the ideal number, and why you need history with your co-founder.

chris100on FarmVille: who knew boredom could be a cash crop?

Interesting that while the article mentions TechCrunch's crusade, it never mentions the problematic aspect, which are the scammy offers. The article only mentions buying virtual goods as a problem. I'd say scamming is worse.

chris100on What My Five-Year-Old Son Taught Me About Marketing

The obvious trick of course is to cook your own (healthy) meal and package it with one of those.

Did that for boxes of Cheerios when we were out of the "approved" brand and it worked wonders.

chris100on Board Meeting Lessons From The Supreme Court

One of the mentors at the Founder Institute had a really good advice for running meetings (board meetings or any management meeting or staff meeting). I can't find a link to it right now, but it goes like this:

- asynchronously (wiki or other technology), update everyone before the meeting

- synchronously (meaning face-to-face, the actual meeting), you are not allowed to say something that you didn't write down on the wiki, unless it's a question.

Consequence: the catching up of information is done asynchronously before the meeting, not wasting anyone's time, freeing up the meeting for actual brainstorming and problem-resolution.

chris100on I survived a speaker’s worst nightmare

Now that is one crazy experience. I'd expect better from BlogWorldExpo, but messing up on your talk's summary is usually a killer.

I guess the survey (show of hands) was the right approach to immediately know what to do. What if you had had about half and half? What would you have done then?

chris100on The three habits ... of highly irritating management gurus

Sure. As long as you understand that the example was one data point in time. I think of it as: "in 1983, John had problem X and found creative solution Y, which worked". It doesn't mean that John's company will be immune forever of business failures. I just try to learn from people's creative ways to approach problems and find smart solutions.

It helps that the same happened in my previous startup. When we were very small, I think we did a couple of great things. Some of those could be used in a business book as examples a smart company.

But a few years later, and 5X more employees, we were quite messed up. Whatever wisdom we had as a small team didn't carry over to the larger organization (I guess you could use this example in reverse in another business book :-)

chris100on Tell HN: Can we stop commenting on troll comments?

With all due respect, you sound very condescending. To use an analogy, think of a first generation immigrant who says that now the country is too crowded, we shouldn't let immigrants in anymore.

Why are you convinced that you are better than newer users, to the point that all new users should be forbidden? It sounds a little harsh. You could impose some new thresholds so that people's votes and comments only start mattering once they have some amount of reputation. That should help get rid of the obvious trolls.

But please, not extreme measures.

chris100on The three habits ... of highly irritating management gurus

The second irritating habit is that of naming model firms: while I agree with the author that the firms may not be successful because of the supposed habit, there is one good writing reason why you should use such an approach.

Because leading with an example is more powerful than a vague statement. The average reader will understand better a story like "John at Ford faced the challenge of flat tires and did ..." than some abstract problem description.

chris100on U.S. Senate to investigate 'aggressive' online sales tactics

Now those companies are in serious trouble.

It looks like I wasn't the only one to be offended by the 17 pages of post-purchase maze when ordering business cards on vistaprint. Those pages really hide the one "next" button and do everything in their power to make you accidentaly click on a myriad of junk offers.

Looks like Mike Arrington's crusade is gaining some friends and the US senate is getting involved. I'm curious to know if there is a link. Does a tech blogger have such influence? It looks like the senate stuff is based on older investigation. Nonetheless, it's scammers' season and it's good for us.

chris100on The Minimum Viable Tree House

Good metaphor for out-of-control software development. I especially like the conclusion that the end-user actually does not like the fancy features (the large size).

chris100on Keep Your Startup Virtual

I agree with the point that you don't need office space early on. The key is being in constant contact with the other team members. Some developers love to chat/IM on skype all day long from home. It depends on your team dynamics.

But once in a while, you need serious face-to-face brainstorming. That's where your coffee shop probably saves you. No one has designed a tool yet that allows several people to really have a brainstorming session remotely (hint for a future YC startup: if you have a solution to this problem, go for it).

chris100on I think I’m tired of Desktop Linux

That sounds like fun. I know so many software developers who wouldn't find their way around a soldering iron, your analogy is very vivid.