electric

"Where is it, then?"

I don't think a comma is required after 'it'.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

-- Henry Ford.

If it is a compelling business/startup based on a great product then you should start it. Nevermind the recession.

HP was founded during the great depression. Sun and Adobe were started during recessions.

None of the above -- get yourself an asus eeepc instead.

"The reason I so deeply disrespect the man, though, is because with that 10 million dollars he has done absolutely nothing to advance the experience of people on his site."

So why don't you do something about it? Start a company to right his wrong and profit from it.

Fact is that he is smart and successful and his user base speaks volumes for his contribution to society but he does everything WRONG for a YC inspired/funded startup:

1. No Co-founder

2. Bad design

3. Doesn't use Apple products but MS.

4. Isn't from/hasn't moved to Silicon Valley.

etc.

Self-financed. Bootstrapped with savings.

Interesting. I had brought up the issue of student debt as being one significant impediment to startups happening at the pace that pg had predicted they would.

" 20 years or so screwing around with technology and business, in complete obscurity until fall 2004, when I became the "I built digg.com for $10/hour" guy."

Awesome. :) cheers!

I'm 85 years old. Rocking out. Starting new companies. Life is good.

" If you're serious about learning advanced business principles, "

don't read, start a business yourself.

Interesting -- i'm reading this on my eee pc. I love it!

Obama is a 1337 h4x0r.

Agreed. The term sweat equity is a negative one, but if you are joining a company at the stage Cuban is referring to (i.e. when it has little to no cash) you should be getting a reasonable amount of equity -- at least enough to make your hard work worthwhile.

Tip 2: Hire A+ engineers who love coding

is Wrong!

You're better off hiring a team of engineers who work well with each other to get things done. All of them do not have to individually be A+. In fact a team of A+ rockstar engineers is almost guaranteed to be dysfunctional.

Since you're in CS and EE I would recommend gnu radio http://gnuradio.org/trac which includes both.

LOL .. Jakob's been around for a while. He actually was a consultant for Google in the early days.

Re: generous....

It depends on what the options are priced at and what the vesting period is.

"You should mostly ignore your competitors"

Bad advice.

The "Captain Underpants" series.

If I understand his last statement correctly, he says don't look for anything in particular, just keep searching.

It doesn't matter whether they do or don't. The problem with GPS receivers is that they do not work reliably indoors. If Loopt relies entirely on GPS to locate users then this offering from Google is superior.

"For most of my lifetime, it's been a given that the top Canadian talent in any field would eventually move to the States, or spend significant time there."

I think that is true in some fields, like the performing arts and untrue in others like engineering esp. telecommunications where top talent is homegrown thanks to the likes of Nortel and now RIM. These people do not want to move and there is a critical mass that hasn't gone away even after the bubble burst.

Or that an employee has "stuck" around for long enough to be unemployable elsewhere.

"Maybe Canadians are more reluctant to move cities for a different job than Americans are"

Canadians love living in Canada and in general move to the US very reluctantly. As a result Canadians have fewer career options relative to their US counterparts. This results in low turnover. You're right, it has nothing to do with a company's "pro-employee" which I assume means "employee-friendly" ways.

Amazing.. there are so many paths to realizing a startup. These people bootstrapped, consulted, etc. and finally found their startup path, not unlike Cognos which was recently acquired by IBM for $5B.

>Can we stop up-voting every story that even mentions the guy now?

Like this one?

What makes software companies so different from the technology companies on the list that were once startups (i.e. products not services)?

Awesome! Thanks for posting this.

"Successful single-founder startups are so rare that they're famous on that account."

Doesn't the same argument apply to successful_ startups founded by 20-somethings? I.e. they are famous because they are so rare.

_My definition of successful is taking the company public.

On a related note, have you seen 'Startup.com'?