far33d

We had our first child when I was 26. It's a young person's game. Lots of late nights, lots of tiring days. I'm pretty certain that I will still work the same 60-70 hours a week when I am 40 or 50, on some startup or another. The idea that you can "get the work out" young and then wait to have kids is a fallacy (at least for me). I'd rather burn the candle on all ends when I'm still young enough to handle it.

So far so good.

EDIT / PS: Moving to Boston to be near family has been a lifesaver for us. Despite all the negatives (from a startup standpoint) of being here, there's actually very little chance I could work as hard if we didn't have the support.

On one hand you have a huge market, ripe for disruption, with high barriers to entry. Seems perfect for a startup.

On the other hand, you have these enormous obstacles: upfront payments, minimum revenue guarantees, arcane and complicated reporting and security requirements, and strange nuances and differences in costs based on how you are using the music. It's a major pain in the ass.

All of this takes time away from building something people want. If you are lucky enough to find your product-market fit, the barrier to entry will keep competitors away and you'll have a huge head-start.

The other issue in Boston is one of focus. The reason Boston tech events and community blog posts, conversations, etc tend to be about funding is that it's all the consumer Boston startups have in common.

There's no concentration (like NYC) and not enough volume (like SV) to get 10 people in a room all making startups that have similar issues beyond fundraising, hiring, and office space. That's not how communities are built. Communities are built on what makes them unique. Many Boston entrepreneurs find their peer communities in SF.

Talking about fundraising all the time is boring.

No way. Zuckerberg wants to BE a Steve Jobs, not work for him.

http://graph.facebook.com/<user_id>;

My advice to you if you are going to this Q&A - read up on YC first.

It was amazing how many of the questions asked in the Boston session are easily answered by quickly looking at the YC webpage or reading the "What happens at Y Combinator" pg essay.

I recently used a corporate travel booking system for the first time.

What a terrible terrible experience. I ended up doing exactly what the post says - I searched for flights in Kayak, found them, and then massaged the search criteria until I found the right flight in their system.

TL;DR - designers who have been making games for themselves lament that someone started making games for everyone else.

This has been on my "weekend project" list for a long long time. Excited that someone else actually got it done.

You could become a PM @ Zynga.

Sure - but that wasn't what he said. He said that requiring facebook makes him think that the website owner shouldn't be trusted with data.

Which has nothing to do w/ lock-in on 3rd party websites. It has to do w/ the relative security competence of those who choose to use FB Connect vs. those who choose email.

Why would you trust a website asking for an email and password more?

It does - I think the OP is referring to all the open graph data you need to add to your page to have this functionality work properly.

Facebook is one of the few companies in the world with unbounded potential. It's a cultural phenomenon that has changed the way people use the internet and, more importantly, has changed the way people interact with their real friends. Very few companies change culture and daily interaction like this.

Is it worth $33b today? Not sure. Could it be worth $200b someday? Could Facebook be bigger than Microsoft? Bigger than Google? Bigger than Exxon? Maybe. I can't think of any other company for which "maybe" is a reasonable answer.

That's why investors value it so highly.

Do you have some inside knowledge of what Facebook's revenues are? What makes you think you know more about their valuation than investors who actually know these numbers?

San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Baltimore, USA

Zynga is definitely hiring in a lot of different roles. We're looking for great Product people and engineers in all the different studios.

http://jobvite.com/m?3yUDXfwM

My email is in my contact info if you are looking for more information.

Very cool - the return of an East Coast presence for YC is a good thing for New York and Boston based early entrepreneurs.

I used cabulous to hail a cab in San Francisco this weekend. Very similar service, but uses medallion taxis with regular meter rates. You have to pay the driver normally. It was a great experience and I imagine these types of services will be commodity eventually.

We use these at our office:

http://www.sitonit.net/home/product-overview.asp?product=foc...

They are not as good as aerons but they are significantly cheaper, around $250.

I'm still here, though I don't really ever post articles anymore. Too much competition - a good article is posted here within minutes, and I'm not interested in a race. I was on the top 10 at some point, but the amount of effort it takes to maintain position is significant.

I still comment and still read most everything every day.

The way I think about scale is:

1) Know your bottlenecks and write them down. This is where you will look first if you have problems.

2) Know how you will throw hardware at it or change configurations if you find yourself with sudden growth you didn't expect. You need to create a buffer so you have the time to solve real code issues. Write it down.

3) Whenever you make an architectural choice, make sure there isn't one that's equivalent in engineer time that will be easier to extend later.

Otherwise, just do whatever helps you learn about the product the quickest.

Also, the two main smartphone platforms (iPhone and Android) have their default search engine set as Google.

Rough anecdotal polling from my experience on the Boston-area commuter rail in from the suburbs: I see more iPhones than Kindles, but way more Kindles than iPads. People on iPhones are often playing games, not reading.

Kindles are surprisingly popular with older women. I suspect it's because it does its one task really well and is much less technically intimidating for non-savvy users. I own one and use it periodically, but prefer traveling with the iPhone so I avoid having 3 devices at all times.

I think the Kindle will continue to be popular with older commuters - it's easy on the eyes, simple to use, and doesn't have a lot of technological baggage.

I don't - I just find it frustrating when people confuse scalable startups with other businesses and try to apply the advice of one to the other. They are different beasts and have different rules. Talking about one vs. the other is like arguing about vi vs emacs - you can argue about the strengths and weaknesses of each all day but trying to pass value judgements is a waste of time.

Did white college kids actively flee MySpace, or were they never on MySpace? Targeting college campuses could very likely have had the effect of attracting a lot of users who had never used social networks before. Flight implies presence in the old location.

Facebook connect is essential to the overall utility of quora.

It isn't he same without identity.

Only if you are able to sell 200 units a day at that price (which is unlikely for most apps).

This is the second time this week I've seen a blog post here on news.yc that was based 100% on a Quora answer.

I absolutely LOVE this whole campaign (one service a day with auto-switching imports). It's good, creative PR and will probably get them as many new users as it converts from other services.

[edit: one service a day, not week]

I thought the point of erlang was that it was easier to code for distributed systems, not that it was necessarily faster as a language for simple benchmarks.