hiddenstage

Unfortunately the telecom companies should be able to keep Google out of larger markets with zoning laws and political power. I severely hope to be proven wrong, however.

I figured that much, but on the market I'm sure someone like Google/Apple/Microsoft would pay a premium to current valuation for 5% of Dropbox.

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug is a must read.

$500 million valuation?

YC could probably sell their stake in Dropbox alone for more than that.

I think the moral of the story is clear: If you want to build a successful startup, you must first hate Windows.

YouTube has analytics for each vid that tells you where it was viewed (by State), when, how long, whether it was a unique viewer, etc.

Probably more useful in determining whether or not YC specifically viewed your vid if it's unlisted and you don't live in California.

McDonald's Monopoly promotion may be a gimmick as well, but it increases same-store sales by 5.5% while it's running.

This will likely increase sales for Exec in the short term too.

Great read about this topic from pg:

http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html

Go to gmail. On the bottom click on Other Sessions or something like that (can't remember the wording). It should show all IPs associated with the account.

Chrome Sync is notoriously bad at reporting what it is or isn't doing, at least in my experiences.

If I were you I'd turn on 2-factor auth and forget about it.

So isn't that telling then that Android is outpacing the iPhone in sales?

Apple was accused of calling their own customers idiots with their 'Genius' ads (which they quickly discontinued). I'm assuming you will also be boycotting Apple?

Building something is certainly better than nothing. But a successful startup founder has an uncanny ability to fix problems.

Task management apps are, like you said, a dime a dozen. So a good project for a founder would be to download a bunch of those apps, see what they are all doing right and more importantly what they are all doing wrong. Then build one based on what you learned. That way you get technical experience but more importantly you are solving a problem.

Instagram was a very real competitor to Facebook. They also have practically zero expenses. It took only 1% of Facebook's market cap (at the time) to acquire them.

Lucasfilm is in a very crowded space. They have a ton of expenses which results in loses a good percentage of the time. Their best days were probably behind them (especially since they chose to stop making new Star Wars movies).

Basically, this is comparing two completely different businesses in completely different markets. I think both were good deals for the acquirers.

I'll leave with this: I think selling Band Aids is a better business than Yahoo - but you're crazy if you think Yahoo doesn't have an insane higher multiple of potential.

Will there be any collateral impacts for those of us who submitted before the deadline? In terms of time spent reviewing applications, etc.

Another thing is time considerations for the founders to review applications. Assuming they remain on schedule with the interviews and such, extending the deadline gives less time for them to review applications - which gives less time for each individual application to be reviewed. This affects those who applied before the original deadline.

This is all speculative of course (I don't know the effect the deadline has on the founders), but I agree that there is no right answer.

Look at the IPs voting yes and if they aren't on the east coast, discount the votes.

If they are on the east coast, discount the votes. They should be completing their application, not voting.

:)

I've seen a ton of examples of applications that have been accepted to YC. It would be very informative to see applications that were on the cusp of getting in to have a better gauge of mistakes to avoid.

I know that will never happen for a number of reasons - but it would be interesting nonetheless.

I'm assuming they are more like "I know HTML and Java" which is conceivably related to building a tech startup than "I ate 20 hotdogs in one sitting," right?

Ever use the app store?

As an Android user, I love NFC and think it has a ton of potential.

That being said, FloJack seems to be inherently depreciated from inception. I hope they reach their goal though.

A little off-topic, but I read the "The Launch Pad" and one thing that stuck out to me was how you teach the YC companies that during Demo Day the investors will only remember a couple of words about the individual startups - in the best case scenario. Sometimes only a single word will be remembered.

I assume that these applications are very similar (although different in that you can take your time and reread parts as you see fit). But the shear amount of applications and the time frame allotted to go through them, I imagine it can be difficult to remember large parts of applications.

They had to keep high margins for their shareholders.

I would be surprised if they sold a ton of these. Why would I buy a mini over a regular iPad?

After clicking on "Shop iPad" it's interesting that they place an ad next to the iPad mini for the regular iPad saying "Just as stunning. Twice as fast." The regular iPad is only $170 more.

Farmville was a great social game and their Words with Friends acquisition was very good... then they started making Farmville clones, blatantly ripping off competitor's games, and paid $200 million for Draw Something.

I realize that but I for one clear my cookies/cache pretty regularly in my browsers while I hardly ever do so for my native apps. I may not be the majority, but my point remains that there is still a higher barrier to entry for browser-based apps.

I think native apps will continue to have significant advantages over the time frame you mentioned. The biggest reason is the following:

Steps to open the Facebook web app- 1) Click on browser 2) Type in Facebook.com 3) Sign in

Steps to open the Facebook native app- 1) Click on Facebook

HTML5 (and other web languages, but mostly HTML5) apps may be more prevalent in the future than they are now due to cross-compatibility advantages, but it is still difficult to use phone functionality in comparison to native code.

I love YC's loyalty with their own companies, but in this case I hope they upload this year's videos to YouTube.

"..the extremely costly Motorola acquisition was directly linked to Google's decision to launch Android as a major business venture."

That is blatantly false. How did this make it past editing?

?

Android usually has features long before iOS.

Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Really, anything by Michael Crichton.