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jon_dahlon Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (October 2010 Edition)

Yes, given the right attitude and ambition.

jon_dahlon Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (October 2010 Edition)

Zencoder (YC W2010) is looking for:

1. an awesome salesperson. Tenacious, resourceful, ambitious, but also comfortable with learning, discovery, and building a model (rather than following a model).

2. a junior designer. Someone with HTML/CSS and design chops, to help expand and improve our web presence. Some work on our core product, plus work on several small micro-projects.

jon at zencoder.

jon_dahlon Amazon DevPay

We tried a while ago. My suggestion: only use it if you're specifically selling to Amazon users (e.g. a EC2 image for Solr). If you're just selling a general SaaS or server product, it's hard enough to get someone to sign up for your service; don't make them sign up for another service too.

jon_dahlon How to encode video for mobile devices (iPhone/iPad, Android, etc.)

Great link. It's specifically for HTTP Streaming, so you can get away with higher quality for videos downloaded before being watched. But even for regular old HTTP Progressive Download, these guidelines are very useful.

jon_dahlon Ask HN: Pivot Or Kill it?

I don't know how your software works, so this may or may not be appropriate, but:

Open source the software. Promote it via a technical blog, Hacker News, meetups, and conferences. Become a thought leader in the GIS space. Keep running your service for people who don't want to worry about installing/running the software themselves. "Open Source for free, SaaS for pay" is a very valid business model, especially when selling to developers. Think of companies like Twilio or Sendgrid; I could set up my own Asterisk or SMTP server, or I could pay a low metered fee to have someone take away the headaches for me.

If you don't care enough about GIS to blog and speak about it, close up shop.

jon_dahlon Ask HN: Pivot Or Kill it?

You'd be surprised how helpful people will be if they don't think you're trying to sell them. Make a list of 10-20 companies that might possibly be users, search for their developers (search Google, look for a blog, look for a Twitter account, search LinkedIn), and get in touch with them. Say something like "Hi [name]. I see you're a developer at [company]. I'm building a service for people working with GIS data, and I'm trying to learn more about the space. Could I pick your brain over phone/Skype [or coffee/beer if they're local]?" You won't get a 100% success rate, but you'll learn a lot from the people who are willing to talk to you.

jon_dahlon What Happens At Y Combinator

The other is to spell out clearly the policy of working on outside projects (to bring in some money) during the YC 3-month period. Leaving it ambiguous keeps out people who need a part-time gig to bring in some money but could spend the rest of their waking time working on a cool product.

I know people who work as consultants and make $10K-$25K in a month. To these people, the YC 'investment' is more of a deterrent. The main attraction would be to get wired into the network and tap into the experience YC and its alumni can offer. It would be good if you could clarify whether it makes sense for them to apply or not.

Pretty sure the official answer is that they wouldn't be interested in taking someone who could only work part-time. I'm sure there are edge cases here and there, and YC is all for creative ways to stay alive financially (AirBnB sold cereal to stay alive - http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/smallbusiness/1003/galle...), but the YC school of thought is that a startup should occupy 100% of your work-related effort.

Of course, plenty of us worked as consultants for $10K-$25K/month before YC (er, closer to $10K) in order to build up some savings to live on.

jon_dahlon What Happens At Y Combinator

Most of the dinners and office hours are focused on building a great startup, not raising money. There is structure around raising money (angel day, demo day, sequoia, etc.), but it's definitely a minority of the focus.

I'd also say that even the fundraising stuff isn't just about raising money. Having a smart angel investor give you feedback on your startup isn't just about raising money; it's also about building a product, a team, and a company.

jon_dahlon AngelGate: Chris Sacca Responds To Ron Conway

It's rather obvious that for Sacca his relationship with Conway is more valuable than anything he does for the startups or his freaking charities. The purpose of his long, very long essay is the damage control of the relationship with Conway, nothing else.

Wow, that's cynical. "Freaking charities"?

If you'd ever met Chris Sacca, you'd know that this isn't true. He has just about the strongest reputation of any investor in SV, and doesn't need to lie awake at night worrying about what Ron Conway thinks of him.

jon_dahlon A blackhat social engineered me by posing as an early adopter of my startup

At the moment, I don't hear/see ninjas sneaking up on me, hackers taking down my web app, a terrorist plot, or the shadow government spying on me.

Oh crap.

jon_dahlon Doing Y Combinator in your 30s

Isn't that no-strings angel funding predicated on the idea that there's going to be either a round of financing or an exit?

Really depends on the investor. Some angels explicitly want you to go Series A -> Series B -> $100M -> IPO. Others explicitly want to help founders start cool companies. Some are basically mini-VCs, and others are really founder-friendly. So it's just important for a startup to have the right angels, whichever direction you go.

jon_dahlon Hiring a Nanny

This is mostly true, but I think it leaves one thing out: risk. You can get a programmer for $40K that will be as good as a $80K programmer if you're willing to take a risk - e.g. folks early in their career who haven't proven themselves yet. You just can't guarantee it ahead of time. It's risky. And if you find someone awesome, they won't stay at $40K for long.

jon_dahlon Doing Y Combinator in your 30s

(Not sure if this is a joke, so I'm not going to vote up or down. I hope it's a joke.)

jon_dahlon Doing Y Combinator in your 30s

Good question. My guess: age helps put other accomplishments in context. "Worked at Google for 6 years" means different things if you're 35 than if you're 21.

jon_dahlon Doing Y Combinator in your 30s

Angel funding, on the other hand, generally comes without strings. If you take $1M of convertible debt, you don't have to give up a board seat, special rights, etc. If you do it right, you get some runway and some awesome advisors. That's it.

Pros and cons, of course, but VC funding (especially when the VC gets to set the terms) is a world apart from angel funding.

jon_dahlon Dave McClure responds to Arrington's post

Personally, I found his babbling rant highly coherent. That's just his style. He's a really smart guy and a good investor.

jon_dahlon VideoJS (Zencoder, YC W10) re-launches with new site, new features, still free.

Up to you. Would you rather have full control over the video (encoding quality, size, hosting, player), or a one-stop solution? Each has a place.

(Vimeo explicitly forbids commercial content, or used to, but you could s/vimeo/another_provider).

jon_dahlon So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…

Signal answered. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1714863

jon_dahlon So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…

The real question would be their investment market share, right? There might be 500 companies building operating systems, but a Microsoft/Apple merger would probably be a monopoly concern.

That said, while their market share is certainly larger than 10/250,000, it probably doesn't even approach 10%. So you're probably right.

jon_dahlon Doing Y Combinator in your 30s

Am I the only one who sometimes feels like you might as well have skipped college if you didn't go to Stanford, MIT, or some other top school?

I don't think so. MIT or Stanford help a little (like 10% when raising money or looking for a job), but at the end of the day, the degree doesn't really matter. For some people, going to a state school or small college is the right path to take. For others, skipping school altogether is the right path. Go to college, or skip college, for other reasons.

jon_dahlon Doing Y Combinator in your 30s

Not really, because I haven't mastered that. But if you're trying to build a startup in the (say) server monitoring space, a great bootstrapping approach would be to do a bunch of server monitoring contracts and keep the IP (which isn't too hard if you say you're using "prior inventions").

jon_dahlon So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…

Grellas, would there have to be evidence that the participants were acting anti-competitively, or is being in the room enough? Arrington says that a few of the folks there were uncomfortable with what was going on, and were maybe there just to see what was happening.

jon_dahlon So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…

Maybe. This approach shows some integrity too, though. Not everything has to turn into a scandal (at least if inappropriate behavior stops quickly). Call me soft on crime.

jon_dahlon Doing Y Combinator in your 30s

Without turning this into "37signals vs. Y Combinator", let's just say there are pros and cons to each approach.

One of the cons of contracting is can be really hard to divide your attention in a startup. If there is any possible way you can devote 100% of your attention to a startup, then by all means, do it. I'm 10x more productive when I put 100% of my time into a startup instead of 50%. 10x, not 2x. Just my experience.

On the other hand, contracting is a great backup plan. It kept Zencoder alive in the early days, and we still do some video-related consulting work to reduce our burn and compliment our encoding service.

There's no points for effort, only for execution.

Well said. Mind if I use that? :)

jon_dahlon VideoJS (Zencoder, YC W10) re-launches with new site, new features, still free.

It's a complimentary project. Most people who need video encoding also need a video player.

The headline is a little ambiguous; it is VideoJS that is relaunching (new version, new site), not Zencoder relaunching as VideoJS. :)

jon_dahlon Ask HN: What's the big deal with startups anyways...

Your questions are focused around money. Startups shouldn't be about money.

If you want to be comfortable, work hard and save and focus on promotions. If you want to be rich, go into finance. Startups aren't comfortable, and most of us don't get rich. If you're in it for the money, you're going to quit when things get tough - and they will get tough and stay tough for longer than you think.

Do it only if you can't imagine doing anything else.

jon_dahlon Heroku: Announcing the Add-on Provider Program

It's via Heroku. They handle customer management and billing, and send revenue to you (after taking a cut).

jon_dahlon Do you want to be in Y Combinator? Summer 2010 experience.

I applied with what was, in retrospect, a weak application. Bootstrapped a different startup for a year and got accepted on that.

jon_dahlon Ask HN: After 6 months, did we succeed or fail?

Steve Blank (who you should read if you haven't) has said "No one can kill you in your first 18 months except for yourself".

Two easy ways to kill your startup:

1. Give up. No one has a smooth ride at 6 months. Everyone struggles for years, whether you see it from the outside or not.

2. Don't iterate quickly enough. Bitspace (great design, btw) might be the wrong product. Talk to customers and try different things. When something works, do more of it. When it fails, kill it.

jon_dahlon Ask HN: How much equity should I give to a non techie founder?

Agreed.

(Typical advisor compensation is 0.1%-2%, depending on the stage and the value provided.)