michael_fine

The problem with that is that at YC there is a huge incentive to succeed. Only people which are very passionate about their idea/entrepreneurship are accepted. Furthermore, when you're out of university, a startup is your only hope, and if you fail you have failed, whereas in a class people will be less motivated to succeed, because this is just a single class, and you have your schooling to fall back on.

Finally, the biggest value of YC is the incredible quality of mentors and peers. Naturally, both of those would suffer. Really, this is less a YC class and more a simple startup class, which many universities are doing, but to much less success than YC

So, what are you currently doing now?

Honestly, I prefer Google's implementation of site specific search better. I'd rather search with DuckDuckGo/Google's engine, because its better, rather than be redirected to a usually bad site search.

Yes. Fundamentally, the goal of a business is to create value, in the form of lower prices or better services.

The reason there is so much political emphasis on job creation is that the unemployed are a small but vocal minority, who's political decisions may rest almost entirely on job growth. Whereas value benefits a lot of people in a small way, but value alone probably will not be enough to sway someone's voting decision.

This also relates to what PG said,

"When you decide what infrastructure to use for a project, you're not just making a technical decision. You're also making a social decision, and this may be the more important of the two. For example, if your company wants to write some software, it might seem a prudent choice to write it in Java. But when you choose a language, you're also choosing a community. The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. "

That may be why the OP is having trouble finding talent, because talent doesn't like the stacks he used.

I think because "{css:hat}", while interesting and amusing, doesn't accurately display what it does.

Now I just use Google Drive and open it in TextEdit or Pages.

Also, while being a joke, there is a language that uses only semicolons: http://pksunkara.github.com/semicolon/

But this isn't really a problem then. If the issue with people being hired away from startups is that startups create more value for society, then that's an externality, and we should care. But if it's a question of potentially higher compensation, then we can expect people to act selfishly, and so it's not really a problem.

Why do we assume that being hired at a startup is inherently better than being hired at Facebook, or any technology company for that matter? People can create just as much value at a large company than at a small one, though there are fewer outliers.

I think what happens with Quora is that experts answer questions in their own field, but they don't ask them. So the questions may seem elementary, while the answers are not.

Probably because the javascript require to change the background would pause the scrolling or slow down the browser.

I feel that distributed teams definetly have many postives, it is just much faster to work in the same building as a person. My startup works via chat room, except for one day a week when we meet in person, and we just get so much more done.

The reason face to face is so much better for us is because so much more information is communicated via talking versus typing. Firstly, the speed one talks usually is faster than their typing speed. Second of all, information is contained in things such as tone, expressions, and gestures, none of which have a digital substitute. Furthermore, it seems that face to face contact facilitates far-reaching conversation about strategy and general topics, rather than just the code at hand. Finally, it is much easier to show someone your error message on your screen, or point to the block of code, than to copy and paste or say line numbers. That final qualm is getting better with the advent of screen sharing though.

What makes you say that?

I hope I'm not naively over-generalizing a complex process, but is 80% of what he doing just not anti-aliasing straight lines? If that is most of it, couldn't pixel-fitting be improved by just doing that?

It's not that they would be disappointed that the team succeeded, it's that they would be disappointed they didn't invest in them.

The problem with this is that people are self sorting. Only the people who intend to fly a lot will buy this. The airline loses money because there is a disparity of information. You know in general how much you will fly, whereas the airline only knows averages. This is very similar to Bill Clinton's Pay off college loans with percentage of 20 years' income program. That didn't work because people had general idea's about their future career path. So, a future government worker may elect to use it, whereas a future investment banker will not.

I think what I would define as successful is a company that made YC wish they had invested in them at the time.

Two ways that work for me:

One, don't try to reason it out. Don't make every chance you have to slack off be a constant mental battle of willpower. This is why eliminating distractions works so well. Also, just make it a habit. This is the harder part, but try something like the pomodoro method, where you work for 25 minutes, and take a 5 minute break. No distractions at all during that 25 minute period. Once that becomes a habit, it gets much easier.

Conversely, if you do find yourself wondering why your doing what your doing, or you have to convince yourself, just think of what you want to accomplish. Is it going to the gym, or working on a side project, or reading more? Just think of the first step. The first step of going to the gym is just getting in the door. Getting in the door is not very hard, but how can you possibly get fit without getting to the door? Whenever you lack motivation, just ask if you've completed step one (http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2011/07/18/step-one/)

Yeah, I guess so, it's just this was such a poignant form of marketing it really struck me.

It's a little ironic that its courtesy to obscure spammer's emails.

I wonder how this could be used in traditional marketing sense? He describes it as:

   First you plant the seed.
   Then you wait for it to grow into a plant.
   Then you …

You clearly couldn't use this approach, because it is a: disingenuous, and b: requires you to have a large number of people's emails. It's an interesting concept, especially in the context of traditional marketing.

So they said two things: Presentational and Metrics. Presentational they should do what you said, with graceful degradation, but with metrics I would just give them up. I'd rather not have metrics on a user than lose a user.

Here's a well-documented, unofficial one: http://code.google.com/p/pyrfeed/wiki/GoogleReaderAPI

Why? Most of the sorting process was about the founder, not the idea, and according to pg a lot of people changed their original idea anyway.

What do you think about replacing social network with website?

Actually, I guess we really weren't clear in saying this, but this is a pre-launch page, so we're really trying to just gauge interest an get emails. I'm sorry we didn't say this well enough. Thanks

Thank you so much for your reply. On the first point.

We decided to use Launchrock because we were tired of spending so much of our development time on building a launch page (maybe because we're not designers). We used Launchrcok because we were pre-launch and believed that we could communicate effectively in one paragraph what we are trying to do. But if the sentiment is so anti-LR, or it causes us to look fake, I guess we will change.

On the second point. We're a social network for people to listen to their music, share their music, and connect with their favorite artists. This is beneficial to you because you are supporting artists with your song purchases vs streaming, you can consolidate all of your music listening and sharing in one place, and we allow you to connect with artists.

And on the third point. This is a really interesting point, which we haven't considered before. We'll try to do this.

We really appreciate it.

For all of your clicking needs: http://signup.musicmind.co/

Clickable: http://mhfine.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/re-imaging-the-file-s...