snake117

For a second I thought PG wrote this...

Thanks for sharing your application with us. It's great to analyze a well thought out and well worded application.

I've posted some links below that have helped me understand their process in a little more depth, especially the interview. These links have been posted at some point on HN, but I'm just putting them here for anyone's convenience. I hope you find them useful:

http://old.ycombinator.com/howtoprepare.html

http://ycinterview.com/

http://ipaulgraham.herokuapp.com/

https://www.aptible.com/blog/y_combinator.html

http://yourstory.com/2014/10/guide-list-y-combinator/

The last one is especially helpful, it should answer just about any question and has other examples of great applications.

Back in elementary school we would watch Bill Nye videos all the time. Aside from not having to listen to my teacher speak, I didn't really look forward to watching him. The show relied on loud volume and wackiness to be entertaining as oppose of letting the raw science fascinate you. I really wish program's like this were made, I would've definitely paid more attention.

Another article regarding the same topic from Yahoo News: http://news.yahoo.com/mass-shootings-study-us-2015-144845714...

I really underestimated the amount of applications that you guys received. I was thinking maybe a few hundred, like 800 or 900, at the most, but 6500? I was way off.

I was wondering though, if the Fellowship program showed great results and you guys decide to continue it, how much equity would you ask for? Have you thought that far ahead yet?

I keep reading that seed investment firms consider it "good" if 4 out of every 10 startups they fund turn out to be something of value. Over time this is showing to be true.

Hey guys I'm posting a follow-up article here and I submitted the link through HN: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/posture-power-how-to-correct...

This was the first article that led me to the Cleveland Clinic website. I hope you find it worthwhile.

Honestly, I think that's the best way to learn. A lot of great programmers/entrepreneurs end up taking an autodidactic approach to learning whatever they need to learn to become successful. I always use Sean Parker as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parker

I don't buy into the belief that the only way to learn something is by taking a course or getting a degree. I can buy the same programming book or the same physiology textbook used in a course and read it on my own. The only problem is that, unless you really do something outstanding to prove that you know the material, its not something you can put on an application/resume.

Very true. I use a MacBook Pro and I recently tried altering my workstation for that very reason. I bought a stand for the Pro, and a bluetooth keyboard and magic mouse. Sometimes I HDMI it to a larger screen and work farther away from the laptop itself. So far, it's been working very well for me and I'm probably going to change my other workstation to accommodate this as well. I don't feel as "slouchy" or tense when I'm done working.

Sure, you're not going to be a professional software engineer working on complex problems and scaling servers at Google, but you can learn a little something from their service. For beginners who have never programmed I think its great because you can program right in the browser; no need to install compilers/interpreters, text editors/IDEs, DBMSs or servers. These things can take well over an hour to install, configure, and learn how to navigate through. All of this getting thrown at a beginners face would do nothing but discourage them.

And even if you're a well experienced programmer, you can use Codecademy to get your feet wet in a new language. I don't see the harm in this.

I love using the command line on my Mac. I had to learn it when I decided to learn Rails. You really do feel like you have more power and control during development. Now I didn't use Codecademy, but I did learn from reading tutorials and watching a Lynda series taught by Kevin Skoglund. If you're in the process of learning the command line, definitely give it a whirl.

That's not to say that it's impossible to do anything on your own nowadays. I hear that it only took one guy to make Evochron Mercenary (http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/faq.htm#2) and the game takes roughly 1gb. Now, Star Citizen is supposedly the next big space sim; a big team that has raised over $50 million and creating a game that will probably take over a 100gb to install. Heck it took 20gb just for me to demo the dog-fighting module.

One developer vs a team backed with millions of dollars.

1gb vs 100gb.

It can still happen.

Seems like the title should be "upgrading to Windows 7".

And not to mention that Microsoft took it upon themselves to use user bandwidth as a way to alleviate stress from their servers.

http://lifehacker.com/windows-10-uses-your-bandwidth-to-dist...

I agree. I think Microsoft picked up on that seeing as though they gave all Windows 7 and 8.1 users 1 year to make their decision.

All jokes and sexist comments aside, how does this really improve productivity? Wouldn't this be more of a distraction?

That was a good joke. It got me the first time around. http://factually.gizmodo.com/shutdownify-is-fake-1725170019

No doubt its going to be hard to phase out Flash. My browser keeps blocking Flash on sites like Yahoo and its funny because then Yahoo's video player, which is one of the clunkiest by the way, doesn't even load.

As a side note, I found this page to be a great follow-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTML5_and_Flash

Kind of curious as to what this service will offer. Social networking and music has been MySpace's domain for many years so I wonder what Soundrop's take on it will be.

I like these kinds of concepts; simple and can really improve productivity when being played in the background. There is another app for coffee shops: https://coffitivity.com/

Although you can't modulate SFX, its still nice to run in the background.

I'm running a machine with the same specs as you and I don't ever experience Firefox bogging down as you are describing. I do believe Firefox is more heavy-weight than Chrome, but nothing to the point where I have to consider updating my OS or running an SSD. I set my browser to delete everything when I close and launch again. This helps to keep registry and temp files from building up. Perhaps this might help?

I should've mentioned that I was still going to give the option of creating a local account. I definitely don't want to completely rely on third party login systems for my application, I just want to give the option to users. Do you mind elaborating on how LinkedIn can be overly invasive? Are Facebook and Twitter as invasive?

Just curious, did something happen during Demo Day presentations that made both Sam and AH write a blog post about this problem?

After reading this and going through some of the comments, it may be worth while for YC to hold a small online course, or at least make a small business wiki, that discusses these terms and other concepts specifically in the start-up domain. I mean especially if misusing these terms, unintentional or not, can be considered as a felony, then it would really be worth while to at least give them some information to read up. Even though the ideal team of founders is one CompSci and one business, it seems that some of the business gurus posting here have a hard time defining a few of these terms, like GMV. That's just my two cents.

I would think at this stage it is all about growing. In fact, even well established companies like Facebook are still trying to grow. I can't imagine Zuckerberg's Internet.org movement was created for the sole purpose of bringing internet to underprivileged areas of the world; he wants to spread Facebook's influence to those regions as well. And at the very end all investors want to see is growth and a high ROI.

Sorry about the assumption. That's actually pretty amazing that you guys managed to read through every application. Even though I was rejected the application was still worth doing because it forced me to think thoroughly about my product. I will still apply in the future.

In the YC Fellowship emails they said applications will open August 24th.

This is a great little game. I had no idea that Nemerle was a language and I completely lost it when I saw "H" from HQ9+. Who knew there was a language out there with only 4 commands?

Keep in mind that most of these companies have to work just as hard once they finish YC. It generally takes a few more years after YC to really make something of themselves. Adding on to that, some companies take awhile to develop an efficient revenue stream. From what I hear, Reddit still has a hard time making money even though it raised $50 million in investments and was bought out by Conde Nast. Sometimes the investments made are seen as a promise for the long-term rather then revolutionizing the way we live tomorrow.

Park it just a little way's down from a Starbucks and watch the money roll in.