I think it is a very interesting move and might actually be successful. Personally, I would love to read comments by my favorite characters from tv-series I watch during a show.
Can someone throw more light into this idea YC is working on? I am damn curious, given that http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html mentions techcrunch on one side and reddit on the other (News will morph significantly in the more competitive environment of the web. So called "blogs" (because the old media call everything published online a "blog") like PerezHilton and TechCrunch are one sign of the future. News sites like Reddit and Digg are another. But these are just the beginning. ) And essentially, given the fact that HN is far better than any of the two.
On a side note, google should definitely get its act together related to customer service. I have heard so many horror stories about google's indifferent/insignificant customer service lately.
Personally speaking, I wont pay if facebook starts charging me $20/year. Rather, it might improve my life because I wont waste anytime on it. However, if google starts charging for gmail, I will totally pay an annual amount as long as they open a customer service center.
WOW! this is a big breakthrough. I have friends working in my collaborators group using STM and AFM at UHV (Ultra High Vacuum) and ULT (Ultra Low Temperatures), and know second hand how difficult/near to impossible it is.
This is exactly what we are going through. The VCs we talk to want to see revenue projections of $50MM+ in 5 years and want a project plan for investment in $MM. All we need is in $150k range and it is extremely difficult to find money in that tier. We have decided to continue boot strapping and stop wasting time for now.
so you are saying $500/hour is industry average? Hackeronymous mentioned that he charged $100k for a 1000 hour work which he could have done in almost 1/6th time if he was experienced. I am not sure about the industry average, but I work through guru/elance/odesk and average seems to be $50-$150 for an experienced developer.
I was not saying that you should charger per hour. I was asking that the numbers you floated will make more sense if you can provide how much time you spent on each of those projects. For example: you mentioned $100k on RoR project. This number will make more sense if you mention whether it took you 1000 hours or 10000 hours or maybe 3 months or 3 years.
I have read all of PG's essays and have seen some of his videos. This one is awesome. The way he uses the slides or I should say the way he doesn't uses the slides during the talk is how it should be. Whenever, I read about him and see what he is doing, it makes me wish, can I be like him 10-15 years down the line and have my own YC kind of thing in India.
I completely agree with Sarah. Being a PhD student about to finish in sciences and starting my own company which is already ramen profitable, the biggest concern of mine is how can I stay in US, after I am done with my PhD. I am not that worried about funding, revenues, marketing as much as I am worried about immigration. I wish there was something like PG mentioned in the founders visa article or things are much easier if you are a PhD in STEM in US. I am preparing myself to move back at this point.
We went through a very similar phase for our startup which is also about developing iPhone/desktop/web apps. We have a lot of shiny features in our apps like syncing across platforms, real time percentile scores, meetup features, turning the iPhone screen into a scratch paper etc., most of which are useful but given the fact that we were bootstrapping, got us into a deeper and deeper hole. If we wouldn't have found an awesome developer we would have to end our startup too.
Good luck for your future endeavors. You have learnt a lot from this. Don't be disappointed and keep trying.
Currently the system is being gamed by developers posting updates without any real updates to take advantage of this. It annoys the hell out of me when I get updates every week for apps which dont have anything new adding on to them because developers are trying to make as much money as possible without thinking about the users at all. The review date should only be allowed to change twice an year or something so that only major updates get the advantage of being highlighted.
Almost everyone is doing this on the appstore including the big names. Moreover, I am just astonished by the fact that apple is still letting developers game the system by allowing the developers to change the availability date with new updates so that the apps show up as new releases. If they stop this, it will probably reduce the number of submissions from 8500/week to probably 1000/week and thereby being more consistent.
I am not sure whether this article will get flagged or not, but I agree completely with you on this. I watched it last friday and wasn't even sure what this movie was about. For the first half an hour I was cursing myself that why did I came, however, everything changed.
This is one of the best sci-fi movies I have ever seen, and I have seen almost all. I am very sure that most of the HN community will love it.
Neat idea. I think it will be really useful if you provide a track record of what percentage of your predictions are right. Otherwise, this service is mostly going to be useful to business customers who buy flexible tickets. Someone like me, is not going to take a chance even if you say 80% probability of a delay on an economy class ticket.
and the strange thing with this is that everyone agrees education industry needs major innovation but not much VC funding is being poured into it in spite of huge (billions) opportunity.
I really like the #4 and #6 mainly because we are working on both. :) I totally believe that education industry needs a makeover because it is extremely fragmented and highly inefficient with very less innovation.