A bit off topic, but where can I learn more about convertibles, valuation caps, FF stock, and all the legal stuff we don't learn in our engineering classes?
And it functions as more or less everything you need to know about this stuff. I was able to read it as it was posted but if I was just starting the now the ebook for $20 is well worth it over clicking "previous" a whole bunch of times in the blog layout.
If you take expressions in the lambda calculus to be programs, then that's not too bad. You don't even have to be liberal in your interpretation of `run'.
Of course "computer term" is a bad choice. It's mathematics (or its hyped subfield of computer science).
"Graham concedes that individual YC partners have invested in a few startups that hadn't been able to attract much outside funding."
Interesting that Paul, Trevor, Robert, and Jessica (maybe Harj and Alexis now?) will backstop companies that can't raise outside money after YC. It's like the exact opposite of the signaling problem.
The first couple years I used to participate in a lot of the startups' angel rounds. Now I hardly ever do. I didn't invest in any of the startups from the most recent batch, for example.
Partly because I don't have as much spare money (because I bought an expensive house in Palo Alto and haven't sold my Cambridge house yet) and partly because I don't need to as much.
Hacker news is part of my daily diet and i have to admit that PG is Rock star. Though the amount of money he funds to YC startups is minuscule, the end result is unbelievable. I have been in the startup industry for more than a decade and to me it seems like the YC funding is more like paid mentoring.
After "Why Nerds Are Unpopular", it's one of my favorite things he's written.
"At an art school where I once studied, the students wanted most of all to develop a personal style. But if you just try to make good things, you'll inevitably do it in a distinctive way, just as each person walks in a distinctive way. Michelangelo was not trying to paint like Michelangelo. He was just trying to paint well; he couldn't help painting like Michelangelo."
I read it as a senior, when the bulk of my school related angst was behind me. It was still awesome, though. I felt less alone – less like I was nuts or something for seeing school the way I had.
Le goût est le nec plus utlra de l'intelligence/Lautréamont (means sthg like 'Taste is intelligence brought to its highest intensity') _ Original quote "Le goût est la qualité fondamentale qui résume toutes les autres qualités. C’est le nec plus ultra de l’intelligence. (Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies I, 1870)"
It is easy. Y Combinator's application process is designed to take only an hour or two, though it can take much longer if you have to figure out what your company is going to make at the same time. But you have to figure that out anyway -- it's not really a difficulty of raising seed money.
Y Combinator is very selective, but there are many other incubator / tech accelerator programs where the bar is not so high.
Then again, as pg himself says, the better you are, the less of a "real" reason that you didn't get in. If you're one of the top 100 startups in this cycle, all of which have potential, you might not make it just cause there are another 35 great companies they decide to go with.
Ustream is often higher in unique views (but not always, and not currently), but Justin.tv has people stay on site almost twice as long, and has almost half the bounce rate. It certainly pumps far more video in and out (at one point at least more than even youtube, but I don't think we've measured that in a while). Livestream is a distant third. Ustream spends a lot of money projecting their image, while we just keep making sure that our product is several times better.
Thanks for info, I really had no idea. Ustream just, well, seemed like they are BIG (good marketing then). I have posted this ~17 days ago, but I had no response: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755458
I even emailed you guys, but got no response whatsoever. Ustream and Livestream both responded.
Sigh...
Great article though. And a wonderful portrait of pg!