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Comment by brezina | Hacker News Reader

Hi guys. Sorry about the news.

I suggest joining my YC alum startup, Xobni, instead. Sometimes great hackers joinup instead of startup. That is what Paul Buchheit did : http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/looking-for-co-founder-try-attending.html

send resumes: http://www.xobni.com/jobs.php

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People here have voted to continue to work on their startup and there's nothing to be sorry about.

That is probably a great job opportunity, but not the same as starting up your own business. A lot of companies (like Xobni) take years to get up and running, and that's doing it full-time. How can somebody expect to do a startup while working 40 hours a week for somebody else without putting in the full-time hours?

Finally, I don't know if you want to hire people who have entrepreneurship in the back of their mind, 24/7. What do you think? Or, do you think it would be good to have entrepreneurial minded employees? Thanks!

I don't think you'd join something like Xobni and also do a startup on the side; Matt didn't mean that. The point of joining a startup this early is that it becomes your startup. Same concept as finding someone who's already tackling the same problem you were planning to, and joining up.

"Job opportunities" usually give Benefits and Work-life Balance. Xobni would give you (hopefully) lucrative equity and the sprint-or-die startup pace that most people here are looking for (along with the rewards that come with it).

Oh. The "send resumes" part made me think they were posting a job ad, in a thread where 30 members voted to "proceed with their startup anyway."

they are looking for employees :P but it would be a much better learning experience than a typical job; you'd be joining early enough that you'd be with the company basically from the beginning and would have much more of an opportunity to take on serious responsibility and make a significant impact (that, and much more equity than later employees :P)

Definitely! It's a great job opportunity and you guys are great! I was just wondering why a job ad was posted here. :P

We definitely want entrepreneurial hackers on our team. I often say entire aspects of our company are tableau rosa. There is fertile ground for innovation and creativity not found in big companies. I guess we are hiring employees, but I've not once used that word.

Ask Craig Silverstein if he has regretted being Google's third guy.

You mean 'tabula rasa', or is that some sort of pun?

Sorry I couldn't resist to reply. I just checked xobni job page and was surprised that they're looking for someone with C# knowledge. I assume they're building something based on ASP.NET ? (or at least .NET technology)

So right now the list of startup companies that use .NET has grown to 2 in YCombinator? Xobni and Loopt (arguably one of the most successful YCombinator investment).

PG, any thought on that?

As far a languages go, there's no silver bullet, go with whatever your team is comfortable with.

And consider that they their products thus far are outlook-based. MS does a lot of the work for you if you use their tools and language.

let me +1 this post.. adam and matt are not only damn smart but awesome guys (i worked out of their living room last summer and we had a great time.) xobni's on a fantastic trajectory and this is a rare opportunity for a smart hacker to get in early -- definitely check them out.

Just curious. Why did you apply to YC, then? And, would you've abandoned DropBox and started at Xobni, had YC rejected you? Thanks!

a fair question -- i would have loved to work with adam and matt, but at the time my stock hadn't yet vested in another startup where i had been working for a while, and i was also running another company i had started in 2004, so the timing wasn't quite right.

i don't want to drag this thread offtopic so shoot me any other questions by email -- thanks :)

np, good luck with DP!

I did send my resume some time back. The least you guys could have done was to send me a regret letter.

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