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aston

$50k in funding from YC (or maybe just from PG)? That's impressive. Over twice the typical amount.

What kind of valuation are we talking, here?

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It was a one-off deal. This startup wasn't in one of the regular YC batches, though their original one (Kiko) was.

Fair enough. Is this the first startup to get that sort of treatment?

I believe there have been a couple of others. This is probably the reason the application no longer requires an idea: YC figures if you're talented/persistent enough, you'll eventually hit on something good.

There was one other one where we invested as angels in the series A round. Ordinarily we wouldn't invest that late, but these guys seemed exceptionally smart and driven.

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Can anyone explain what is exactly so great about this idea?

It's the 90's all over again...

I hate the censoring of comments on reddit & news.yc. It seems contrary to the entrepreneurial mindset.

If Steve Jobs got on a board like this in the '70s, and announced that he was going to start a company building PCs when mainframes were sexy, he probably would've been downvoted too.

Ok, I might've over reacted there. I should've said I LOVE everything about News.YC except the censoring of down-voted comments :)

Regardless, it looks like other comments w/ negative karma are grayed out (like http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13764 ). So I imagine this comment was probably deleted by the author...

And how much are you taking from them for this contribution?

I was a bit shocked to hear about Justin (yet another media outlet) on NPR - this is truly becoming a global phenomenon. The value of the PR they've received to date is unbelievable - I'm interested to see how they convert all this fame into a business model, which I'm sure they'll be able to do. Nice job believing in their radical idea PG.

I don't know how "radical" the idea is. Justin.tv is "Web 2.0" for Jennicam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JenniCam).

Justin.tv is not Jennicam. Justin.tv is a business and has a business plan that can be executed. Think reality TV... think internet television.

50K is a small investment to make for a company that you believe will hit the big time. I guess YC will get more equity.

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