Snap Inc. presents Yellow – An investment and mentorship program in LA | Hacker News Reader

Snap Inc. presents Yellow – An investment and mentorship program in LA

yellowla.com

182 pointstristanho124 comments

From the terms:

   By applying to Yellow, you agree to irrevocably waive any legal claim you 
   may have against us under any theory of law in any territory, including, without 
    limitation, copyright infringement or breach of implied in fact contract 
    (idea submission), that your rights were infringed due to any similarity between 
    your Content and any other content that is or may be developed by Snap

"Give us your ideas"

should be a non-starter for anyone.

Yeah, I can easily acquire $150k somewhere else.

Edit: For the record, I'm being sarcastic here. My point is that it's hard to say that this "should be a non-starter for anyone", because almost no one can acquire a $150k investment under any condition, and it's a difficult decision one would have to make.

Please do tell more.

Freelance as a developer for a year? There are a fair few ways to make 150k without signing away your life. It just takes a bit of time ;)

Very few developers in the US can add $150k in post-tax cash flow in 12 months from a dead start. Depending on living expenses and tax situation, you need to gross $300k to $450k. I speak from experience: doable, but not easy.

The variable is 1) whether you're accepted, and 2) more specifically, whether they like your idea so much they rip it just by way of your mere application to Yellow. It's potentially a very expensive $150k.

Seems pretty standard.

It's not. YC has no such terms that I am aware of.

YC says this in regards to IP/ideas, though:

Will you sign an NDA? How do I know you won't steal my idea?

  No, we won't sign an NDA. No venture firm would at this 
  stage. The informal commitment to secrecy on our 
  application form is more than any VC would make.

Reallly submitting idea means you loose the IP, even sponsored Hackathons don't have that in their rules/contract.

The funniest part about this, is that the chain would continue into one of Facebook's products after snap gets it.

I come up with a great idea for storytelling --> Snap says "yeah, that's our's now" --> Facebook says "yeah, we prototyped it in a weekend and folded it into Instagram."

Yellow isn't looking for product ideas. They are looking for content.. Content is on a platform rather than folded into one, no?

Its as if Snap is deliberately trying to turn off founders.

Wondering outloud: given what facebook did to snapchat, would one assume that you have to "beat" snapchat (and anyone else) without resorting to a legal defense? In other words, if you can't beat snapchat at your own idea (assuming your idea is good enough to warrant their interest), are you doomed whether or not you signed a non-suit agreement?

This is actually reasonable. Without this, Snap would be asking for lawsuits from anyone that submits an idea that’s even close to an upcoming feature. At the end of the day, this incubator relies on trust, and founders should never take money from someone they distrust anyway.

it seems pretty one sided as far as trust goes

The idea is that I, an adversarial actor, could submit an (or many) applications, and then sue snap if they ever release a feature that resembles any of those submissions.

Basically, as a potential incubatee, I need to trust Snap. For them to remove that clause, Snap needs to trust that there will be 0 adversarial applicants. Thus a one-sided trust metric makes some level of sense.

Ok that makes sense now on its face it seems incredibly adversarial to the point where they could force you to be a drug mule as a team building exercise. But when you put it this way it makes perfect sense. Without this kind of protection you're open to a lawyer placing bogus applications just to launch series of lawsuits to effectively destroy the program for everyone.

I have a project which fits perfectly into what they are looking for, but these IP terms are ridiculous.

Any other suggestions of where I could get seed funding? (somewhere in EU would be even better)

I have to admire the courage to set up something like this when their own company is tanking.

This is a built in excuse for not being profitable for Wall Street analysts for future quarters.

I doubt that. The few million a year going into Yellow are a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in infrastructure costs.

My first reaction is that they’re trying to give birth to a unicorn that’ll save them

Yahoo's biggest asset was Alibaba

"Investment of $150k for equity on founder friendly terms"

Interested to know the actual % they are taking for $150k...

Yeah seems like an important point to gloss over.

I'd imagine that it's different for each incubated project/startup

Couldn’t it depend on the ’startup’ situation?

It sounds like it's negotiable.

You don’t make a startup for the money you do it to change the world!

Good luck with that. I'm sure investors will definitely be very supportive....

I imagine they will closely align to YCs standard deal ($120k for 7%)

http://www.ycombinator.com/deal/

I bet they pull a Lightbank and let the founder almost have some upside.

"Almost" meaning they actually don't get any?

I imagine this means taking equity but not voting power.

Huh...so it's a play to get better/ more structured content on snapchat. Seems kind of anthetical to the whole point of snapchat(unstructured, free style content)

FYI, info@yellowla.com seems to be down. Tried to reach you and got the following response:

Message not delivered

Your message couldn't be delivered to info@yellowla.com because the remote server is misconfigured. See technical details below for more information.

The response from the remote server was:

550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

Final-Recipient: rfc822; info@yellowla.com

Action: failed

Status: 5.7.1

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 15:13:45 -0700 (PDT)

Incidentally, so is application@yellowla.com

Message not delivered

Your message couldn't be delivered to application@yellowla.com because the remote server is misconfigured. See technical details below for more information.

The response from the remote server was:

550 5.7.1 Relaying denied

An email idea is on the way, via post.

I like this idea - does anyone know if there are other incubators for content creators? I never thought about building a show/movie/experience/etc as though it were a startup.

I think Maker Studios was somewhat along this line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Digital_Network#As_Make..., but I'm sure there are plenty of more clear examples around.

Popular Youtube vlogger Casey Neistat recently started 368. And he's teaming up with Patreon's CEO, Jack Conte.

> Conte detailed his idea in a video he uploaded to YouTube on April 20. “Imagine if 368 had some sort of program where you could essentially be sponsored as a creator,” he said. “Say you get three or four thousand bucks a month for some period of months to essentially quit your day job and just be a full time creator.”

> Sponsored creators would be able to take advantage of 368’s facilities, which could include podcast studios, video game streaming stations, and screening rooms, according to Neistat. Meanwhile, the funding for those sponsorships would come from Patreon, where Conte believes Neistat could raise significant resources. “I think the community would be super excited about participating in a program like that,” he said, “that helps people pursue their dreams.”

https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/04/24/patreon-jack-conte-cas...

I'm trying to get a hold of him :)

https://twitter.com/thepatwalls/status/998727187707686916

Keeping it brief is good and all but maybe give him a link to the website in question and also mention what would be the topic of your podcast?

There's https://standard.tv/ founded by Dave Wiskus (Here's the Bad Version), CGP Grey, and Philipp Dettmer (Kurzgesagt). I think they have an office in NYC.

As a VC the tricky aspect here is thinking about exits for these kinds of businesses.

Snap have the luxury that they don't need to worry about finding a return for their $150k because presumably the content delivered will create far more value from adverts and engagement. Other investors who don't have a $billion media platform behind them have a different story!

I wouldn't necessarily say that snap is a billion dollar media platform.

                    2015       2016       2017
  Sales/Revenue    8.66M    404.48M    824.95M	
  Gross Income  (123.68M)   (47.18M)    61.42M

Snap’s core demo is just now graduating. They’ll have that sweet, sweet disposable income soon enough.

I think I'm one of the few who liked the site. It loaded extremely fast on my horrible internet. I was able to get the information I needed, including which questions I should answer if I wanted to sign up.

No excessive photos, videos, and other nonsense. I found the font chosen to be adequate and easy to be read.

About the program, it seems to me that they saw a limit point on the content that people are creating on their platform. It is clear that they want more quality productions that serve as an anchor for users.

I've never been a heavy Snap user, but I always visit to see how it works when someone reports a change. It seemed to me that the new design was meant to divide my friends from the artists or the content produced by companies.

You in the middle, being able to choose, your friends on your left and content to spend time on your right. Few people debate this, but other social networks want the exact opposite. They have always gone in the direction of merging the two.

Thus, this incubator could facilitate the creation of content to its right. But she could also demonstrate better ways to consume this content and how to interact with your friends, who would always be on your left.

Snap seems to be in full desperation mode. I understand the value of moonshots, but this isn’t like Google X. This is just plain ridiculous.

> What should I know about the program as an international founder?

> Applicants do not have to be United States citizens, but should be able to stay in California for at least three months for the program.

> It will be the responsibility of each applicant to ensure their team members have the proper paperwork in place to join.

> Do we have to be U.S. citizens?

> No, as long as you are legally permitted to operate your company and physically participate in the program (not virtual).

> Can you get us work visas?

> No, we won’t be able to handle any immigration related matters. If you need help, we can refer you to legal and immigration services teams.

Can someone decode this one for an EU citizen?

A visitor visa typically disallows you from working, so I'd imagine not.

Basically the answer is "no". If they're not willing to help with visas, there is no legal way for someone who isnt a citizen or GC holder to stay in the states for 3 months and work.

Looks like for all practical purpose you have to be an US resident.

Do you already have a Visa? If no, you can't apply.

Even if you do most are tied to employer..so that's a no-go as well.

As others have said, there aren't any clear cut answers. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and you should ask a lawyer to be sure. At any rate, a few suggestions (assuming you're EU):

- You could enter on an ESTA, which gives you 90 days. If you leave the US (Can+Mex doesn't count) and come back, the counter re-sets. Note that you're not allowed to work on ESTA, which means that drawing a salary is a no no. But if you desperately wanted to, you could probably figure out how to get paid in your home country or whatever would work for you.

- E-2 visa. A lot of EU countries have a treaty with US which says that: if a company is A) majority (>50%) owned by people/groups from your home country and B) someone from the country (doesn't have to be you) has invested ~$50K-250K (equity, not debt) in the company, then the company can apply for an E-2 visa for their key employees. It takes 1-3 months to process from what I hear, and the investment is substantial, but it's at least one more route that is available.

If anyone has more info on the two above, please feel free to correct me - I feel like I learn new things about the E-2 every time I speak to a new lawyer.

Approach 1 doesn't seem legal and I'm not sure if Yellow Incubator would agree to it.

Approach 2 doesn't make sense. It seems to be more work (time and money) than the likely benefit from joining this incubator.

Approach 1 doesn't give you a work permit. It's merely an explanation of how you can spend 90 days in the US as a EU citizen. But I don't think Yellow Incubator would dive that deep to see if you have the proper immigration papers.

Approach 2 makes sense for some. If you're just setting up a company to be in this incubator, then I 100% agree with you. But if you're working on something, and you think it'll have a better chance at succeeding if you're in the US, then it might very well make sense for you to get that kind of a visa. Many people (not involved with this incubator) do : )

Getting work visas can take considerable effort and the biggest resource is the sponsoring company that you are going to work for, so in the absence of such help it's unlikely that this is worth it. Also the terms about assigning all IP over to them doesn't help either.

I'm looking forward to reading Snap Inc's bankruptcy filings.

When the US Fed interest rate rises above the inflation rate and fiat money has value again, Snap stock is going to be the first to snap.

Please allow me to ask, what exactly is "mobile storytelling", is it a "newspaper" but for cool kids?

I think it's meant to be more like visual/interactive novels

This website seems to go out of its way to have an unfriendly design. The sharp yellows, the highlighting of singular characters in words in a different color.

Snap Design makes simple things complex.

This is what I would expect from trying to navigate the ridiculous UI in Snapchat. It seems to be obtuse and non-intuitive on purpose.

It’s been dubbed “digital brutalist” [1] style; as a rejection of the “streamlined, flat” designs of the last decade. Style evolves; Snap is targeting a younger demographic and the best way to say “we’re not Facebook or google; we’re cooler” is to reject all their design principles.

[1] https://envato.com/blog/brutalism-ugly-web-design-trend-taki...

> Snap is targeting a younger demographic

The design makes it look more like they are targeting a demographic nostalgic for the worst of late 1990s design atrocities.

Member of the younger demographic here. It happens that many of us adore late 1990s design atrocities.

Not sure I'd use that particular visual language in an enterprise website, but I think the reasoning is valid.

ah then you guys would have loved my home page back in 1998. Pretty sure I used this exact color scheme, although I think I had a really horrible logo in there too.

In fairness, in 1998 the people designing sites were the "younger generation"

Design is cyclical in about 30 year cycles. Grunge is back in. Everything ugly is beautiful again.

> Grunge is back in.

Keep it.

I recently learned Doc Martens boots are fashionable again. Makes me regret throwing my pair away in the 90s. Yes, I'm old. But at least back then they were all made in Great Britain.

Jesus, I remembered my Dad saying the same thing in the 90s about his boots from the 60s.

Yep; docs, ripped jeans and flannel are all really fashionable right now. Feels like high school.

Fashion moves reliably in cycles of twenty years. It's entirely expected that 1998's visual styling looks fresh again in 2018, always filtered through an ironic-nostalgic lens of varying density.

> Fashion moves reliably in cycles of twenty years. It's entirely expected that 1998's visual styling looks fresh again in 2018,

But it's 1998s bad amateur design, which didn't look fresh in 1998, either.

To me, the Yellow site doesn't really look like an old website at all because HTML's creative possibilities have changed — typography, layout options, etc.

However it does look like a lot like print design from circa 1994-98. Wide font variants for all copy, strong contrast with primary colors, and so on.

It looks like garbage.

I wish they were true to the cause, and used black on white, the most brutalist anything could ever be.

People keep on misusing "brutalist". This isn't brutalist whatsoever, it's anti-design. [1]

[1]: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/brutalism-antidesign/

And what's up with the highlighting of (to me) seemingly random characters?

It spells out Yellow, if you read the highlighted characters in order.

If you look really carefully, you'll notice the highlighted chars make up the word "yellow".

Such design. Much wow.

> ...the highlighting of singular characters in words in a different color.

In case it wasn't obvious they've highlighted the letters for "Yellow".

Also an _inaccessible_ design. Yellow text on a black background creates a contrast which a whole swathe of people can't read.

The way the word "yellow" is highlighted can't be good for dyslexic people, right? (Or people blessed with the gift of sight for that matter)

  *Each year* we will choose a small group of individuals and teams from around the world to join our *inaugural* three-month program

Now its facebooks turn

Ever heard of FB start?

Was the name derived from: If it’s yellow, let it mellow?

Not sure what to think of this. Google & FB have internal frameworks and/or hackathons to encourage their own people to come up with ideas. After all the failed attempts of Snap (glasses, the redesign etc) to come up with some key new ideas, poor IPO, layoffs and other bad news, this seems to be a clear signal that screams: “we don’t have the smartest people working at our company. We need your ideas to save our future.”

They had layoffs? I did not know this.

~220 engineers, salespeople, and content folks:

http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/snap-snapchat-layoffs-7...

I'm not sure that's really fair. It seems Yellow is geared more towards content and media, which is very out of the realm of product and engineering.

There is this trend where people build content heavy sites like this on using React. It's a weird choice since you want to optimize for SEO. Anyone know why people are doing this? Have this SEO issues around React been resolved?

You can run server side rendering. This is becoming increasingly common to do in new projects.

What's the value-add to using SSR React as compared to a framework purpose-built for server-side rendering to begin with if you're starting a "new project"?

Being able to use one framework instead of two.

Why would you use two frameworks on a new project?

This is what happens when you use a frontend framework and a backend framework.

EDIT: To clarify,

> as compared to a framework purpose-built for server-side rendering

If you use ANY framework purpose-built for server-side rendering, the second you need to do some client-side rendering you're now using two frameworks.

Value-add is for engineers who use React day to day already or want to use a minimal API to work to build their UI.

Don't take my word. Checkout the popularity of React, it's proliferation into the marketplace, and it's use on production environments. Also Vue is another popular alternative that UI engineers like to use, which also has SSR.

>Checkout the popularity of React, it's proliferation into the marketplace, and it's use on production environments.

How is this a valid methodology to picking a framework for your web product for your new business / project? If the idea is to reduce training/recruiting/onboarding costs and sacrifice domain-specificity to attempt to utterly commoditize your developers, I can sort of understand that reasoning at larger scales. I just don't understand why a new business/project would choose this weird circumstantial path for new development initiatives.

I also don't understand why I can't seem to get any React enthusiasts to explain to me the business value prop of using React for a _new_ business started today. I'm only guessing that there are elements of cost reduction in training/onboarding/continuing education, but nobody will even go as far as admitting that much of it, let alone give a decent technical reason for using React.

Does all of this really just boil down to "It's javascript, and I know javascript. And not only that, but it's React, and I've used React before to work on this website that I thought was pretty cool, so I might as well just use React again because so many other people use it."?

I don't even think that is that bad of a business reason, I just don't get why people are so cagey about it and try to invent weird technical reasons for why your enterprise document store needs to have a reactive, fully-fledged javascript application running in the client browser just to show a document and expose basic CRUD actions.

React has server-side rendering so SEO is covered.

However it’s still a complete waste of developer time & server resources to do this in React when a static website would be better suited for the task.

But they're clearly not using server-side rendering here, so the point stands...

You can choose to server-side render a page only for googlebot or other crawlers, no sure if it's worth the effort though.

I really disagree that it's a "waste of developer time" to use React for projects like this.

`npm install next react react-dom` takes an insignificant amount of time and gives you an extremely efficient developer experience immediately, with automatic code splitting, server side rendering and great modern CSS support. Compared to the amount of time I've spent over the years fiddling with gulp/grunt configuration files for "static websites", it's a no brainer for developers who are already productive in React.

All you need for this site is a .html file and a single style sheet...

I mean... Google has being running javascript for while now.

Not sure what SEO issues you're talking about, since many search engines index React apps properly even with no server rendering.

Also child comments are talking about it being a waste of developer time and server resources. If the developer saved time doing the React version instead of using a static site builder, was it really a waste of time?

Finally, if there's ever a next step for this site having to convert from a static version to a dynamic one could suck.

I have to wonder if this is criticism just for the sake of having something negative to say. Does anybody really think the kind of micro-optimizations these comments perpetuate are really worth making it a more complex problem?

Props to the devs of this site for using what they wanted and felt was best for their use case.

> If the developer saved time doing the React version instead of using a static site builder

How is this even possible?

On top of that, WHY would you even use React (a framework designed for dynamic web apps) for a static website? The only reason I know of is because developers want to look hip. Please tell me if I am completely missing something you know.

> How is this even possible?

Maybe they have processes where it is a one-click thing to setup a new site like this. With a combination of 'set in their ways' using a static builder might include setting up a new build system or fiddling with new CSS setups and so on.

E.g. I'm an iOS developer and if I am to prototype something, I often just start from an already built app rather than doing it inside a prototyping tool. Because it saves me time for what I want out of it.

It's the "hip" thing to do.

Sure, if you're really good with React and prefer that environment, you can use it to build static sites, or a framework like Gatsby to even make it efficient... but this site is 4 pages and requires no JS at all. I could make this thing in about 30 minutes using notepad.

Taking a moment here to ponder the design of the webpage. If that style was the result of an amateur at an unsexy company, I'd imagine this would be considered "ugly" or "uninspired". Knowing its the product of a hip young company however one might label it "bold" or even "innovative". Reminds me of fashion, where the only difference between a person wearing goofy clothes and a model is everything besides the clothes themselves.

It feels if though they went for the YC/HN minimalism thing but executed poorly. A dark/black background can be pleasing to the eye, but combined with the yellow and hard white texts it's almost unbearably hard to digest. When I clicked to the application form, the white input boxes blinded me to the point where I had to close the tab almost immediately.

at least it's responsive!

> If that style was the result of an amateur at an unsexy company, I'd imagine this would be considered "ugly" or "uninspired". Knowing its the product of a hip young company however one might label it "bold" or even "innovative".

Yes art and design needs to be evaluated in the context of the creator and the time. I don’t think that’s an unusual idea or that it shows anything up.

When did this trend start, this monoculture of design? It seems that nowadays, content and function aren't even important--what's important is getting the right filter, portraying the right "vibe," and using vapid, trendy, copywriting. I write this as someone who's obsessed with design, but who kind of hates myself for it. It seems like people around the world are designing defensively--insecure with themselves and making everything as Squarespace/Stripe lookalikes, to the point where if one does something different, it's considered ugly/bold.

It seems very reminiscent of dropbox's new design. It's tough for me to call it amateur - the information hierarchy is clear, the text is legible and the layout isn't confusing.

https://dropbox.design/

Yap... but then again: the design is making you talk about the page, me replying to your comment etc. I don’t think it’s so bad. It serve another purpose than you think I believe

Good point. In this case it's probably a calculated style though (with the dynamic you described taken into account), and not actually made by an amateur.

I can't speak to the amateur-ness of the design itself, but I can speak to the fact that my eyes started to hurt trying to read the site itself. I don't think the color scheme and 'black-space' is helping legibility, at least for me.

Smart. People here are too focused on the design of the page.

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