Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
Congrats to Mr. Buchheit and YC, you're both making out like bandits.
More than that though, I'd like to learn about the nitty-gritty of e-mail. As a game developer I do mostly C++ application code, so everyone else probably has way more knowledge than I... But for example I'd like to be able to embed the ability for my programs to send emails (as a debugging mechanism). Or even receive emails! (Imagine taking down some number of your servers, for patching purposes, by sending a "console command" as an email to servers+someadminpassword@yourservice.com. Or running queries on your servers by sending the query as an email, and then they email back the response.
How would I write a C++ function like:
bool SendEmail( const tchar* destination_email_address, const tchar* subject, const tchar* body );There's no technical reason why email addresses like markbao@news.ycombinator.com can't work. In fact, I'd argue Tumblr/Posterous have some of the same core ideas you're proposing.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/24/startup-school-gmail-frien...
Honestly, a large part of that talk has stayed with me and kept my main outside-of-work project quietly in the background. I'd like to think I had the confidence and motivation before that talk. But somehow that talk just clicked for me. And has encouraged me to keep at it.
His approach is sort of what we all, I think, aspire for. A really clear, honest core outlook. And then entrepreneurship as bottom-up programming. It's actually much more difficult than it seems -- because you have to look ahead compared to a lot of people and then insist on relearning things in a bottom-up approach. You see it with all great founders (Zuck, etc.). On the outside, they seem lucky. But if you look more closely, they have a habit of putting themselves in the right position by looking two or three steps ahead (as I think Adam D'Angelo's talk @ Startup School 2010 was partly getting at). But then they insist on revalidating things from the ground up (e.g., Paul B's 'winging it' and deriving the overgeneralized nature of advice without a particular context, etc.). Anyway, they all make it look easy. But if you're smart, I think you look at them as real inspiration in terms of getting things done the right way.
Someone should write an in-depth story about the rise of YC, would be an excellent read!
FF was acquired about 15 months ago, so that's about how long Paul was at Facebook.
Also, I imagine being a partner in YC is very much a fulltime job.
In the mean time, thanks for reading!
What an odd modifier.
It's slightly more complex than desirable for good writing, but it's certainly well within normal bounds for size, especially for news articles. News articles do that sort of thing a lot.
YCombinator is "famous"?
Er, 3 + 1 == 2? Or maybe they mean "web startup world"?
Why would Paul leave just before launch? To me it means Paul either was never involved even though he was told he would be, or it's crap and he's leaving before the shit hits the fan.