One thing I've learned from YC is that practically all startups are broken in some way, no matter what face they show to the world. And novel kinds of breakage are the basis of humor.
But it seems funny now that I look back. Whatever made me think a shared hosting account was the way to go? `:D
I've been seriously waiting for a Scrubs-style primetime comedy on startups and/or Silicon Valley-esque entrepreneur culture. Maybe one of these days, I'll get a pilot-writer and pitch the idea to a network...
heh, or you could always pitch to YCombinator :D
AGENT: "So tell me about the show, what's it about?"
NERD #1: "Well its 4 guys, sitting inside on computers typing, making jokes, writing code and eating pizza trying to reshape the social networks in cyberspace."
AGENT: "So do you go outside?"
GEEK #1: "No, we don't need to. I just look up 'alt.nerd.obsessive' and find the google location & look it up on google map."
AGENT: "Do you do normal things?". "You know Like go to cafe's and meet women?". "You know talk, drink coffee?"
GEEK #2: "I saw a girl this week. I've counted three this week... including the one at the 7-11". D"o you know what I'm working on? I'm optomising a ...."
NERD #2: "Don't listen to them. They're doing server side work. We are the front end guys. I own a mac. It's got an OS10-X Tiger OS with ..."
AGENT: zzz... zzz... zzz...
NERD #1: "Guys, guys your blowing it, jeez. Now look what your've done. You've put the agent to sleep. How we ever going to get on TV?"
Geek #2: "What about YouTube?"
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Oh yeah it's really going to catch on :)
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/the_art_of_the_.html
That said, his book "The Art of Start" did not live upto my expectations. I felt that it was too practical; consequently, leaving little room for creativity or sparking new ideas.
He got his MBA, then got into evangelizing about Apple through a friend. I think I would count MBAs who evangelize about Apple as suits.
Edit: By the way, nothing about being a suit means you're not nice, of course. I would assume that most suits are probably nicer than most hackers, because it's the job of a suit to say nice things, while it's the job of a hacker to say true things.
His book Selling the Dream is a lot more out there. A lot of his ideas has since been appropriated by others, so it's not entirely fresh. Still, there are some good things in that book that you won't find anywhere else. He has this huge list of people who told famous entrepreneurs their ideas sucked. Like, "I think there's a world market for maybe 5 computers." But about 100 of those quotes in a row. Including the quote where he turns down the chance to be CEO of Yahoo! because "there's no money in search and the commute is too far." :-)
Don't forget, hacker originally meant someone who crawled around in steam tunnels. It really just means someone who explores and takes stuff apart because they want to learn how it works. That could be code, could be social systems.