The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator | Hacker News Reader

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator

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106 pointsDanielRibeiro33 comments

PG, what do you think of the book?

It's remarkably accurate. There's stuff in it that makes me wince, but I suppose that's a feature of any accurate portrait.

Randy got to see everything, even interviews, and he's a very observant guy.

PG, do you think you could skim through a short excerpt from my book as well? I wrote it after applying to the class of S12 and wanted to share what I learnt: http://bit.ly/icecreamstart Ice Cream Startups: Pick your best idea & run with it

"... Silicon Valley’s past is more accessible than its present ..."

interesting Randell Stross is a historian & lecturer, "Business and Society and Strategic Management." ~ http://randallstross.com/bio/ the book intro is here (pdf, 134Kb) ~ http://randallstross.com/thelaunchpad/the_launch_pad_intro.p...

I get a little frustrated when books centered on tech startups don't come in electronic formats. Pretty please, publisher, can we get a Kindle version?

Seconded on the Kindle version (preferably one which is formated correctly for a change). I suspect we aren't alone in that preference.

PG, any chance of finding out if there will be a Kindle version?

And a Google eBooks/Play version too, just to round things out.

There WILL be a Kindle version (I emailed him). I think it's just not listed in pre-order.

(I actually convinced a friend of mine who wrote a great new book on dealing with analysts, Up and to the Right (http://www.amazon.com/UP-RIGHT-Strategy-Influence-ebook/dp/B...) that he should do an ebook. For some reason he thought it would cause piracy!)

http://www.amazon.com/Launch-Pad-Combinator-Exclusive-ebook/...

Thanks for the Kindle link. Preordered!

Hardback: $14, Kindle edition: $18

Kindles read PDFs, right? I haven't seen a mass-market book released in years that doesn't wind up as a PDF in a torrent.

There's no reason to be frustrated. Even vinyl-only releases end up digital. Some enterprising soul will scratch your itch.

That's the problem with the old publishing model. They should set up a "choose your price" download model where people can download DRM-Free ebooks. Or the author creates their own torrented version with a link for "donations"

I don't think 'choose your price' needs to be embraced by all publishers, but a higher price for a digital version where costs are significantly reduced from a physical version doesn't sit well with me.

However, pricing is what the market will bear (bare??).

is that a referly (S12) affiliate link in the post?

Yep, how classy of DanielRibeiro to do so (that is if it was intentional or not), but I don't see how it wasn't intentional unless Amazon have started adding them to the end of their URL's, haha.

Sorry about that. My mistake. On the other hand the link is actually from Danielle Morrill[1], who is the founder of Refer.ly

Would change it if I could, but now only HN mods can do it...

[1] https://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/23335824183119462...

Hey guys Danielle here. Here's what I think we should do: if it makes commissions we can donate them to Room to Read through our charity program, and I will share all the stats in a blog post. Cool?

I think you should email PG to ask him to remove the referral link

why?

It incentives spam.

I have less of a problem with comments containing referral links since that's clearly the author's opinions, but I see submissions should have less blatant commercial interest.

HN already frowns upon self-submission of personal blog posts (if it's interesting enough for HN the argument goes, it would be submitted by a 3rd party).

How can I trust a website recommendations from a website like Coding Horror when every Amazon link generates a commission. It's encouragement to sell expensive products rather than more suitable ones.

I generally remove the referral query from URLs when I click through.

I wouldn't mind if all Amazon links on hn got a hn referral link and donated to Room to Read.

Can you extend this great gesture when the ebook is published as well? I would rather read it the softcopy.

Why not just, uh, keep the money? There's nothing wrong with referral links if people keep it reasonable.

How many people here honestly would sacrifice their reputation for a few bucks? The book is genuinely of interest to this community, not just something someone's spamming.

I'm a bit dismayed that as the founder of a service for referral links, you're not a bit more defensive of their use, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Offering to donate the money makes it seem like "ill gotten gains".

Good point well made. As to referrals, I didn't realize they needed defending - that is how the Internet, and business in general works, and either Amazon would be keeping that money or it would be in someone else's pocket. The product was absolutely relevant to the audience here, or it never would have made it to the front page and remained for 10+ hours

Since this is my link personally and we have a donate to charity program and fundraising drive going for Room to Read, I am happy to donate. I am more interested in the data than the money in this case and getting $50 in unexpected referrals isn't the key to our business model.

I'm primarily offering the donation to placate the community so the mods won't remove the referral link (in which case I couldn't get the data I need). HN could use our API and a few lines of Javascript to turn every Amazon link into a referral link if they wanted to, and donate to charity. I'll ask PG if he'd be interested

Uhm, who cares? Whatever the link is, you will have to pay the same price anyway and the commission would end up in Amazon's pockets. Luckily, Danielle is nice enough to donate all the proceeds to charity.

I just pre-ordered mine through this link, you're welcome.

Uhm, who cares? Whatever the link is, you will have to pay the same price anyway and the commission would end up in Amazon's pockets.

Exactamundo. A link on HN is either valuable content or it isn't... whether or not the submitter is profiting from it via a referral code is pretty much orthogonal to that, and is pretty much irrelevant. It's a silly thing to bitch about.

I think it's awesome that she is donating the commission to charity... but it's worth noting that Amazon prohibits telling others that you are doing this.

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/t15/...

The referral link itself is from Danielle (co-founder, not the Daniel who submitted the story): refer.ly/r/aY0H/show

My guess is OP saw it via refer.ly and submitted it straight without stripping the identifier.

New bootstrapping strategy, anyone?

Given the http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591845297/?tag=referly-20 URL how does referly know which of its users to pass Amazon's commission onto? Several could turn up to refer on the same product.

Probably via the "-20"

I think the "-20" is on every Amazon affiliate link.

No, Amazon dishes out -20 to all amazon.com IDs. Other countries have other numbers, e.g. -21 is amazon.co.uk.

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