A New Experiment: The RFS | Hacker News Reader

A New Experiment: The RFS

ycombinator.com

175 pointspg57 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20090819131213/http://ycombinato...

I fear that this will hit the same problem that I've seen over and over again in the open source world when people show up with the question:

"What should I work on?"

If they weren't driven enough to already have a list of things they would like to do, they rarely were motivated enough to latch onto ideas when given them. A much more promising question was:

"How do I...?"

(Blog entry of mine from 2006, "On Being Unresponsive": http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2284)

Not all motivated people have a list, and the ones who are inexperienced may have a list, but can't prioritize it.

If you've got a group of people you trust (a team), let the group prioritize the list together. The result will be higher quality and more people will feel ownership of the ultimate selection.

Shameless plug, but on topic: My company makes a tool for exactly this problem, http://www.stormweight.com/

The Django team's organization of sprints has been awesome - we had 40ish people show up in Portland. Very few of them use Django regularly, some never had, but because we had two committers with a nice big list, everybody not only had a good time but was very productive.

Sometimes all people need is a little nudge, helping hand and direction.

It's pretty easy to stay motivated for two days. Staying motivated for a few years is a lot harder. How many of the people from that sprint became core contributors afterwards? That would seem to be the important data point.

I wonder what sparkled this? The lack of good ideas in submitted applications or you guys just wanted to be more involved, i.e. wanted to see your own vision of the future materialize in front of you?

I also wonder what happened to idea #2 on this list: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

Seemed like pikluk.com applied to solve precisely that (even before the list was published) but we got rejected, then exhausted our savings, burned out and just quietly returned to our day jobs, yet no YC-funded solution emerged up to date. Being rejected is one thing, but getting "Your idea is great, but we'll wait for someone with a better pedigree to work on it" message hurts much more.

Why not also add a link to "Startup Ideas" beside "Feature requests" so anyone can contribute ideas and vote on them?

This is one of those ideas that seems so obviously good after the fact that it just makes one marvel

This is a great idea. I've often wished that pg's original ideas article was updated more regularly but your suggestion would be a nice alternative to giving pg more work to do, especially given how poorly we pay him.

More the latter: there are particular things we wish people would do.

I don't think we've funded anyone to work on #2 yet.

I don't remember pikluk.com, but the ideas on that list are deliberately vague. There are a lot of possible permutations, some good and some bad. If we didn't fund you, it wasn't necessarily (or even probably) because we were waiting for someone else to do it.

"Your idea is great, but we'll wait for someone with a better pedigree to work on it" - Did the rejection letter/mail explicitly indicate that ? Or is that your own conclusion ?

Building pikluk.com on top of IE was a bit mistake, IMO. I assume it doesn't run on OSX, and is stuck on whatever version of IE you built it on...

Regarding the RFS 1: The Future of Journalism, and specifically the "So what will the content site of the future look like? And how will you make money from it?" part.

The answer to latter appears to be something along the lines of http://contenture.com. I.e. pay in one place, reap the benefits in many. The definition of benefits may vary, but this is the most consumer-friendly model that involves explicit paying.

But even if one has a good understanding how it's going to work, it is not clear how to get there. This project is going to be more of a business development and sales effort rather than anything else and so it is unrealistic to expect a random startup with no existing ties into the news industry to succeed.

So while I understand where this RFS comes from, I am not sure if it's realistic. It seems to be a very long shot. Correct me if I'm too pessimistic.

Another obstacle to worry about is micropayments!

It's not so much that you're pessimistic as that you're assuming too much about the solution.

Well, I am pessimistic in that I don't think there is a simpler solution :) Assuming the consumer of the content is paying.

But the solution is simpler, and the consumer's definitely not paying. I mean, everyone's a stringer now, right? Sites run on ads and buy content from stringers through an auction market that takes a cut of each transaction. You are that auction site. Competitive bidding for genres of content; reputation indices to incentivise quality journalism -- most of the details have been worked out already in other contexts. I mean, it's so brain-dead it must've been tried already, right? What am I missing?

I see a few things holding it back right now and once they are dealt with, online journalism can move on.

1) The big content providers have much of the established talent sewn up in contracts. 2) There is no single go-to place for content, like there is for music (itunes). 3) The current newspapers and magazines still think of themselves as content distributors rather than content providers. If you are a developer or advertiser, sure you can rig up advert auctions and RSS feeds, but the average user, just wants to read an interesting piece and needs a central place to go look for it.

A new paradigm would involve content-makers who are organizations and freelancers. We will always need organizations to front money for expensive journalism, and to provide some journalists who need the security, with a steady paycheck. In the future, if journalists work for someone, it will be a virtual newspaper with no delivery network of their own, and which only exists as a brand.

I think this would actually produce higher quality and better paid journalism than the current system. Since there's no formal approval process required to enter the market, good journalists who were previously stymied by old-style institutional filtration will have their day. And since journalism under this system is essentially free-agency, the possibility of bidding wars for pieces by (forgive me) "rockstar" journalists is highly probable, and provides a powerful incentive to do groundbreaking work. A journalist who's scored a comfy gig under the current system has no such incentive.

How the heck do you get access to closely guarded sources when you write for "j-auction.com"?

Hrm. Well, you don't write for the auction site any more than eBay sellers work for eBay. You're your own brand, and win or lose source-cred on your own merits. And it's called "stringerbell.com" :)

I hear you. And that's how it will be for more and more folks, no matter what happens.

Example, Megan Cotrell is a Chicago-based reporter who covers housing issues. She was with one news org (ChiTownDailyNews.org) for a while and now blogs for the Tribune company. Maybe in a year or so she'll be somewhere else. Wherever she goes, however, she takes her sources and contacts with her. So yes, she can pretty much get what she needs no matter who she's writing for. but getting to that point is a lot harder without a brand backing you up.

I read RFS1 too, and contenture.com is not at all what I got out of it. Honestly I'm confused as to why that RFS led you to such a specific conclusion, not to mention one that doesn't match the RFS (why would contenture need a good writer?).

On contenture itself, I just don't think this is a good idea. Its been discussed on HN before, but my basic problem with it is that you'd have the top tier sites (i.e. NY Times) subsidizing the less known sites. No matter how the pot is distributed, you'd have the top tier site sharing revenue with the less known sites. Why would they join in?

I've got a lot of other issues with the contenture model, but that's the obvious dealbreaker. Also, micropayments are so boring, I don't understand why they are thought of as a panacea.

A more interesting approach is the Hulu model. Try searching for a show Hulu doesn't have, like South Park. They'll still show search results for it, and direct you offsite to watch the episode. As a result, the user learns that Hulu is the place to find online TV shows, regardless of the network. In this manner they've inserted themselves between the product makers and their customers, which is a recipe for $texas. And should they later arrange a syndication deal for South Park they can seamlessly change from offsite links to onsite links.

A key point with the Hulu model is that they still control a huge chunk of the best content. As much as possible, they're only "outsourcing" the long tail, low ROI content.

Its not a particularly new idea. Google largely operates the same way. Google has become the starting place for the web, even if your destination is offsite. When they find areas where they can replace offsite content with their own they do so (think Gmail, Youtube, and the ill-fated Knol). Blockbuster video does the same thing (owned by Paramount, who makes films), and so does your grocery store (with in-house brands where they see high-margin opportunities).

I'm not sure this is a great idea, but I'm no expert (and you, PG, are). Here are my concerns:

1) It seems like it encourages people who are more passionate about having a startup than it does people who are passionate about their particular idea.

2) Is selecting a RFS as your startup's core going to help or hurt an applicant? I suppose this is something we won't know the answer to until after we see the scope of this round's applications (or get a more general approximation for them). If the RFS is popular, you're going to have half your applicants with similar start-ups. Assuming you select your classes such that you have some measure of diversity in your portfolio, then ultimately groups doing a RFS will be at a disadvantage (since they'll be competing against everyone who did that RFS for a few slots, instead of competing generally), and the program's popularity will dwindle. Note that this assumes there are only a handful of RFS options.

1) I think there are several people without ideas but who also want to be polymaths. So they would become wrapped up in whichever RFS they chose.

2) I think the applicant pool is getting large enough that it is worth the risk. pg said the applicant pool was eclipsing 1000. The first round had, what, 220? And most of those companies were successful. If I were to apply, I would stick with one of the 5 ideas that I have brewing, and I think a lot of other people would stick with their ideas too.

"most of those companies were successful" - that's not even true

My bad. Leave out that bit of information. Restating what I meant in point 2 is that there is a large applicant pool, and ideas are just one factor. Doesn't YC choose based mostly on the applicants themselves? The idea is hardly relevant. One of the factors in funding "smart" founders I think is that they know when to abandon an idea and select another one.

This is a half-thought-out and cynical musing, but couldn't you use something like this as a honeypot to weed out the people who are less likely to succeed and thus give them less scrutiny?

I'm guessing YC gets a LOT of applications and going through them has turned into something of a burden, a problem not easily solved without adding more staff or lowering standards, neither of which is probably attractive. So how can you use the process itself to get people to sort themselves somewhat?

Hypothesis: you come up with a bunch of startup ideas in big spaces where no easy solutions exist, but many many startups have gone and failed. These apps go in the "paint-by-numbers" pile and get less scrutiny, because you figure two things:

1. For someone who doesn't have an idea or a problem to solve, they'll look at YC and see this list of pre-existing problems that need solutions. They could learn a domain or a space really well and organically come up with their own idea, or they could use one of these. We assume that people in that situation who pick the easier path will probably come up with solutions that suck, but that's ok, because it keeps fewer apps from the "artisan" pile, which get much heavier attention.

2. If someone does submit an app to the "paint-by-numbers" pile that is truly novel or brilliant, it'll probably leap off the page, so all is not lost.

I guess my overall hypothesis is that people who need to pick an idea off a list like this and/or don't know enough about a space to come up with their own idea are probably unlikely to succeed. This just gives them an opportunity to declare so more readily :)

I'm sure that YC isn't doing this, but would it be useful?

Your point is 100% valid and probably completely against the philosophy of YC. But it would be a perfect (evil) plot for an incubator called Black Combinator (instead of White-Combinator :-)

I can't help but think that while pg may be hinting that he has a solution in mind, it's just a trick to get people to think harder about it and come up with new ideas.

Sometimes, getting people to believe that something is possible is the best way to get them to come up with a solution.

Sometimes I have no more than a gut feel that something is possible, but in this case I feel like I know more precisely what the right answer is.

Would the right answer be niche reporting? Basically sites like Talking Points Memo or Techcrunch where a small but focused group produces quality reporting on a specific niche?

This is a relevant article about Politico and their model. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/wolff200...;

RFS1: write a crawler to gather as much information as possible on trending topics, rank the sources, then have a writer look through the autatically gathered data and use his intelligence and skill to put it into a nicely flowing story that makes sense?

You've just described the standard news editorial process. Instead of a "crawler" they have the wire services, and source rankings are fairly static, but otherwise, yep, that's how it's done. The problem is not the means of production (so to speak) it's how to make money from it.

"Groups applying to work on this idea should include at least one person who can write well and rapidly about any topic, one or more programmers who are good at statistics, data mining, and making sites scale, and someone who's reasonably competent at graphic design. These functions can of course be combined, and in fact it's even better if they are. Xooglers would be particularly well suited to this project."

It seems like that paragraph could be copy-and-pasted at the end of every RFS they put out...

The Personal News Agency

Dealing with information follows the (almost universal) five-step pattern: sensing > filtering > reasoning > creating > enjoying. It is like noise > signal > information > action > flow, or, fear > accept > share > use > love. And many more.

No one has to consider the existence of information sources. They will grow up instantly from individuals, local groups, global communities and professionals specialised on production.

The most important is to find the right channels for you and open as many channels possible inside you to let information flow through your senses.

Don’t bother about acquiring exact knowledge. Let your brain automagically store whatever seems to be important, go and discuss frequently your ideas to distill thoughts and opinions about what you have read. Create knowledge based on feedback.

The tool you need must focus on helping you channeling, tagging, formatting information and producing, sharing results/knowledge. The return will come from surprisingly unseen and now unpredictable receivers. Once you shift from consuming to producing you’ll open channels in other systems willing to recognize your effort.

More at http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-per...

Twitter?

Can you distill knowledge from tweets on Twitter?

You'll have to add tweets to a wiki or a mindmap, tag them and visuzalize later in several contexts ...

A Personal News Agency would offer a complete solution:

- deal with sources of information

- add filters/metadata/semantics in a completely free way: multiple tagging, categories, microformats, etc.

- help you visually organize information to distill knowledge (mindmap like, multiple lenses, timeline, treemaps, etc etc)

- package the result in formats others can consume (blog, tweets, multimedia, wiki, widgets)

- built in mechanism for monetization / usage metering

Ideas are cheap and I'm already committed to a project, so here's my take on the RFS. Imagine a site with the following attributes:

- Anyone can submit content in any language.

- Anyone can translate any content.

- Editors (initially the founders) select content that meets topic and language standards.

- Editors independently vote on content priority; site layout adjusts automatically based on editor consensus.

- Content authors (and translators, if any) get points proportionally to the editorial vote.

- A certain (large) number of points grants editorial access (having proven that they are invested in the site and get the standards).

- Points can be exchanged for world currency in either direction (bought/sold).

- People pay in points to access content (per article or per month).

- People start with enough points to give them access for a month or so.

- Eventually there would be editorial boards in different languages and ideally with different topics.

I know newsvine is kinda like this, but without the monetization. Newsvine also seems far more editorial than factual, and doesn't have the same "gotta earn editorial access" feel. Graduated karma-based community systems like stackoverflow (and HN) keep quality high longer. What do you think, would something like this offer a viable alternative to the journalistic status quo?

To respond to the general idea of the RFS, not RFS1 specifically: I think this sort of feedback to the startup community is incredibly valuable. I take it as an statement of "what they think the world needs/wants/would-pay-for right now." Having a sense for markets seems a bit like being able to predict the weather based on the way an old injury aches, and young entrepreneurs with a whole lot of energy don't usually have that sense. As one of them, I have to say it's nice to see suggestions of unsaturated/needy markets. It's icing that the advice is coming from someone who also can help bring proposed solutions to market.

As a side note, I'd really love if someone similarly informed did this with a philanthropic eye. Think "things the world could really use right about now," since those who feel the pains rarely are the ones with the ability to fix them on a replicable scale. Like a giant to-do list for humanity, maintained by people with a great degree of perspective. But I also have a hankering for a philanthropic equivalent of YC that funds and supports non-loss startups.

RFS1 asks what the content site of the future might look like. I think what it might be driving at is a deeply entertaining and aesthetically pleasing narrativization of some hardcore data-mining and pattern recognition on current events -- a real-time story spun by smart people with writing and design and artistic chops. It'd be news as art and serial novel and near-future prediction -- news as a thing of beauty. It would have to be something people are willing to pay well for, because to succeed at its purpose it would have to be ad-free. If this is at all true, it's pretty rad. But, well, it isn't so much a startup as a sort of content band. It would depend sooo heavily on the artistic sensibilities of the founders. Perhaps that's why you want a greater hand ...

I don't know if the goal of this thread is to discuss this particular RFS, but it's one that I've thought about frequently in the recent past.

To me, it seems like anything wanting to hit "google-levels" of success in the news sector has to be more than profitable - it has to solve one or more current flaws in the news-media. Approaching this problem and building a better media mousetrap would seem to require at least some thought as to what those flaws are, which appears to be (wisely, IMHO) left as an exercise to the implementers.

I love the idea of an RFS.

As for the first one, I think the problem is already largely solving itself. There are plenty of blogs out there that are profitable, like the AOL blogs, the mommyblogs, TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. The recipe is simple: focus on a monetizable niche and churn out quality content. I'm not sure if the Business Insider is profitable yet but I think it's well on track to becoming the Wall Street Journal of the 20th century.

The only thing that always strikes me about news and people reading it is that feed readers are more and more popular..

This is a problem (because your not getting "bums on seats" all the time).

My approach would be to create something that had a good revenue model even with feed readers being used.

EDIT: micro content and things like edited news Aggregators also come to mind.

This is a good way to seed the discussion. I think good ideas often come out of iterative discussion and tweaking.

So it would be good to provide a platform where people can vote, tweak, enhance, branch out new ideas, etc. similar to http://uservoice.com.

My company makes a product for exactly this purpose [1]. It's better for this sort of task than UserVoice because it works with an ordered list of preferences, not just plus/minus points, which yields far more granular voting. It allows realtime interaction and chat, too. I built it specifically because UserVoice wasn't meeting my needs for internal brainstorming/idea discussion at my previous startup. Let me know what you think if you try it out (jacob@stormweight.com).

[1] http://www.stormweight.com/

> http://www.stormweight.com/privacy

Your privacy page feels really shady to me.

WebBeacons (also referred to as GIF files, pixels or action tags) help Stormweight System Inc recognize a unique cookie on your browser. We use this tool to compile aggregate information about you, and it is not personally identifiable. This information includes IP addresses, search terms, domain names, and browser types. We use this information to track usage and other patterns on our Websites. We may share this aggregate information with our partners or service providers.

"WebBeacons"? -I knew "GIF files" as "images". And an IP-address is not personally identifiable? Right, as long as your ISP is not forced to personally identify you. How do you track an users's search terms with your WebBeacons?

I'd recommend talking to your users like a normal person, not in vague half-legalese.

Truth be told, we thought it looked weird, too. We don't use "webBeacons" or anything weird; just cookies. Google drops a few cookies for analytics, too, but that's it.

I'm going to go over the privacy policy today and make it reflect the reality that privacy, security, and ethical business practices are at our essence.

Since you read privacy policies closer than we do, could you recommend a good examplar of a friendly, non-legalese privacy policy?

Thanks for the feedback!

[Edit] I removed the weird WebBeacons reference, simplified the language, and added an additional message at the top. Does it feel less shady?

You thought it looked weird too? :) Does that mean it's just a copy & paste from somewhere else?

It's better now, of course, but it still feels like too much text.

Without prejudice to your rights under applicable data protection or privacy law, Stormweight Systems Inc may amend this Privacy Policy from time-to-time. We will notify you of such amendments or changes by updating the Last Updated date at the top of this Privacy Policy.

You will notify me by updating a date on your website? Sounds a bit passive for a "notification" :)

The problem with legalese is that it never really tells a normal person anything. It's an impenetrable wall of text which no one wants to read, but possibly should, in case it contains some outrageous evil to which you'd end up agreeing.

That's why I want to avoid it when I get my own stuff out there. Since I'm not planning to do anything evil, I don't need to distract & confuse anyone with legalese.

And since I don't live in the US, I don't have to use legalese to cover my ass from ridiculous lawsuits either :p

Sorry, forgot to comment..

> Since you read privacy policies closer than we do, could you recommend a good examplar of a friendly, non-legalese privacy policy?

Actually I just happened to feel like checking yours out. I'm afraid I haven't got any privacy policy to link to, but as I mentioned earlier, I'd try to make things as simple as possible.

Something like:

We only have whatever data you give us, and we only use it for this website's functionality - nothing else.

but is rather a direct though somewhat atrophied consequence of a very successful 20th century business model.

I am curious to know more about this? Can you please provide a few links or talk a little bit more about this? thanks!

Really neat idea. It could also happen someone outside YC could take the idea and work/improve on it.

Where do these ideas come from?

"Where do these ideas come from?"

Probably from http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html, which is roughly a year old. RFS#1 is #3 on that (presumably unranked) list.

They come from that list in the same way food comes from a grocery store.

so RFS #1 starts with advertorials and sell data about the readers? that is the model you see on TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, etc run on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com