aashaykumar92

Very cool. This got me thinking: there are many tourist sites where people aren't allowed to go anymore because of safety/security issues. It would be awesome if the site coordinators (or whoever makes executive decisions on such things) would make pages like this one available on their websites for their respective tourist attractions. And in more POVs.

Yeah I saw that as a pretty glaring mistake too. I'm guessing he thinks that because the founding team is valued at $1.7M, they actually get $1.6M to spend but I can't believe that to be true at all. From what I know, YC companies receive $120K to spend.

It sounds really good, congrats! But growth is the statistic to focus on. Maybe make your current stat of 600 users be your starting point and make it your goal to increase 10-15% weekly from now on.

Also, reach out to your current users constantly and ask for feedback so you know what to improve on for each iteration. This will come in handy 4 months down the road when you are trying to gain 300 users in a week. Good luck!

Super admirable that Mr. Musk is willing to help given his extremely busy schedule. Shows that he understands the importance of the public being more knowledgeable about the origins of what our present-day technology relies on.

Seems like a strategic acquisition to help Carousel grow.

The competitive advantage seems to be in the Voice Search and in the gaming. If the gaming takes off, it'll be hard for anyone to compete. Everyone so far is talking about the Roku and Apple TV as competition, which they are, but what about the Xbox and PS4? Those offer gaming and other streaming services like Netflix too. And it seems as though Amazon is trying to be at the center of all of them.

Funny, I applied to YC with this exact idea. Unfortunately, I had barely done any work other than thinking through the idea so, understandably, nothing came of it but glad to see someone went through with it...good luck!

Good luck, hope it takes off there! I go to Michigan and this space has become annoyingly saturated...there are 3 or 4 student-startups focused on building a 'Craigslist for Michigan students' and none of them have had an edge. My only advice would be to make your loyal users a priority and hopefully more will come...I'm willing to bet there will be at least one more service like yours that already exists at Penn or will exist shortly.

Reviewing rejected apps would be a waste of time given how many apps YC has received. Also, what does 'big' mean? I doubt a startup exists that was rejected by YC then grew to a $1B valuation--someone would probably have heard of that by now, made a big deal of it, and those of us on HN would know. But I don't doubt that YC-rejected startups have gone on to raise a few rounds of funding and/or may have even made <$100M exits.

We can easily expect GitHub to continue its exponential growth. The timing seems perfect to me...Chris will take on a role that will require him to ensure that the product remains excellent and will implement the innovation that Tom will be responsible for. Both suit their styles.

This is awesome, congrats to all the hosts! It is more common now to see female founders of non-tech companies but hopefully this conference will inspire more women to get into starting tech companies and furthermore, will inspire younger women to pursue more technical degrees, namely CS.

Another important trait Ron Conway highlighted at Startup School that really stuck with me was that Founders of 'super successful companies' can careless about other distractions, especially the media. He highlighted the example of Ben Silbermann and how he used to reject several interviews so as not to lose focus on Pinterest.

So although it's a hybrid of two traits mentioned in the article ("They are obsessed with the quality of the product/experience" and "They don't get excited about pretending to run a startup"), it is still one that should be there by itself.

That doesn't solve the problem of completing a course, though.

MOOCs can't expect to replace universities right now, it just won't happen. But if they integrate their platforms in a way to HELP college students and even adults, their popularity will blow up so that in the future, it will be more realistic to think that MOOCs may be THE go-to for a higher level education. Focusing on the college population and growing that is the best way to begin...being ubiquitous from the start has not and will not work, it's just too big of a problem.

There are two large problems with MOOCs right now that are documented in the article but not well enough supported IMO: 1) There are no transferrable credits to colleges and 2) They are free.

And the two problems go unsurprisingly hand in hand, and they both have to be solved simultaneously if MOOCs are going to work. The ideal scenario would be that each course costs somewhere around $150 and courses can be transferred WITH credits to as many accredited institutions as possible. Why? Well firstly, once you pay for something, the average persons's conscious will naturally have that commitment in the back of their minds and will not want the investment to be a sunk cost. Furthermore, if credits are offered, college kids will be able to take a variety of courses in fields that they may want to try out and the more institutions that allow credits from MOOCs, the more students will feel comfortable taking these courses. It will be a great outlet for students to use in a variety of ways. The SJSU example is extremely poor as the sample is way too limited and as mentioned in the article, the bulk of students who signed up for courses were in limited situations.

Definitely interested in learning more about the startup, but I agree with others in that you should lay out some guidelines for what you expect/want out of your co-founder. Feel free to ping me--aashayk@gmail.com

I'm glad pg also shared the percentage breakdown. If just the number of startups based on funding year had been shared, YC's progress/success would not be nearly as telling as with the percentages also shared.

What a perfect week to launch the story in. Anyone can learn how to code once they put their mind to it.

Though it is fascinating how old such an artifact is, it doesn't at all surprise me that such a communication device was invented and used during ancient times. Going from the picture, the 'phone' doesn't look too sophisticated but has the functionality that justifies its utility for an ancient civilization.

Given the tools we have to detect the sun's 'doings' today are magnanimously more sophisticated than 200 years ago, could it be that 200 years ago several fluctuations were missed because the overall balance still remained throughout the cycles?

It is amazing how obvious it is that customer satisfaction is at the core of every new initiative Amazon launches.

Fuck the competition, don't worry about them--your post shows there is no reason to yet.

If this is a way to get your name out there and you're looking for Google to acquire you in the future, fine but I guess I don't see the point in this post as it's a waste of time writing about competition instead of building and improving LiveNinja. Sorry to be blunt but all the best with LiveNinja, I do hope it crushes Google's stab at it.

Even Boerries says it will still take a long time for a 'techie' to acquire a Visa, Germany just offers a simpler application process and is fastER than that of Americas.

And even if the time it takes to get a Visa is close to similar, it comes down to a debate between being in Silicon Valley vs. Berlin...despite the so-called saturation of startups in the valley, the reality is opportunity is far greater in the valley than anywhere else. Silicon Valley wins IMO.

Didn't think of that but just added it to my post...thanks so much!

The negatives posed in this post are hardly negatives. Companies will be able to raise the money they actually need and not have to deal with shitty advisors or gain great advisors and dilute a little more. To an extent, this separation will weed out the shitty VCs, which is an ultimate win for the industry. Is my logic correct?

Usually when I see the same topics make it to the front page again and again, I get somewhat annoyed. But when articles that highlight the importance of customer service make it, I am genuinely happy to see it. Why? Well quite frankly, it is an area that still needs work and given how many aspiring tech founders are on HN, it is an excellent place to reiterate such a point.

Personal anecdote if you care to read: My roommate and I launched a mobile app a little over a year ago on our campus and it didn't do as well as we wanted. Sure, the app wasn't as refined as it could have been but we still expected far more users. Looking back, one thing we never did was reach out to our initial users and ask for feedback. This time around, just last week, we launched the same service but in the form of a website (alwaysbuzzn.com) and have reached out to almost every one of our initial users to ask for their genuine feedback. Not only has it helped us iterate, but it has shown our users that we care about what they think and the word is spreading faster than ever. Sure, we can say the website is more effective than the app, but I still point our success to our attention to maximizing the user experience beyond anything else.

What an amazing lineup. The big selling point in attending this talk is the sheer number of perspectives the audience will be fortunate to hear about, not to mention in a more personalized setting than normal.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not Google releases a statement as to why they were down.

Everything about this is beautiful. The idea, the UI, the timing, etc.

Furthermore, if you click around, it seems to be a higher end market. Is this intentional or do you think these were the only businesses interested in selling online?

When someone stands up for so many people, this is the expected outcome. Unfortunately, it's doubtful that the government will take much of this into account given how badly they were exposed--they will more than likely make an example out of Snowden in such a way that no one is encouraged to do something like this again.

Before you down vote, maybe try it: I bet if the pros and cons were written down, people would actually find the aggregate magnitude of each to be similar.