ashleyreddy

Have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish. No one likes hitting a moving target. Sure there might be pivots, but don't add to that by not understanding in great detail what you want built.

Assist them by helping them test everything you can.

I take the Reworked point of view on the word. I prefer "Starter".

http://37signals.com/rework/

VS 2010 /c# asp.net , ANSI C, Notepad++ Mac:xcode: objective C, Clang

I bought a new Logitech MK550 Wireless Keyboard and mouse. I can work for hours with this ergo keyboard. Very good boost in productivity for $70

Thats not unreasonable. Consider the following. $30Mil worth of properties rented. They charge 10% so thats 3 mil gross profit. As I recall from SUS they are now processing the entire transaction.

Alas it's only open to non-profits.

Even Marketeers don't like marketing. Its a tedious pain in the ass. You shouldn't absolve you self of all marketing responsiblities. Read some marketing books and blogs. At present no one will know your product better than you.

HTML 5 is still in a draft state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5 Looks like it will be in IE9. So whats all this about Microsoft not adopting open standards? Their kind of a big company isn't it okay for them to support both?

Here is one I submitted to YC under the cool non-computer hacks: In the early days of ppc advertising when it was straight auctions. I would call up all our competitors and have them bid just 1 cent more than the previous guy so they wouldnt loose their place but dropped our cost per click to 1/4 what we were paying before (we were ranked first). I think Google changed there bidding system because of me :)

Another one was where we replaced a site created by March 1st for over 1 million dollars with a Yahoo! store in 48 hours for about $50.00/month

Graphics Gems. http://www.graphicsgems.org

Dropbox. Simple concept well executed.

Grab a bottle of womens hair dye. The stuff for men leaves too many greys behind.

I've used legalzoom to setup a Nevada LLC. Easy and cheap.

My first business idea was making scrolling LED displays. I tried this about 20 years ago. At the time I didn't realize that almost ALL electronics are manufactured off shore and that it would be impossible to compete. We did make a prototype but that as far as we went with the business. I learned that just because I could make something doesnt mean that I can build a business around it. There is a lot to learn before one becomes well versed in the field of startups. The word failure is not appropriate for our field. I think not yet succeeded is better.

Just FYI. As far as game programming there is cocos2d it works really well and is very easy to use.

Thats great info? BTW have you tried Windows in a VM on it?

Wow, that's huge. I assume that if they are profitable and there business ideas are scalable, their chances for getting into YC greatly improve?

IMHO Ycombinator seems to be very founder centric. Tell us a little bit more about yourselves to see if it makes sense to submit to YC. We applied in YC 2010 Fall. Did you look at the questions they ask? eg. how long have the founders known each other, what other projects have they worked on. Interesting stories. If I read PG correctly these seem to be more important that the idea itself. Nice site BTW!

I wrote one for my startup paperhater.com Just using regexp.

Good summary of what happened at SUS2010!

Its my understanding that open source startups don't scale well because revenue is derived from services vs software sales. It would be hard to get venture backing for these. I'm sure there are a few outliers...

but people put things on Github and other online repositories all the time. Is this still an issue?

The pager duty guys are great. I had the pleasure of meeting them at the reception last week.

Ok let me explain it this way. No one has the exact amount of money, talent, time etc for their startup. You may have more of one and less of another. Say you have some surplus money, wouldn't you want to invest a tiny amount in a fellow Starter that had a promising idea. That wouldn't effect your level of success one bit. I don't see YC as a competition in the sense that their can be more than one winner.

Pretty site. How many signups do you have?

Yeah and it would be fun don't you think. Also someone else has done the work of qualifing and bringing together promising startups.

That is why I prefaced my question, because it could be viewed as not motivated...I just thought it would be fun thats all.

Glengarry Glen Ross ABC Always Be Closing!

I'm dating my self here but Risky Business.

If you liked Shogun you should read his book King Rat. One of my top 10!

Fiction Enders game Rendezvous with Rama Hunger Games The old man and the sea

Non Fiction Rework Wiseguy Sun Tzu The art of war

I work on C# on the pc side and objective C on the iPhone side. I don't have a problem going back and forth. Try it out for yourself. I don't think its that much of an issue.