bcrawford

My logic: almost everyone who succeeds did so with a trail of 'no' behind them and the only way to get those is to put yourself out there. YC's application was something I labored over for a couple weeks and feel I got a great deal of value from that process alone... this is no different and I would have hoped that everyone applied.

My suggestion: get a whiteboard, now. Don't do anything but decompress for the next few days (i.e.. fuck off) and write anything that comes to mind about your startup.

One of the most important processes for the human brain is externalization: it's why talking about problems helps as you can't think feelings... but you can write them down and later think about them.

I'd wager you're quite emotionally charged right now, hence the paralysis, so just start writing (don't erase anything) and sort it out next week. Things will be much clearer then.

Best of luck to you!

Having the money to sort out the pithy details of day-to-day life like food, shelter, etc. and simultaneously funding my insane garage projects I embark upon constantly is a nice-to-have but not an expectation.

Really, in the end, I just want to build a legion of robotic minions.

As for the specs you're throwing out: my mom doesn't care about specs, cores, or whatever a GPU-whatsitdoozy is. Android will win with the hardcore nerd/tech-enthusiast like the 360/PS3 won with the hardcore gamer... Apple/Nintendo is for everyone else.

Oddly, what is keeping me awake isn't the application so much. I've kind of resigned myself that it would be a nice-to-have but not a requirement. What keeps me awake now is things like reducing my monthly expenses more and more so I can work less and less for the man and more and more for myself.

I also generally exercise at the start of the fast to burn off my glycogen stores so my body relies on stored fat for energy the next day.

Settled.

Honestly, any respectable nerd is going to have either a) a box to SSH to or b) a VPN endpoint... if you encrypt/encapsulate all traffic originating from your tethered machine there's very little chance they'd be able to catch you.

Chrome OS isn't trying to tackle an existing market any more than Nintendo's Wii was trying to target the hardcore gamer. There are far more people interested in doing LESS with their computer as it's less daunting and intimidating that way. Combine that with the severely lessened threat of viruses and a near one-click full system restore feature that, due to cloud storage, poses absolutely no threat to any data less and you have a #winning level of simplicity that no Windows-based netbook can offer.

At my last job, I was being paid at a mid-level admin rate but was expected to do senior-level engineering and even architectural work (I had proven that I could). The best they could do is 3-10% (and even that was pulling teeth) per year. I had already been there several years and it would have taken me several more to finally make what I should have been making all along... minus the opportunity for raises based on that income.

In the end: I went out, interviewed, and negotiated a salary elsewhere at such an insanely high increase (just under 40%) that I figured my then-current employer would just show me the door and say thanks for my time. Much to my surprise, despite having a hard time squeaking out a few extra K before, they were not only offering to match my offer but exceed it by an appreciable margin.

The moral of the story: a lot of employers will aim to profit on your complacency. Period. It is more profitable to pay you the least as possible as long as possible. They got damn good (if I do say so myself) engineer at a steep discount. Even if I had taken their offer (which I didn't), it would have taken me a couple more years just for my pay to normalize to what it should have been all along.

Unless I'm reading this wrong: if you work on it solely on your time, with your equipment, it's yours (in California, anyway).

UPDATE: Oh, also it can't compete with their business.