bfioca

It's interesting that my first thought after reading this was, "I wonder how Facebook will compensate for this?" I know university networks (verified by .edu email addresses) used to be the bread and butter of Facebook but maybe they're already becoming less important...

Yeah I'll cop to that - it is a bit sales-pitchy. We were just really surprised by those figures, though, and I wanted to share them in a useful way. Can you blame me? :)

Well, I think it can be argued that it's at least a leading indicator.

A 5 person board seems like a bit much for an angel funded startup. There are some other weird terms in there, too - the vesting schedule for example.

Actually there's already mysql support in the mysqlplus driver. http://www.espace.com.eg/neverblock/blog/2008/08/28/neverblo...

It's supposed to be 1.8.6 compatible but neverblock isn't, I don't think - so I'm not sure what the advantage of this alone would be. I'd like to know, though.

That's not always true. It depends on the maturity of the startup's product but I don't believe (and RescueTime supports this) you can really expect to see long term productivity gains from employees when you require them to work well over 40 hour weeks.

I had lasik about 5 years ago and I've been very happy with the results. I previously had been moderately near-sighted and even after 5 years I'm still at 20/20. The cost was pretty expensive, the procedure was rather intense (remember, it is surgery), and the recovery was fairly quick but nerve-wracking due to the uncertainty of how your vision will end up leveling out.

I've had no long-term problems with dry eyes. The only side effects I really have are slight "halos" - which for me actually mean 3 prongs of light extending above bright light sources. This has changed my night-vision in a significant way but not in a disruptive one. It's simply that bright lights just look different to me at night than they used to. If that might matter to you, it would probably be a good reason to not do it at all.

I would do it again, though. To me the convenience outweighs the hassle and expense of the procedure.

Yeah I don't know - they removed RescueTime and some others. It seems pretty incomplete to have some but not others. I don't know what criteria they're using to decide which should be listed.

Anyone who pays any attention at all (let alone whose job involves investigating) wouldn't have made the mistake of calling YC an incubator. That just seems careless to me. I keep wanting to give Saray Lacy the benefit of the doubt but it's getting harder and harder. :/

At least she wants to talk to Paul about it. Anyone who does will realize that they've been generalizing YC incorrectly to at least some degree.

what a brave corporate logo!

I'd like to point out that I've never been entirely the type to put in insane work hours. To be fair, I've probably always worked more than the average person, but my particular peak efficiency (as I've been able to see while using RescueTime) comes when I work for bursts and then rest.

All of that being said, ever since I've been a founder (and especially during YC), I've noticed my work time shooting off the charts compared to how I used to work for other companies. I know why this is for me: it's simply because I know that every minute I'm not working is a minute that I'm subtracting from the company's success timeline. People talk about compressing your career into the span of 4 years as a founder, and yeah that's really what's going on. The reason is because if you don't work on your startup, there literally is nobody else that will. And for me, it feels like I'm costing myself money when I'm not working, and that takes a while for people like me to figure out how to balance. I have found that it gets easier after you've reached a more stable 1.0 of your product, but it's always a challenge.

I must say, though, that the idea that YC is a cult is pretty ridiculous.

Yeah but that's the point. :)

It makes sense to not be cash flow positive in the 2nd and 3rd year if you can show that investing in R&D or sales/marketing will accelerate growth by a nice factor. I think you're oversimplifying.

Maybe downgrading is considered an edge case.

RescueTime is mentioned! :)

Urbanspoon rocks, and this is a great idea. I've wanted something like this for years. :)

I'm not sure, but there's a few reasons not to post if you got accepted:

  1) just getting picked to go to the interview really only gives you like a 1 in 3 or so chance of getting in to YC.

  2) the news of getting accepted into YC is pretty
     noteworthy and shouldn't be squandered - 
    it's useful for PR purposes when you launch your product.  
    If you blow the news too early, you miss out on a 
    potential PR-based influx of users from TechCrunch for
    example.

Congrats to those who were picked to go to the interview!

I had exactly 1 karma point when we got accepted into YC. :)

Wow, this is bad. But it gives me an opportunity to counter her main point. I actually talked to Wayne of Zenter about this very thing - I asked him whether he felt any remorse or negativity about going from starting Zenter to working for Google. I was really curious about it, personally. He emphatically refuted any such notion! He told me he has been very happy there and was impressed by the way that google works and the process they have. I anticipated that response but it seemed very heartfelt and emphatic. I suspect that Google probably doesn't fit in to many of the big company stereotypes... I think that would've been obvious to anyone who'd done even a little bit of homework on the topic.

I dunno how I feel about that - it depends on the size of the pool (# of companies). Could get distracting in the long run.

I don't think it's correct to call this a YC clone, but it's cool to see more startup-investment-related activity coming out of Seattle - there's a lot of great talent and ideas there.

Funny because just 2 days ago I switched to FF3b4 because Safari was crashing too often on flash-based ads (of all things!). Now I'm switching back to Safari, even though FF3 is pretty cool, because it just handles (scrolls, renders, feels) faster and smoother.

Same goes for RescueTime - once we start hiring (soon?) I'm sure I won't bother reading resumes anyway. I never have, really. They're generally boring, bloated, uninteresting piles of hackitude that people use to get past recruiter/screeners. I generally 1) google the person 2) ask them what they did that they're most proud of, and 3) a bunch of other stuff that depends on the person/job. I also prefer people I've worked with before, or who have come highly recommended from trusted friends.

I agree with this - but I guess I don't count because I don't ever want to work for anyone but myself ever again.

http://www.rescuetime.com :)

That is what we call "a good problem to have."

awesome new look guys, huge evolutionary step. Love the twisp and catsby annimation, too. :)

Only if we end up so successful that we're one day able to build a tool to go back in time. Er, I mean... yes. :)

In all seriousness, though - the original RescueTime coming soon page was put up a little less than a year ago. It did land on TechCrunch, which is where you might have seen it so long ago.

This is exactly why you should rest a day before you push a big release to your app/site. After a marathon coding session there are bound to be bugs that will pop up in your dreams, and you'll catch them in time.