boringkyle

This. Definitely. Physical activity helps me survive my days so much more than coffee does. Even just 10 minutes of core exercises can give you a huge boost that lasts longer than caffeine.

[1] to escape the daily grind - consume information (news, downloading the top apps in the app store, HN, etc), help someone in need (volunteer at random soup kitchens), write (code and/or blog posts), play (drums and/or keyboards), get some sun (offer to run errands for a friend) - this all gets me out of my bubble working 12-hour days indoors

p.s. any chance of scanning the copy? I would much rather read this version than the one you could torrent now.

Premii's too slow for me. I use Dinopost - http://hn.dinopost.com/.

I like how you can change the text size for a small phone. And it's light-weight for mobile connections - caches all the front page articles so makes it worthwhile for commuters.

Any way to file returns for the previous years?

Love that you have a functional page and not another one of the launchrock sites I had to click through.

One alumni told me that YC was all about picking billion dollar, not million dollar businesses. In that case, could you say juniper would scale to the billion dollar market? Could your users track their usage with a recurring Google calendar entry? (I know women that do). Why not scale to include other high usage products - toothpaste, toilet paper, etc? (I know of one startup in stealth mode doing this, so it's probably a feasible plan). Sorry for playing devil's advocate - really like what you got so far though.

Judging from what I see here, most applicants sent in a landing page? Or was there more to it - any demos?

Any rejectees in Toronto want to meet up for a mind meld this weekend?

I agree, impressive landing page. Every application round I see someone as polished as this, and then realize to not take rejection to heart. Rejections, even at YC, will have their fair share of false positives.

Context: We sent an application in for S12 and S13.

Interesting that you mentioned "serious." Looking back I don't think I was a whole lot "serious" the last time I applied, but I think my application might have been better (see my comment below - got more video views last year, but that could have been an anomaly).

In any case, I wonder if being in school this time hurts our chances. Most of our founders are graduating, and the rest have signed on to jobs. But we are more serious about it this time around - hacking away on public transit, on campus and pulling all-nighters to get features out.

We had 4 views from the west coast the day after we applied. Another 4 this week. Last time we applied, we got over 20. PG says they only look at the videos if the application seems promising. So I guess my application got worse?

Sorry Isaac, but it was on a blog with much similar posts to yours and swombat's. Btw, one of my all time favourite posts actually is your "Two paths to greatness" one. +1 Thanks for that.

The best advice I got was:

  1. Never compare your beginning to someone else's middle
  http://www.lifewithoutpants.com/someone-elses-middle/

  2. Don't look to the past. It's all dead back there.

Also, one way my accounting friend explains it to me is that anything that's already happened is a sunk cost. Like in business, you shouldn't worry about the "could've. would've. should've." What you evaluate are the future costs/benefits of your decisions. I've been there man, and I still get into that mood now and then. It's normal. It will pass. Smile. Get sunlight. Do something good for someone. And sleep and wake up early. These are the things that help me still.

Thanks. Any along the lines of Peter Norvig? That I can learn from: books, udacity videos, etc.

I second that, and also think parenting is a big factor to blame.

Does flux practice readable colors on their own website?

It seems like they do - I just returned to HN from reading flux's pitch, and my eyes did not take too well to the higher contrast on HN. Can anyone confirm if the colors on their website change over the day?

Did you just compare scrolling to a black swan? :-)

A good effort, I didn't realize it was a pitch for the magicscroll extension till I read it a few times.

also vidyard, kytephone and upverter

Anyone got one for musicians?

They look at:

  - qualities of the founder/team
  - the product you're pitching
  - traction (growth rate, # paying clients, etc)

If you're at the idea stage, stress how you can monetize, and how much the costs are to get to a proof of concept / prototype. Most importantly, validate that there is a market for what you're pitching.

Thanks. Sorry for the ignorance, but what do you mean by LOE?

Thanks, I'm from Toronto. I was curious to see some comments before I constrained my question to the following. The site should, like HN, help you:

  - Keep up to date with industry news
    (e.g. record labels and producers would read it daily)

  - Improve your chops
    (much like the technical coding articles)

  - Provide a community
    (but not in the sense of YouTube or MySpace)
    i.e. more signal, less noise; perhaps deliberately small.

It's something I would like to see someone build. The closest I have right now are trade magazines.

  - What YC or any VC would love to see is traction.
  - If you have a simplified version of your idea that's 
  functional, and solicit user feedback, take it from there.
  - Work at it during nights at first.
  - If your growth rate is good, apply to YC.

Note: Startups are still too much work for one founder. So see if a good programmer you've worked with in the past would like to team up with you on this.

I agree, like this bomberman-inspired HTML5 game: http://powderkeg.artillery.com/