chandrab

A meetup at last week's WebInnovators conference would have been perfect. Unfortunately the next one is 2 months away.

Great site, a definite must read...I've been aware of some of these VC games by seeing them first hand, but this takes it to the next level of detail.

Patents are intellectual property, when you are acquired they the buying company looks for and pays for to justify the acquisition. Having strong IP is an asset like any other, even if it doesn't prevent a competitor from entering your space, it just make it harder.

Great, another test I have to study for! :-)

Seriously, what impact does this have on getting funded by YC? (I'm sure everyone wants to know the answer to that)

I got to say this was idea was very clever. kudos to Phil K!

I worked at company full of ex-Digital Equip Guys and they had similar procedures to Google except they had design "approach" reviews, where over lunch you presented your design for a feature/function etc. to your peers. It was quite effective for finding new approaches or things you haven't thought about. I was impressed enough with the process that I often thought I'd try it if I was ever the head of an engineering dept. The company did produce some industrial strength network management code.

The problem scaling YC is definately time, it sometime sucks that we only have 24hrs/day!...I had a few friends that were VCs and they worked like dogs. A few VCs shuffle you off to a Jr. Associate, which has some negatives, the biggest being that if you had any experience at all, you knew more about running a business than they did.

If I was in PG shoes and I had to scale the business, I'd definately recommend getting some Sr. Operational folks with a like-mind to work very closely with the portfolio companies.

Joshwa...thanks for putting this up.

Guys, when formulating your magic number in your head, not forget to include taxes...that's up to 50% gone right there. So your $1M is now $500K. I speak from experience on this. It's a good story over a beer.

btw - Did you know the SEC is going to pass a rule that no longer considers people with $1M in assets "rich", they are changing the bar to $2.5M...this was in last week's wall st. journal.

This is a tough one to answer since I am committed to my idea, and while money is important I want to see it through. To an investor though, their goals are to get out as soon as they can with as much as they can. Obviously you can't have a $100M company in 3 months, but you could have something that gains A-round valuations from a VC.

If some advertisers shift from PPC to PPA, it sounds to me like there will be a drop in PPC prices. Which in turn may lead to revenue problems at many advertising supported sites. Also, not every site is suitable for PPA - since they won't convert well (domain parking being an extreme example). It will be interesting to see if there is any impact on Google's short term revenue.

I agree with the others that you shouldn't focus on an API for rev 1.0 in order to get the product to market. But I would be careful and architect the code such that it can support an API...otherwise it's going to be a real pain in the rear to retrofit.

CPC (Cost per Click), CTC (Click To Call), CPL (Cost per lead) and now PPA...what's next? I wonder if this is in response to the clickfraud lawsuits.

Wasn't Omar Khudari a founder of ViaWeb or did he come later? I met Omar a couple of times when he was on the board of my friend's company and what a terrific guy.

This is one of the better posts I've seen on the topic..If you want to dive in deeper Brad Feld's blog series on term sheets. Another good read is: http://www.fenwick.com/VC_Terms.htm. It covers nice things like liquidation preferences, rachet clauses and other things that will make your head spin!

A definate read for all startups is Jeremy Liew's blog: http://lsvp.wordpress.com/. This lastest article is pretty sobering stats for anyone considering an eyeballs based business.

Having been part of a few startups before, I it definately easier to do it with a partner(s). I'm currently doing my latest startup alone - but I dont' consider myself alone. I have two great programmers, even though they are working for me...I treat them like co-founders, we discuss everything not just technical issues, business model and even their love-lives! I'm also getting assistance from my network, people I've worked in the past with and people I've looked up to during my professional career. Each one of these guys have stepped up to mat and offered me guidance each step of the way. Some mentors I talk almost on a daily basis...I treat these guys like board members/quasi-founders also because without their guidance and support I'm sure it would be much harder. Startups are not built alone - they are built by teams...these teams are composed of people who may not be traditionally considered co-founders but I'd argue they are. So I respectively disagree with YCombinator shying away from one person startups - they really need to consider the entire infrastructure. (Sorry for the long post- Chandra)