ericwan

I actually got an hiring email from a Stanford MBA who's working out of the Sequoia a month ago. Curious to know if it's the same company/person. =)

I actually like your first answer more though. =)

i.e. how does YC judge non-technical people on the app?

I'd suggest to add ^2 or even ^3 after c ! =P

For Mark's comment, I think an entrepreneur over 30 would tend to ask to "address a market", while those under 20 tend to just build a cool thing and see if anybody is willing to pay for it. The latter is more likely to build revolutionary products because they see market needs that haven't emerged yet. Having said that, older entrepreneurs are more experience and still capable, but perhaps can only build incrementally better products.

Despite Techstars' copying of YC's approach, it definitely is an appreciation of YC as a viable business model. And it is a great thing for student entrepreneurs unless, as people may suggest, a VC-run YC copycat do entrepreneurs more harm than good.

How much damage does a 17, a "derivative idea" make? There are some me-too Web 2.0 websites which do not really have new ideas but execute pretty well, and attract quite a number of users. An example is flixster.com. I wonder what's the composition of execution and idea that lead to success.

To me flixster just sounds like a MySpace for movie-goers. Any ideas why it's getting so popular?

Interesting post. The ultimate startup school is to really get your hands dirty by joining a startup. It gave a sense of what it'd be like if he's going to build his own startup, and a chance to decide if that's something he really wants.

No one ever knows exactly what the curve after the current point is like, especially in a changing environment like in the web business. By taking risk one is able to check out if there's a higher local Max.

I the Guy Kawasaki says it the best: You won't fail only if you won't try.

I am not sure if emails are good or bad though. I personally hate spamming by different websites. But while facebook could send so many emails to you a day (wall posts, photos, etc.) they're incredibly successful.

I am not sure if emails are good or bad though. I personally hate spamming by different websites. But while facebook could send so many emails to you a day (wall posts, photos, etc.) they're incredibly successful.

I'd like to hear PG's opinion on that though. Also, Besides Gustaf what are other people who's had similar situation but accepted by YC?

I'd say there're two kinds of startups which are unknown to mainstream America. One is the kinds the general public have actually used, but just may not realize that is a service provided by a startup company. This includes the likes of Slide or Meebo, which many more people have put their widgets on their blogs/Myspace than going on to their proprietary website. These startups are fine; they may just need more PR to the mainstream media.

The startups that are really hard to reach mainstreams are those me-too startups, which are those "social network for XX" or "youtube cross wikipedia" kind of thing that users could not tell a slight difference from the sites that they have been using.