fearless

Assuming this is referring to founders. If you're an employee, you're the engineer making $100K in OP's comment.

Source? I've seen data pegging startup failure rates anywhere between 50-90%, but I've never seen a credible source claim that over 99% fail. Mathematically, no investor would be able to stay in business if 99% of their investments fail. I'm guessing failure rates for startups that have funding or bootstrap through revenue are closer to 75%.

Everyone knows startups are not the optimal economically rational way to make money. But to an entrepreneur, living off 6% muni bond interest is profoundly uninteresting, and dare I say soul crushing.

Repeat after me: If you think it's only about the money, you're missing the point.

And even if it is all about the money, most 25 year olds would jump at a 1% chance to make $10 million over a $100% chance to make $200K. Not mathematically rational, but if everyone was rational there would be no outliers.

Can you explain simply and concisely what your elevator pitch/product is? I don't know what Style Influence is and I can't tell at all from your landing page.

Isn't being homeless generally accepted as being more detrimental to health than pretty much any office job?

My only point is that you should start at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy and take care of the basics for yourself before trying to change the world. Seriously. Get off the internet, get off HN, and figure out some way to have a stable income(or apply for disability and welfare), get health insurance, etc. After you've done that you can transform healthcare. Not before. Ranting online isn't going to change anything for you. Get out there and fix the basics.

Aren't you homeless? Your first priority should be a getting a job so you can get out of debt and put a roof over your head. Then worry about big ideas like changing healthcare.

To be perfectly candid, the reason people dismiss you is that someone who seems incapable of providing for themselves to take care of their basic needs is certainly incapable of starting a hugely disruptive business.

Sorry if this is harsh. Just trying to help.

That domain is worth about $50, not $5,000.

A bit of advice: your post is missing the one word that matters: sales. Don't say what you're not(ie not technical) or that you have "people skills". Just talk about your sales ability. If I were looking for a tech cofounder, this is what my entire pitch would be: "If you build a product, I can sell it. Here's how much revenue I brought in at my last job." And that's all you need.

Building a successful business-any successful business, bootstrapped or VC, is really, really hard. Do you really want to be working 12 hour days and losing sleep about deals falling apart or how you'll make payroll, and blowing off every social event for work, for the rest of your life? Really? Do you think it's even possible for a human being to survive 40 years of that kind of stress?

You're optimizing for the wrong things.

All applications are reviewed. In your case, YC was able to decide your company/team isn't a good fit for them just by reading your app, without needing to see a video or demo.

Why should they be forced to spend an hour on every app when they can make a decision in the first few minutes?

There's no way for you to know the quality of the applicants who got an interview. Why do you think you're so entitled to an interview? YC doesn't owe you anything. Your suggestions are largely self-serving. There's no way to force alumni or anyone else to spend lots of time on every application, and limiting the number of apps just increases the chance YC will miss out on the next Dropbox.

Link to said tweet?

I'm not attacking you personally, I just can't grasp your argument. I would think we could take as a given that most Facebook users would say Facebook makes their life better by allowing them to keep in touch with friends, etc. Again, you could argue that Facebook's management has done business in a way you don't approve of, but Facebook the product has undoubtedly had a net positive impact on hundreds of millions of people all over the world, not to mention the thousands of entrepreneurs and businesses that are building on top of the platform.

Studies show Facebook has created over 500,000 high level, high paying jobs.

This is a social network for God's sake, not a coal mine.

If my college days are anything to go by, the presence of drunk college kids has never deterred women before.

If you're actually arguing that FB doesn't have a positive impact on people, you are so far off the mark that you can't be reasoned with. You might be able to argue about Zuckerberg's methods, but the end result is that he created something that made hundreds of millions of people's lives better. Unless you've done the same, you don't really have the moral high ground here.

Why are you hiring a CFO/executive manager if you don't have any employees? Who is your CFO going to manage? Shouldn't you be hiring engineers first?

Sounds like this person should be a cofounder, not an employee.

Something doesn't make sense here. If they're profitable and making millions, why are they raising more bridge funding at the last round's valuation and taking on more dilution?

Previous post from a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3115872

Kudos on the transparency, it's refreshing.

It seems like this investment thesis(low valuation, not in the bay area, willing to give up a board seat) is aimed at investing in second-tier startups. It would be interesting to contrast this strategy with that of most other investors, who are actively trying to fund the best/category leader startups.

The problem with your statement is that it's incorrect. The founder's comment below implies investors made money in this acquisition.

It's more about context. GP could be saying "I wish I hadn't worked as much on this startup because it failed and the time was wasted" or "I wish I hadn't worked as much on this startup because it was a huge success and would have been successful even if I worked less".

This article is specifically for startup founders. Startups are very different from lifestyle businesses.

Was your startup successful? Knowing that would help readers decide whether your advice is credible.

I think you're just being bitter because you got rejected by YC, and now trying to deal with it by saying "Well, YC's not that great anyway".

With the value of YCs portfolio companies over $3 Billion, it's ridiculous to make the allegation that YC is some kind of pyramid scheme.

This post on Quora might help:

http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-apply-to-500-Startups

The whole point of a referral system is that it conveys trust/vetting. Even if some random person from HN saw this and referred you to 500Startups, that referral wouldn't carry much weight.

Reach out through your network to someone who already knows you and can vouch for you. 500 Startups has funded enough companies that finding someone who works at one of them can't be hard.

I think the difference here is that this book is crowdsourced on a more granular level, by sentence. So every sentence in a single story could have been written by a different author.

Are you moving to Portland to found a startup or to look for a job? Your experiences would be very different depending on which one it is.

If you're looking for a job, going to tech events and networking meetups is great idea. If you're building a startup, all you need to do is go head down and work on a product/prototype, which you can do anywhere, at least until you get to the stage where you're actively fundraising.

Finding a cofounder will be a lot easier if you already have a prototype/early version to show that you're not just an "idea guy".

Does this mean YC will be able to fund more startups in the future as you add more partners?

Is anyone else tired of Techcrunch always sounding the death knoll for Yahoo? I don't think they've had anything positive to say about Yahoo for years.