marcomonteiro

I applied for Summer 2011. I'm a single founder - point against. I'm not working on a social networking project or something with mass consumer appeal - point against. It's a fairly trivial product (though a great demand exists) - point against. I'm also older (29) which might not be favorable to YC.

Admittedly I was a little intimidated by a few questions on the application and my video sucked. I've been in real estate for the last few years and am now getting back into software development. Being in real estate though is what gives me tremendous insight into the niche market I'm targeting with my startup. It's impossible to know for sure why I wasn't invited for an interview considering they don't give any feedback. I'd assume they were just more interested in other founders/projects. That doesn't make me a "B" grade startup, I just don't fit the YC criteria (at least right now).

Point being that it benefits YC to bet on projects with huge upside potential. Fewer big hits compensates for massive misses. Isn't that the same strategy that nearly all VC's use?

All in all I'm learning as I go and moving forward regardlessly.

Yes and that's what makes the equity trade worth it. The money is too small to justify giving up 5-10% if it wasn't for the quality of advisors (and their reputation) that you'd be adding to your company.

The money to me was important as well as everything else YC offered. I wouldn't have applied otherwise. I can't afford to build my business without the seed money at this point. So it's either find a job, go back to school and/or look for funding elsewhere.

YC doesn't have the time and resources to help every startup.

$80-120k based on the salary of numerous people I know and work with here. Why? High cost of living, competition and market demand I suppose.

Please put [video] in the title.

Whether I manually compile it or it's automatically compiled it still has to be compiled which was the question I was responding to. Which is to say Node.js will not run CoffeeScript directly.

That would make startups drastically uncompetitive.

This is a very low estimate for Silicon Valley.

True. I wonder if the same would apply if this disclosure/terms were placed as the header with something along the lines of "by continuing to read this email you hereby agree to the following...", similar to TOS on websites.

1) The YC staff and Alumni possess a wealth of knowledge that would be available to you.

2) To get out of your bubble. Being surrounded by other intelligent individuals all working toward demo day helps you stay focused and keep moving.

3) The experience. Being able to have gone through the YC system wouldn't hurt.

4) The seed money would be a huge help.

5) Access to VC's with the YC brand name behind you. So again, the money.

6) The alumni network. I hear it is extremely supportive even after YC.

Disclaimer: I applied to Summer '11

Yes basically. Your repository could grow faster using binary files but it's still worth it to have a version history. Even if for nothing else other than to be able to see how something evolved.

I wonder if people actually even notice an email footer these days or if they're ignored like most advertising. The only footers I ever notice are the ones that say "Sent from my iPhone [iPad]" but I'm biased and those are potential customers.

Actually in certain circumstances it can impose a legal obligation. For example, I'm licensed to sell real estate in California. As a real estate agent, I can create an agency relationship by giving advice in an email. This means that if someone acted on my advice and was harmed by it that they'd have the right to seek damages.

I believe attorneysand CPA's have the same obligation. Unless it is explicitly understood that advice given does not create an agency relationship or something to that effect.

You have to compile it.

http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

I had the same question after reading this.

Git, like most versioning systems works by adding a file to a repository. Then subsequent changes are added to the repository by saving only what has changed in the file.

In the case of a bitmap image think of a grid made up of pixels. Each pixel is stored on the file as binary data (0's and 1's). Anything that affects that pixel will change it's value in the file.

With a vector file there aren't pixels necessarily. The drawing is saved as shapes and those shapes have properties. These shapes and their properties are actually saved as text (sort of like HTML markup).

So as the file changes the changes in those various file types are more drastic. With a bitmap there will be greater changes so overall more space is used to store the file and it's history. Also, because it's binary it's difficult to see the changes in the actual file (without opening it in a photo editing program). With a vector file only small amounts of text would be changing and you can literally see the changes in the file and make sense of it.

Hope that helps.

True that would make it easy to produce a PDF but ePub is more flexible (and enjoyable) on the iPad than a PDF. Which is why the original author (from GitHub) created it.

I'm 29. I started programming C when I was 12 or 13 and I really think that C is probably the best language to learn to program with. In fact I made that recommendation to a friend who recently took his first programming class using Processing and he thought I was crazy. I think it's important to understand memory management, pointers, pointer arithmetic and such.

C was my first real programming language. Loved it. I just don't use it much anymore. Most of what I do is either web (Ruby/Rails, PHP, etc) or mobile (Objective-C).

Ok, we get it, some people are paranoid and afraid of running a "random script" and having to sudo to install it. Can we please have a discussion on the merits of the actual application. I just installed it - I trust 37signals enough to give them the benefit of the doubt - and love how simple it is to access different apps I'm working on at the same time without having to worry about configuration. Thanks 37signals.

This is awesome! I'll join in a few minutes.

How are you actively seeking them? I'm just curious because I'm sure I could be doing more.

I concur. I'm self-taught and would agree that "we don't know what we don't know". I'm not sure that's exclusive to programmers. Give me a tip about what I don't know that though and I'll research it obsessively. That's just my nature.

Maybe we can connect and share ideas.

marco[at]marcomonteiro[dot]com

This is extremely true. It is all politics and there will be a lot of hurdles. It is what it is.

Agreed. I'm 29 and have been doing real estate sales and mortgage origination for the past five years. I've always been a hacker, though admittedly much less so over the past few years. I'm scratching my own itch. Turns out it's a common itch in the real estate industry.

I'm sorry. That's a really hard position to be in.

On another note what does "sucking it up until the end" entail? Where is the end? What happens when you get there? Lastly, what's the worst thing that would happen if you were to walk away?

Just some questions that popped into my mind. Hopefully you find them useful. Best of luck.

Putting the real Multiple Listing Service back in the hands (literally) of real estate professionals and combining it with tools that helps them make sense of the real estate market. It's part listing syndication, analytics and social networking.

I agree with this. I'd love a co-founder who had the same passion, drive, work ethic and commitment to the company but I just haven't found them yet. It's also much easier to sever an employment relationship than one with a co-founder. On the other hand an employee collecting a salary is much more expensive than a co-founder working for equity.