Amazon’s Alexa github has a number of solid tutorials/example code
446 karma · joined September 20, 2011
We are seed funded and looking to continue growing our user numbers and team, email me if you want to hear more!
Our near-term goal is to grow the pool of seekers as quickly as possible and test the viability of both approaches. Having worked on some products that people like-but-don't-love, this one is much easier to market because the users genuinely love it.
1. We make money from companies via recruiting fees. In this scenario, our goal would be to present listings that we make money from via "sponsored links" a la Google search. As we grow our pool of job-seekers, we'd concurrently be able to expand the number of companies we have recruiting agreements with, thus making our implicit incentive to be biased towards a small number of companies weaker and weaker. If we got a significant portion of all job-seekers using our service, we'd probably be able to introduce a standardized recruiting agreement that companies could sign onto online in a self-serve fashion, minimizing our need to do "on the ground" sales.
2. If that approach doesn't work, we'd hope to offer services to job-seekers that they're willing to pay for, such as resume reviews, interview coaching, and the like. There's also the possibility that we could come to some agreement with seekers for a (very small) percentage of their signing bonus/salary at a new job that we help them find. Obviously we have to provide excellent service to earn this, but that's what we aim for!
What's your take on the best way to make the network useful on day one for a small number of users? What are you looking for in a YC app for a social network (with or without traction)?
I agree that 99% of the time instant gratification is what you want from a trivia game, but we dream of many many people playing at once, which would be pretty unique, no?
Secondly, this write up is incredibly rich and I really appreciated the chance to get so much insight into the success of the system so far. That said, I'm particularly interested in the next moves.
You note that the network effects of OpenTable for discovery are waning, thanks to Google, but I'm not sure that's the case on desktop, and even less so on mobile. The cases I experience are:
1. I know exactly where I want to eat. In this case it's almost always easier to go to OpenTable anyway, since restaurant website design is clunky and unpredictable.
2. I have a general idea, say "mid-range Cal-Ital on Thursday." Google may be superior to OpenTable on recommendations (slightly, and I think that's debatable), and it doesn't really matter if they do a better job pulling up, say, Nopa and Rich Table, since I'm not getting in anyway. OpenTable shortens the loop between idea and execution.
3. I have no idea where I want to eat, other than, "right here, right now, and good." In this case superior mobile recommendation apps carry the day, many of which I can book through, usually via OpenTable's platform. With extensions/deeplinks/etc. picking up on Android and iOS, it seems likely that this will be further entrenched.
I like the idea of more flexible and innovative reservations systems taking hold, but I'm not sure I'd discount the network effects so soon.
Finally, the kiosks in restaurants that are provided (some might say forced in) by OpenTable seem like ripe opportunity, given the horrific UI and vendor lock-in. Are you considering building an iPad/tablet app to manage your systems in-restaurant? Or is the browser interface sufficiently mobile-friendly to serve this purpose?
Thanks again for the write-up, really enjoyed the read. Looking forward to Next Chinese.
Also, I lump 1) and 3) together in my mind as not-quite-objective, analytic content, but I admit that was poorly expressed.
We're seeing this in sports (Grantland, Deadspin, 538, Baseball Prospectus), politics (Vox.com/Ezra Klein, 538 again, Politico), and tech (Thompson, Evans, Gruber, The Wirecutter, Anandtech, MG/Dixon/Wilson/Suster/Andreessen/Horowitz/etc/yesIleftamillionpeopleout).
Tech leads the way because those on the cutting edge are often interested in tech, and I believe it's a solid leading indicator of where all journalism is headed—a 'Cambrian explosion' of thoughtful, analytic, but not purely objective writing.
I wish we had so much detail on the founding principles of other organizations (in thoughtful essay format, say). We'd know a lot more about what makes groups of people succeed and fail in achieving their goals.
“Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”
Tell us in one or two sentences something about each founder that shows he or she is an "animal," in the sense described in How to Start a Startup.
Paul and Robert built the first SaaS company, Viaweb, which allowed users to build their own stores on the web. It became Yahoo Stores after its acquisition.
Jessica is an excellent writer, marketing whiz and is already working on the idea for our second major product—a one-day version of our summer program in which a number of successful founders give talks to prospective hacker-founders. We think this will inspire even more of the kind of companies we like to invest in.
Trevor built a robot that duplicated the Segway’s functionality in a weekend using off-the-shelf parts.
Tell us in one or two sentences something about each founder that shows a high level of ability.
Trevor is working on the first self-balancing bipedal robot. It’s almost ready.
Robert discovered buffer overflow, which helped bring the internet into the mainstream press.
Jessica managed a highly successful rebranding of the investment bank Adams Harkness as VP of marketing.
Paul is the author of On Lisp (1993) and ANSI Common Lisp (1995). (Have you ever tried programming in Lisp?)
For founders who are hackers: what cool things have you built? (Extra points for urls of demos or screenshots.)
Trevor—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunicycle Robert and Paul—http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/ Paul—http://www.paulgraham.com/arc.html
How long have you known one another and how did you meet?
Several years, mostly at school. [Ed. note: ???]
What is your company going to make?
A “summer school” for young, inexperienced hackers that are interested in starting a company but lack early-stage funding.
The founders will meet with us once a week for dinner, during which a speaker from the technology industry will answer questions and speak from hard-won experience.
If your project is software, what OS(es) and language(s) will you use, and why?
ARC
If you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?
A few months—most of the work has been planning the program, the code for the site is fairly simple.
If you have an online demo, what's the url? (Big extra points for this.)
http://ycombinator.com/sfp.html
How long will it take before you have a prototype? A beta? A version 1 you can charge for?
Once this application process concludes, the beta should be ready for launch.
How will you partition the work this summer; who will work on what?
All partners will help select companies and advise from past experience. Paul and Robert have more experience with investors and shepherding small companies through the necessary phases towards becoming big ones. Jessica has experience with marketing, branding, and working with large companies. Trevor is a hardware/software savant and is running a growing company of his own.
If you already have a business plan, what's the url? (Don't send us your business plan. Put it on a server and tell us the url. Ascii text preferred. Don't password protect it.)
[redacted]
How will you make money? Who will your customers be, how many are there, and how will they hear about you?
Our basic assumption is that young founders can succeed in building startups with good advising and seed capital. Given our average investment is $18k for 6% of 8 companies, just once company has to be worth $2.4 million for us to break even.
We’ll advertise in the computer science departments of prominent universities (e.g. Harvard, MIT) to recruit hackers who are looking for an alternative summer job to working at a big company.
Will you do price discrimination?
We’ll give slightly more money to larger groups, although we suppose that’s “investment discrimination.”
Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?
Obvious investment-side competitors are early-stage VC firms, who have more money and the trappings of success. We’re banking on them ignoring our target group of early founders.
The competitors we’re really afraid of are competitors for these hackers’ time and attention. Fast-growing tech companies, graduate school, and even cushy jobs at big companies might have more superficial appeal. We need to make sure the most promising companies follow through on their potential.
Who will lose most if you succeed? (This need not be a competitor; TV networks have been hurt by email.)
Likely those very same competitors for our founders’ attention. Google and graduate CS programs might lose some great hackers, although we think in the long run they’ll do better if younger programmers see the potential to start companies. The big losers will be the R&D/quant trading/IT/etc. departments at ossified giant companies—they’ll lose the kind of brilliant people they use to bury in back offices.
Which companies, in order, are most likely to buy you?
KPCB/Sequoia Google Microsoft
What do you know about your business that other companies in it just don't get?
Young, inexperienced founders can start massively successful companies. They don’t need much money or training—just seed capital and a push in the right direction.
What's new about what you're doing?
Our focus on such early-stage companies and our plan to invest and work with these companies in batches are both quite novel. Most funds operate asynchronously and make much larger investments in much later-stage companies.
Why would it be hard for someone else to duplicate?
We have experience in starting companies from the ground up and insight into what matters (people, making something people want, thriftiness) and what doesn’t (“market size,” the initial idea, “professionalism,” having an office, etc.)
Have you made any discoveries you consider patentable?
We think we move fast enough to not need patents.
What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.)
Perhaps all of the startups will fail. Perhaps the founders will go back to school and the companies stagnate. Perhaps founders do actually need experience at a “real job” to succeed in business. Perhaps Bill Gates and Larry and Sergey are true needles in the haystack and we won’t be able to find hackers who could be huge successes.
But we don’t think so.
If you're already incorporated, when were you? Who are the shareholders and what percent of the company do each own? If you’ve had funding, how much, at what valuation(s)?
Self-funded.
If you're not incorporated yet, please list the percent of the company you plan to give each founder, and anyone else you plan to give stock to. (This question is more for you than us.)
[Ed. note: ???]
If you'll have expenses beyond the living costs of your founders, Internet access, server rental, etc., what will they be?
Space to hold our dinners, the food, and the investment money, of course.
Describe, in one sentence each, any companies any of you have started before. If they failed, why? (We consider failed companies valuable experience too.)
Paul and Robert founded Artix, which let art galleries go online. This failed (reason below) but became Viaweb, which allowed people to build their own web stores.
Trevor started Anybots, which has developed several wheel-based self-balancing robots and is closing on a bipedal robot.
If you could trade a 100% chance of $1 million for a 10% chance of a larger amount, how large would it have to be? Answer for each founder. (There is no right answer.)
Let’s go with the cold mathematical answer and say $10 million.
If your startup seems at the end of the summer to have a good chance of making you rich, which of the founders would be likely to commit to continue working on it full time over the next couple years?
All of us.
Which of the founders would still want to be working for this company in 10 years, if it were successful, and which would rather sell out earlier and do something else? (Again, no right answer.)
All of us [Ed. note: just one year left!].
Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? Will any be under consulting contracts this summer?
No.
Was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? If so, how can you safely use it? (Open source is ok of course.)
No.
Will any of the founders have other jobs, responsibilities, or consulting work this summer?
No.
Tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered, and who discovered it. (The answer need not be remotely related to your project.)
Paul and Robert discovered that art galleries didn’t want to go online in 1995. This may not seem surprising now, but it was to us then!
What else would you have asked if you were us?
There’s a joke here somewhere.
Some thoughts:
—I can't speak to how widespread the entitled-MBAs-in-startup-roles (no direct experience) problem is, but MBAs definitely have good job prospects (in the traditional sense), which has made it much harder for me to convince former classmates to "take the leap" and try to start companies instead.
—At least on the West Coast, the startup classes treat leanness as a central principle. I didn't meet many MBAs (especially ones who took those classes) who believed strategy could be laid out and then executed by underlings. Your mileage may vary.
—I went to business school because I wanted to get out of the consulting job I didn't like, and loved technology and wanted to move to the Bay Area. That said, it didn't sit well with me that I didn't pursue my dream and try to start a company instead of going, which made me unhappy all year. The question of what motivated someone to go to b-school is generally a good one, though, as most MBAs will gleefully admit that their goal was to spend two years kicking back at "summer camp for adults."
—The limits to the degree's usefulness, in my opinion, come from the fact that much of the good learning is in the hard-won experience of visiting founders and leaders (a la Startup School speakers). Unfortunately, to quote Clayton Christensen: “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go...You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”[1] I often felt like visiting speakers were giving good advice, but that I didn't have the place in my mind for the answer to fit yet. Another reason to try to start something and accumulate better questions.
The opportunity cost was the strongest motivator for me. As a twenty-something tech nerd, another year felt like an eternity. And I'm already five months better at programming and building a product than I would have been. Which feels like a win vs. another piece of paper.
I deeply believe my cofounder and I have a better chance of success because we took this path instead (he quit his job). I guess we'll be one more piece of data for the experiment in a few years.
P.S. We joke around about our travails once a week at http://uncannyvolley.com/why-not-combinator-podcast/ if you're bored.
While in high school I gutted it out in English so I could make it to my next math class, as I grow older I've found myself increasingly drawn to reading and writing. The power and precision of the right word at the right moment can be intoxicating.
Perhaps if college and high school students were given the chance to peek into the whole world of opportunity in written expression, the humanities would see a resurgence.
1 - http://paulgraham.com/essay.html. "Moneyball" is one of my favorites and I've read an awful lot of thoughtful food-focused essays in the last few years, but does anyone have a good one on the role of color in fashion? The cerulean rant in "Devil Wears Prada?"
Chinese philosophy nails the importance of the quotidian (to quote the article) in shaping one's world view. It's akin to PG arguing that what you think about in the shower matters or that living with your cofounders is optimal. I found it enriching.
In the end, isn't the point of a good education—to get you to see the world differently, even if it's more superficial lures that draw you in?
If someone could do/had done the same thing to CS51, I might have fonder memories of my first Lisp and object-oriented experiences...
The push off the cliff is as valuable as the plan for learning how to fly on the way down.