portLAN

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3147833455273735180#...

The economics have changed. With a recession looming, it will be less expensive than ever before to fund a girlfriend or mistress. They'll just be happy you're one of the few percent not worrying about getting his car repossessed! Sure, in the old days, you had to buy them a big shiny rock and take them jet-setting all over the globe. Now? Why, you can use open-source software and services like MySpace and Facebook to entertain them for free while you're gone with one of your other "investments". You can even hook up webcams all over the apartment to make sure they're not cheating on you while you're out cheating on them! Track them with Loopt and monitor their activities with Twitter.

You'll be sitting pretty while 95% of the people your age are stuck living at home because it's too expensive to move out and all the jobs pay minimum wage. There's never been a better time to win the Darwinian Game of Life while simultaneously investing in porn futures to exploit all the frustrated L^H... almost-winners!

In the near future, everyone alive will have an ancestor who founded a start-up.

It bears repeating: out of the top 10 richest "U.S. Americans", 4 inherited it; of the six who didn't, one has a degree (Warren Buffett), and 5 are drop-outs: Bill Gates, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Ellison, Paul Allen, and Michael Dell. Woz dropped out to start Apple (he went back to school only after he was done working there) and Jobs dropped out of Reed College here in Portland. (We're all very proud of him.)

The only trick is you don't know exactly where you'll be living at first, so if you could use YC's address to get the process started then you could apply and get accepted before you move so you don't have a gap in coverage.

A lot of deprecated methods are still used because they work reliably, whereas the replacement often didn't, until much, much later. People remember the pain and bugginess and so you lose the early adopters even if the problems eventually get fixed. Cf. Apple III, g++, MySQL.

Downarrow for blog spam needed.

Hopefully this will outrage lots of founders so they will refuse to use Lisp, thus giving me another competitive advantage.

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend C#, PHP, and ASP.NET to my prospective competition. Oh, and especially Java.

(pedantry: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.editors/msg/882fd4ef853e... )

It's definitely intuitive for marsupials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pouch_%28marsupial%29

 10 PRINT "LARRY RULES"
 20 GOTO 10

 RUN

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48652

Apparently there are still some people who haven't seen the clip yet. They must be working harder on their start-ups.

The funny part is, for most people here, Aaron and Matt aren't reading your blog -- but you're reading theirs! This is like a Denial-Of-Service attack against their competition by inducing them to waste time they could be spending on their own startup instead reading about someone else's.

Id software was a master at this. Everyone was so busy playing Quake, Quake II, etc. that they weren't working on their own games. Did you know actual celebrities are horrible at recognizing other celebrities? They are too busy making movies to read celebrity gossip magazines.

Speaking of, I probably should get back to work!

I didn't say the process was completely arbitrary or only whim. I said not to leave your fate up to someone else's whim -- which is probably what it comes down to for the group of "maybes". Whim is generally the make-it-or-break-it deciding factor. And when there are more unknowns -- as with applicants who lack experience, or lack a demo -- it plays an increasingly larger role.

> I wish they devoted more time to the decision making process, because I remain convinced that our outcome with YC would have been much different with a 1 hour interview instead of a 15 minute interview.

You're essentially saying now that YC lacked solid reasons for making their decision because the process is too brief. I agree. They don't have that much information, and they don't spend that much time on it. They make a call one way or the other and then go on to the next applicant.

> The seedcamp interview process is orders of magnitude better and more fair from a founder's perspective.

Which is to say, it is less based on whim than YC.

Edit: And one more thing -- your chances are always better if they like you personally, and almost always zero if they don't. That is why whim plays a big part in any human relationship, and investing is no exception. If they like you enough, that is often all it takes. I've heard and read interviews with VCs that go like this: I didn't understand what they were talking about, but I didn't care, I said, "I like you guys, here's some money, now go build it."

It might occur to you that some people are busy working on their start-ups rather than spending all their time debating points of little consequence on YC news. I haven't posted at all in two days, not just on that thread.

It's also pretty hilarious you think you need to "award" Paul the "win", on his own site, based on a made-up technicality.

I can tell you don't really believe what he said, otherwise you wouldn't be trying to score brownie points! You want the whim in your favor.

U.S. Americans don't view failure the same as the Iraq and the Asian countries. South Africa, such as.

That's pretty amusing. Whim -> arbitrary doesn't exactly constitute a long chain. Might want to start employing your proofreading team for your comments ;)

I'll refer you to one of my other responses:

"Not to mention, a substantial number of people haven't even built anything, which means they really have no choice but to judge the book by its cover. There are always snap judgements and rush decisions in any big application process."

YC's process reminds me of the Feynman story about choosing schoolbooks.

You have a bunch of young would-be founders who don't have a track record. How else are you going to choose? You just don't have enough evidence to go by in many cases.

Assuming a large portion of the applications come in near the deadline, you're in the position of having to review hundreds in the space of a week. It's like going through stacks of resumes, your eyes glaze over.

Making the observation is no slight to YC. You give people a chance despite them not having much of anything to show. I also know whim is a big factor even when there is a lot of supporting evidence because it's just human nature. That's why Cisco was turned down by 80 VCs despite having great numbers and committed people already.

Accusing someone of trolling because they had the audacity to bust out the dictionary to prove you wrong? Classic! "Every native English speaker [...]" -- too funny!

"Where the dictionary and I disagree, the dictionary is wrong." That should clear things up around here!

Especially condom failure.

I think the main factor behind this is not work division, but social stimulation. Just being around other people is stimulating. Plus, we are wired to assign importance to what other people are doing; if nobody else is doing it, it doesn't seem important. By contrast, look how hard two friends will compete to outdo each other in meaningless contests of trivia, gross-outs, and even hazardous stunts.

I would be surprised if anyone on YC news couldn't get a few successes out of 60 start-ups.

YC's had its share of duds as well. And various times we've heard they're not far in the black; considering the micro-investments they're making, that doesn't strongly support the notion that they are especially successful.

> "Whim" and "arbitrary" have a connotation of carelessness; I don't think they fit here.

I'm sure they are careful in certain ways but there's only so much to be gleaned from a brief application, which may not include the follow-up 10-minute interview. Three people can't advise 60 existing start-ups and do due diligence on 500 more. Not to mention, a substantial number of people haven't even built anything, which means they really have no choice but to judge the book by its cover. There are always snap judgements and rush decisions in any big application process.

Hence, whim.

It most certainly is: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/whim

> Why would it, if its meaning was the same?

You may as well ask, "Why do words matter?"

You're unsuccessfully trying to argue an academic point while ignoring the basic gist of the decision, which is de facto one of considerable extrapolation. There simply isn't enough data in many cases to make a decision based on reason; that leaves whim. Even in cases where the data is obvious, whim comes into play, which is why Cisco had to go to 70 or 80 venture capitalists despite doing hundreds of thousands a month in business already without outside investment. Other VCs' stories of "the one that got away" involve a long-haired Steve Jobs.

This is merely human nature. It's no particular indictment of YC, everyone does it. I'm advocating for not leaving your decision of what to do with your life up to any single investor, or indeed, a series of 70 or 80 of them.

That's funny, you just spent several messages reiterating that you didn't care what project you worked on.

To me, "please give me money and great people to work with" is not a convincing pitch. Plus, if I already have a group of great people working on something, why would I want to burden them with an additional person who had no particular interest in what they were working on?

On the other hand, if you were really interested in a particular problem domain and had expertise or at least enthusiasm for it specifically, then you're giving investors a more compelling reason to put their money behind you. Remember that investors aren't only the VCs and angels, they're the people you're working with. They have a lot invested, too.

> that doesn't sound quite so undeniably prudent anymore, does it?

Good thing it's definitionally equivalent and I used the form that would provoke a stronger visceral response, in order to get the idea across more forcefully.

YC should just be one possible tool you can use. Keep in mind that if you do actually have something valuable, you're doing them quite a favor by letting them get a percentage for such a tiny investment.

> Especially considering that the "someone else" in question is highly authoritative on the subject.

You're a bit mixed-up there. Starting your own investment company doesn't make you an expert on people and ideas any more than starting your own record label makes you an expert on music.

It's also fairly apparent that no one person is going to be a good filter for all ideas or people. We've all been surprised by various start-up successes.

"I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." -- Steve Jobs

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-06150...

(You can also find it on Google Video)

> as long as I'm with a great group of people

Except how are you going to know that until they do great work? Which is very unlikely if you're not all working on what you love. If you don't care what you work on, then you haven't found what you love -- otherwise you'd work on that.

Merely being "great" without reference to a particular context isn't very useful. Take your favorite 5 entrepreneurs, stick them in a room, and probably nothing gets done. PG and Max Levchin we know; maybe Marc Andreessen; take your pick. They probably couldn't even agree on a language, and they're all used to being the one in charge.

A decision is both likely to be affected by, and dependent on, multiple factors. In YC's particular case of selecting among many young, first-time, unproven, possible entrepreneurs, there likely isn't much of a track record to go by so the decision has a very large subjective component. Not only can they not predict the market performance of what you're building, but they want you to be "flexible" with the idea, even to the point of throwing it away and switching to something completely different. In those cases it means they can't possibly objectively evaluate your plan, because you don't have one yet.

The greater the lack of objective data, the more subjective preference comes into play.