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"Make people want something that is actually junk." doesn't have quite the same ring to it, nor does it sound remotely more plausible.

Presumably the 10% weekly growth that YC and PG advocate as the default growth metric isn't expected to be in the absence of sales but the contrary, sales plus anything that works that is ethical and not some ponzi scheme.

He provided examples via the link to http://paulgraham.com/ds.html where he describes stripe founders engaging in zealous activities many would call sales despite being the type of startup that could have leaned back and had ample demand.

I (kind of) missed it. He mentions Alan elsewhere on his site. http://www.meltingasphalt.com/prickles-and-goo/

Did I miss the attribution to Alan Watts for the prickles and goo metaphor? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts

This seems wrong from an engineering AND MBA point of view. As designing and manufacturing electronics becomes more automated, the workflow for designing computer hardware will be very similar to software development (it pretty much already is).

From an MBA perspective, Apple just owns more of the value chain in software, i.e. some of the silicon via the mobile processors, and the proprietary cases. Other than that, most of the hardware follows pretty closely with the industry standard tech [intel's roadmap]. They don't seem excessively tied up at all.

You could just as well say that your dollar lost 10% against bitcoin in a day, who would dare buy something with a dollar with it fluctuating so much so often.

Does everyone forget that the U.S. government brought an antitrust case against Microsoft and nearly broke them up? That experience certainly cooled them off a bit.

They've slowly aligned themselves in the background with Facebook, Yahoo, and even Apple against Google. They just inked another licensing deal with Foxconn for use of Android and Chrome OS of all things.

It was really the exact opposite of that. The thesis was exactly that, it's all about the content, so get the best content creators in the world. It turned out to be all about the medium, and there are still only a few people who know what do in the medium of online video.

It would be great if they can be successful at making a company where you can be confident that your data will not die; but flexible enough for the inevitable sampling of future 'bloggish' platforms that come out.

Part of being a good communicator is being relatable. This worked so well with Steve because his results spoke for themselves. The is the important detail for anyone who wants to emulate his style. He was given the privilege of communicating like a visionary because of the results he achieved, not the other way around.

Someone can probably build an app player for android apps, but architecture wise, what you just described sounds kind of like a custom UI for android.

The rationale for not doing something like this philosophically is that the underlying point of webos is that it shouldn't feel like a 'whole new platform' to a web developer, but rather the platform they are already most familiar with, even more than android, i.e the web.

Given the way Google implemented gathering street view data, I wouldn't be surprised if Google has more map data in the USA than all the other map companies combined.

Twitter wants to give you access to the data. Their client is their main product. Thus, every 3rd party client is competing with their main product, that seems to be a fact.

Theres no way to stop you from building one anyway, twitter knows that. If you go against their rules, you're a revolutionary, and if you win that revolution, they'll have to deal with you.

You can't expect however, that the incumbent is going to go around encouraging revolutions against themselves.

The only alternative is to encourage everyone to make clients, at which point, they're just a big cloud xmpp server to the world.

Who is more of a 'liberal' programmer, RMS or Linus. Think about it.

In my estimation, if the answer here is unclear, then this metaphor breaks hard.

Saying that programming is 'spending all dap tapping in code' is like saying drawing is 'spending all day holding a pencil.' That isn't a perfect analogy, but programming can be equally about what is being created as it is the code itself.

Some friends and I actually pitched this idea to YC and got an interview a few years ago. We didn't get in.

Part of the issue is as soon as you describe this idea one of the thoughts people will have 'so you want to pay me for receiving spam.'

Twitter is an example of an 'alternative inbox' but the hard nut to crack is to get enough people using a system like it in lieu of email. If that is not achieved, all you end up with is two inboxes with a bunch of junk in them, or at a minimum the same amount of email you always got.

This is like 6 minute abs but in reverse for Gladwell. Outliers require 10000 hours, but if you want to outlive the pyramids, better start earlier than kindergarten.

It isn't really linkbait. I doubt adrian is worried about getting traffic to his blog.

A sheep follows the herd, but the wolf drives itself. Pretty good analogy if you ask me.

Pre iPhone: Carriers control software ecosystem of mobile phones.

Post iPhone: Apple/Google control software ecosystem of mobile phones.

Revolution: A forcible overthrow of a government or social order for a new system.

You can take a break from college without dropping out.

The best reasons/excuses don't sound like "maybe college isnt for me" and more like "Someone offered me a very time flexible paid internship that will allow me to start my own business on the side, and if I don't, then most likely I'll go back to school."

I don't think PG was saying that music equals smells. He's saying piracy = smells, some of them good, some bad.

It's just silly that the industry spent a decade suing people, and probably could have made 10x their money by giving up the 'suing people for smells' and started other music/content related businesses.

Not sure if you read the article, but other than the semantics of the word 'content,' the point of the article was in agreement with your intention.

The point is to put the same effort and passion into your essays, or tweets, or blog posts that you put into work at large.

The closest things to regular blogs I read daily (almost) are SVN from 37signals, and metafilter, but I'm looking to branch out.

This is kind of like saying "If I didn't get into Harvard, why should you still go to college?" No matter how big YC gets, they will still be rejecting the vast majority of applicants. Its simply not possible for them to fund every startup that comes their way.

Furthermore, think of companies like instagram, angry birds, quora, github, groupon, and a huge list of others that are not YC companies, but kicking ass. Should these people have given up because they weren't in YC? YC is one of the greatest opportunities in Silicon Valley, but by no means is it the only game in town.

These deals often faul through at the last minute. Much of the time, the company making the offer just wants to get a look 'under the hood' of a potential competitor.

Think of all the companies google has made these offers to and the deal didn't happen. Strategy at this level is kind of like macroeconomics, it just doesn't map to what makes sense on face value.

I think it's great that New York wants to step its game up in science and engineering, and should be applauded.

However, I think the idea that New York needs to be the capital of technology over Silicon Valley is like if New York tried to become number one in Chicago style pizza, it's just silly.

Technology is going to be a driving force in our economy because technology simply means producing useful things we don't yet have. To make it about some kind of dominance over another state within the same country is unnecessary, just grow your own legacy.

The 'problems' described here are actually the mechanisms of why SV works.

Yes, there are lots 'me too' startups out there. However, in any thriving ecosystem there will be a trend toward replicating success, and rabid competition.

Furthermore, these startups don't represent the vision of where the founder wants to take the company, but just a miniature vs of the startup for what is possible today with the small amount of resources they have.

As these startups gain traction, their vision will expand, and their innovation will as well. Some will die off, and a few outliers will emerge. Not every company becomes Facebook or Google, it's logically impossible for every startup to be an outlier.

Facebook is an alternative social network to email. Real competition to Facebook won't be 'the Pepsi to Facebook's coke.' Instead, it will probably be something totally different that makes Facebook irrelevant, or at least different enough that comparisons to Facebook are not relevant.

I think the last thing you mentioned hits it on the head ( wildly deprecating the title "product guy"). Seems to me that were there an engineering discipline that included understanding customers, we'd have some awesome engineers. Right now the current engineer + mba model in education doesn't seem to quite fit that. Maybe product people just are inherently autodidacts.

FB seems to have a different dynamic than Twitter, because the posts float around for several hours once posted.

With Twitter, after ten minutes or so, your post is lost in the shuffle unless it hit big earlier on and received many retweets.

Google manages not to hire someone who didn't want to work there in the first place. Sounds like the process is working just fine to me.

In all seriousness, there may be some issues with their hiring process, but I think the Google hiring practices would best be analyzed by using the aggregated data, rather than the trickle of anecdotes we tend to hear about in public. Even if Google got their hiring right 99.9 percent of the time, there would be hundreds of people, if not thousands, who were perfect for the job, and still didn't get hired.