zmitri

I agree. But it also takes people willing to put their money where their mouth is to do that.

The notion of "free" has spoiled a lot of folks online and made it a tough sell. I run a site that is entirely reader supported, but statistically it's very unlikely you'd just sign up and join, even though you believe ad revenue needs to die.

It's especially tough to do on sites built on user-generated content, because someone could just start a new one that's free and they'd lose their audience.

Good Karma was evolving from idea to actual product with people involved. We still had full time jobs while working on this and never got an interview.

Backspaces went from 1,000 users (first application) to 60,000 users in the 6 months since we'd first applied. We worked on this full time and we got an interview the second time.

We re-applied along the way because we had progressed and gotten better at everything each time. We never even got an interview until 5th or 6th time.

Note: If you somehow get face time with one of the partners and you impress them, you will likely get an interview. We made that happen and then got an interview.

Pathetic is the perfect way to describe me.

Especially when you factor in that as an immigrant I had to leave America 3 times, once because I was diagnosed with cancer, and haven't legally been able to take salary from my own company in 2 years.

Our 14% acceptance rate makes the most appropriate title "How not to get into Y Combinator."

But yeah, if you get an interview (you're already doing pretty well!), the 42Floors founders practice interview is the best training you can get for it.

I saw Jessica speak at Startup School in 2012 alongside some of the biggest names in tech, and her talk was by far the most useful/practical for me as a 23 year old entrepreneur.

She is really really good. I suggest watching it.

Interesting. We'll have to see how it plays out.

I know you are deeply interested in social apps, and have invaluable insight into their workings from early days at Facebook and personal in-depth research. I'm pretty sure you were username n on an app I built too...

But in my experience, despite having very active and passionate users, the lowest form of interaction always wins out on a free social service. Lack of interactions means user churn - no matter how good or important the interactions that take place actually are.

In that sense, social apps themselves are just vessels for human interaction - and great human interaction happens all over the place whether an app exists or not. Your goal as a venture backed social app is to focus those interactions and try to monetize them.

Is Path going to be one of those handful of "lucky" networks where those interactions happen in large enough numbers to make it viable financially? Personally I wouldn't bet on it.

Hey Numair, I agree with you on the negativity. It's not good for anyone. Path is exquisitely designed and the product team are top notch.

That being said, websites like App Annie provide reasonably detailed metrics on downloads and popularity in iOS and Android stores and what you've just said doesn't really tie out. Besides Indonesia, it's really not doing well.

Important interactions can happen on almost any social network, Path isn't inherently bad, but that doesn't justify it being valued or hyped like it is. There is A LOT of money at play here - and a large portion of that money comes from things like retirement funds, pension funds, etc.

I think that annoys a lot of technologists who work hard and get overlooked - you know, those who believe that meritocracy rules in SV instead of connections.

I've found that cliched advice is often the best advice for this same reason. It's cliché for a reason - a lot of people have found it to be useful.

Many people try to give insightful or unique advice, but often the simplest advice is the best because it's hard to understand something until you've actually experienced it.

They've done some cool open source stuff with Tornado too, very awesome.

This project looks pretty smart as well: https://github.com/dailymuse/catnap

Perhaps Dawkins' "meme" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) is a simpler - and not negatively associated like spaghetti code - way to describe it's evolution?

That's only 3 people and they have all come up as entertainers first. Why entertainers first?

I agree that hip hop is packed with sophistication and cultural consciousness, but hordes of young wealthy teens listen to rap music almost exclusively as entertainment. They often don't parse the emotional and powerful context of the lyrics - as they are often tied to racial, social, and financial issues they have never had to deal with. They often listen to it as outsiders in that regard.

By prefacing his posts with lyrics, Ben is focusing on the good parts of rap music - hustle and determination - as opposed traditional media which very rarely does that. In that regard he is "legitimizing" rap in the eyes of many people, or at least opening up their eyes and mind in a positive manner.

Excluding entertainers - if you look at CEOs, executives, tech startups - I think what he's saying is extremely evident. It's also especially strange how few there are considering how influential hip hop culture is in current youth culture, and how influential African American culture has been in the history of America.

Are investors rational decision makers? or gate keepers? It's hard to say in a system he so eloquently and accurately described in the first few paragraphs, and where so few companies actually get funded.

I'm sorry, I had thought you meant based on pieces and videos before you had even heard of this. That was how I read the last response and I suppose is why I am now defending them personally now, as opposed to their actions (which I still believe aren't a right or wrong issue - although it definitely will hurt them).

I don't work there but I use the site a lot, and when I used to live in New York they were one of the few teams of founders I met who were not complete bullshitters.

I started building an app and they had no reason to do anything for me, or provide me with any help whatsoever, but gave me detailed feedback on the product, gave me actual useful advice, and as my efforts became more and more successful have introduced me or championed me to numerous hard to get to people. Most people in their positions do not do this (at least in New York).

The reason why I responded to you in the first place was I saw you were still in university, and I bet when I was (I'm 25 so only a couple years ago) I might have thought the same thing of them. I might have burned a bridge for no reason, when actually these guys are extremely good people.

Although they put on a bit of persona when they deal with the tech press (mind you a lot of people I know wish they could do that), in real life they are sharp as hell, and are full of love. You don't meet a lot of people who give up jobs at Google, hedge funds and law firms to work full time on a lyrics website - but those are the types of people who put themselves on the line to try and work on stuff they are truly passionate about. Yeah sometimes outrageous, sometimes don't play by conventional rules, but those are the type of people that you want to work with if you want to try and build something successful.

PS. I don't believe you are toxic

You just called a group of human beings poisonous based on stuff you've "read and heard". Think about that. Poison kills people. You've never interacted with them personally, yet you are already calling them toxic.

So prior to actually analyzing the situation, you are already saying you don't care what actually happened, you don't like them anyway. Context is important, and I believe if you come into a conversation with a closed mind, it's not a conversation. That's why I don't believe those questions are moot.

Do you believe Edward Snowden is toxic for breaking rules and then complaining that things didn't go his way? I feel as though I could make the same argument about him using the logic you've just presented.

Are Google's terms a moral imperative? Does observation of Google's terms define who you are as a person? Are rules created by a corporation means to determine whether doing something is right or wrong?

Google can do what they want, they own the rankings. But why would you personally attack someone? Is adherence to Google's terms a factor you use in judging the quality of someone's character?

Seems toxic to lay such claims without getting to know someone personally. Have they done you wrong?

Perhaps you are uninterested in rap music, perhaps you believe in staunch professionalism, but at least have respect for an individual's choice to live to their life as they please. Success isn't truly success unless you do it while being yourself.

There is a reason you don't have the power to ban them for a year. Rap Genius was built with love - a reflection of the founders - and is a vastly superior product. If you had ever used it, you would clearly see that. You are blinded by hate my friend.

I totally agree that it's up to Google to deal with it how they deem fit. There is nothing wrong with a private company altering how they list things.

I originally asked because he seemed to be personally offended that they may have gamed a system put in place by a private company that has financial motives besides just serving you the best content.

I appreciate that. I guess personally I just don't know whether or not a system like this can ever truly be fair, especially when controlled by a corporate entity. Not that it's bad or wrong or that a corporate entity controls it, but it makes the notion of cheating less "right or wrong."

In fact, you or I might not have ever even learned about Rap Genius to begin with without antics like this!

Unfortunately the best content doesn't just win. Rules often favor the people already in power and who abide by the rules - or broke the previous ones to get there. Every "system" is flawed in the same way that connections and money are a "cheat" to help you out in life.

These guys weren't always at the top of results but they managed to get there, and I still recommend the service - I've never recommended another lyrics site in my life.

If breaking rules got them to where they are, I'm glad because damn is it a superior service to everything else out there.

If you don't mind me asking, why is this such a big deal to you that you would stop going to Rap Genius? As a music lover myself, I consistently go back to Rap Genius because I know they have the most interesting content.

I don't understand why you would be willing to abandon that because a claim (although it seems to be justified) that they might be breaking a rule created by a corporate entity that is often used to enforce their own agenda - putting Google+ results up top in results seems much, much worse than this to me!

How can the proprietary Google ranking algorithm be such holiness that a simple infraction causes such vitriol?

That's just what we call the loan where I'm from.

It's the loan I took out to pay for my 4 year undergraduate university education in it's entirety.

Is that better?

How long have you lived in New York?

Yep. For less than that amount I had a floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn, 20-30 minute commute via subway, paid off 10 year student loans in < 1 year, took my entire family on a vacation, and went out to dinner at a variety of nice restaurants on a fairly regular interval. I also saved up 30K in liquid assets (Although that includes some cash from 1-2 years before).

It's that's "only" middle class, the world is in serious trouble.

I worked in finance and made less than that in salary.

It's enough for a luxurious existence in NYC provided you don't have children. I'm not sure whether or not they have children, but that's a lot.

I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries?

Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that is venture-backed.

The same thing can be said for comments like yours.

He actually does a pretty great job in this article in my opinion: Strong narrative, uses facts + common knowledge and personal insight to build a strong point.

He is informing people on a particular topic they might not be so well acquainted with. Whether or not he's right about Facebook, we'll have to see but he makes a good case.

I'm sure they could, but it's not really relevant. It's more about the 2-3 Dropbox, AirBnB, Heroku like companies.

Think of it this way with Heroku:

YC gets 6-7% initially and probably ends up with close to 3% after Series A and B. That's $6.2M on the $212M exit price.

A single exit like Heroku returns them enough to run YC for at least a couple years and returned >10x for other investors.

So while you could show that, it doesn't really matter to YC or to investors, because they have those 2-3 huge wins.

Winnipeg? G Tan! I never knew you were Canadian brethren.

I owned my own company throughout university so I just got letters of reference from customers (aka my friends) that vouched for the work I did.

Remember, rules are made to be.. um fitted to your needs.

Fairly easy if your job description fits into one of the 13 designated jobs and you are from North America. Computer Systems Analyst and Graphic Designer are two that can work for startups - but whatever you do, do not include "programming" or "programmer" in your job description or tell the border agent you are a programmer. "Programming" or "programmer" is a huge red flag for the TN-1.

In fact, Microsoft brings on a lot of Canadian developers via TN Computer Systems Analyst and outright tells them to lie at the border and say they don't do any programming.

The H3 visa is a visa granted to "temporary trainees" for a government approved trainee program. You are expected to return back to your home country after it is finished and the program can be no more than 2 years. However you can parlay this into an H1B.

An L visa also works if the company has an office in the country you are from.

The reason is that J-1s are very easy to obtain if you have a willing sponsor. There are companies that are setup to grant J-1s as a business.

You can easily do everything without a lawyer too. I paid for my initial 4 month work-travel visa for ~$400 USD.

H1B is a whole other story...