ztan

I'm curious in how things would have turned out had he not been kicked out of YC. My guesses are he probably wouldn't have been that much better off. My analogy for this would be the situation of a Harvard drop out. You've already accomplished the toughest task - getting ACCEPTED. Whether you graduate or not seems pretty insignificant since it's so much more unlikely for an average high school student to be accepted into Harvard, compared to an average Harvard student finishing the program he was accepted in. Ultimately he was able to demonstrate his ability to network and raise fund despite not completing YC. What I don't know is how much did having that YC stamp of approval (despite being taken away later) helped in those endeavors.

Edit: rephrased my question a bit, still seems awkward...

Thinking out loud for #4. If YC becomes the major choke point. I can then see the emergence of another "Pre YC" stage forming. In this stage you are mentored (by perhaps YC alumnus) to maximize your chances of becoming funded by YC. Eventually certain organization will then again stand out as producing the highest rate/number of YC funded talents and becomes the new choke point... and then the process repeats for the YC of YCs?

That's $6M every batch, at least $12M a year. Assuming YC classes does not expand. I think PG mentioned about 1/3 of the YC companies fail. So that's $4M in the water every year. Out of the rest 2/3s chances of being a Heroku are... actually I'm going stop here because I'm sure they've worked out all the math already.

>p.s.-I love Hacker News myself, and take all my students there to open it up to them.

I have nothing against middle school students. I like kids. I also think exposing HN to kids at an early age is a great idea. However something about that idea bothers me and makes me feel uneasy. I'm not quite able to put my finger on it. Anyone else feel the same way?

No, I do mean Blizzard Entertainment. Besides the fact they have total independence from Activision in terms of operation. They've also had a long history of doing stuff like this. They shutdown the open source project Freecraft in 2003 long before the Activition merger.[1] Yes, Vivendi owned them at the time. But they have done some equally sketchy things before the Vivendi acquisition as well.

The original StarCraft client silently snooped through the players hard drive and sent the gather information back. They later patched out the spyware "feature" after being hit by a class action suit.[2] I see a lot of fans with the idea that "Bliz is this innocent goodie good game dev who was forced to do evil by their giant greedy parent publisher corps". Trust me, I worked for them. That is absolutely NOT the case. All of these decisions came from with in.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagus

[2]http://attrition.org/errata/company/blizzard01.html

The interesting thing is there are plenty of SC2 maps/mods that use the word "Warcraft" in their name. There are even ones with "World of Warcraft" in their name. Yet Bliz only chose to go after this guy. None of the other maps seems be getting this kind of attention. The practice of Bliz fans making mods using other Bliz IP has been going on for years. Even the original Starcraft game had Diablo maps. Something really struck a nerve with this one and showed up on the Bliz legal dept's radar.

For those who are interested, here's another copy of the removed video. Not sure how long it will stay up though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIOpHq0vUc

I too find that partnership interesting. Mainly because of the fact I can't quite figure out what could Groupon bring to the table for Tencent if they already have Tuan QQ? Am I missing something?

My 2 cents:

3. Habits are often formed because of/to adapt the environment. (evolution?) Hang out with smoker friends all the time, higher chance of becoming a smoker. Or if you have a door that doesn't shut/lock properly. It could lead you to form a habit of double checking the door every time you close it. Fixing the door would probably cause you to lose that habit.

6. A lot of behaviors are set off by certain triggers. It could be different for everyone. Smoker trying to quit should probably avoid being at places where everyone is smoking. AA member probably should avoid going to bars. Recognizing triggers allow you to avoid things that lead to undesired compulsive behaviors. At the same time they can be used to create desirable ones. Perhaps listening to motivational music or phrases will trigger someone to study and seek self improvement.

I disagree. Reason: I think the problem with Intel is that they are more of a manufacturing company than design company. What I hear from insiders (anyone at Intel care to validate/correct?) is that the company's culture as a whole value their design arm much less than their manufacturing. Their main advantage (also strategy) has always been that they can out manufacture their competition. (ie faster shrink, better yields) Intel does not have a good track record for processor design outside of the x86 CPU space. (and even in that space the P4 is pretty much a failure in terms of design) Looking at their repeated failed attempts at being significant in the graphics space. And then there is Xscale. They had a lot of potential with the StrongARM group when they acquired them from DEC, but they just ended up selling them to Marvell (who is now doing amazing stuff with them). Also how they are now capitalizing on their superior manufacturing capabilities by venturing into producing lower tech products like SSDs. Combine all of that with the notion that the x86 architecture simply does not offer any value on a mobile CPU, (another debate, but one I strongly believe) I really don't think Intel will have anything competitive against ARM "shortly". (Xscale was sold in 2006...)

The thing i find interesting about the diagram is that it feel like the center point should be some sort of balance point, but in fact it is just medium skill with medium challenge lacking a descriptive word.

Y Combinator probably does not count as a startup. But I'd still have to say YC has been the most inspiring company for me in 2010. Seeing PG talk at startup school about why right now is the best time to do a startup had a large impact on me. I'd argue that currently having the YC stamp of approval for a web/tech startup has more value and credibility than any other single incubator/funder out there. And its probably one of the best things that can happen for an early stage tech startup.

Yahoo PR single handedly gave the Pinboard guys a hockey stick growth.

http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/15562023131676672

My guess is that the floating head and staring contest with Jimmy Wales banners finally got to him.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTe...

Interestingly from what I can see in their published tests and stats for the banners, having pics of Jimmy on the banners actually had a significant positive effect. Which explains why they kept doing different variations of them despite the fact they creep some of us out.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testi...

My new theory is that kickstarter actually works best as a demand gauging/preorder tool for a completely finished product that is in the process of working out a mass manufacturing deal. These guys already knew exactly where/who to go to and took care of all the business side of things for manufacturing very very quickly. I'm pretty sure they could and would have manufactured some of those watches with or without kickstarter. The only real problem kickstarter solved for them was knowing how many to manufacture. The fact that other successful kickstarter projects such as Glif, Lockpick tools, and C-loop succeeded under similar conditions seems to somewhat back this theory up.

I'm a new user. I too have just discovered today that quoting pg does seem to make some people here uncomfortable. However even they admit themselves that those are words we quote are of wisdom.

>Why is that I also have the biggest urge to code something fun when the time is best used to get good grades?

According to PG, "There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. ... The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination, because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things."

I would guess coding something fun instead of doing school work falls into (b) for most people who do it. Reasons: 1) Being fun makes it easier to do. 2) If it has sufficient complexity over the school work one can rationalize to themselves that working on it is more important (for learning) than getting good grades.

full link: http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

"Internet high five. Place hand here" Did anyone else actually touch their screen after seeing that?

i kind of lost some respect for him after his endorsement for tony robbins...