OK, this is very cool. Great idea!
Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
51–60 of 300 posts
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#52Hey everyone! I manage and run the Fellowship program at YC. I just want to build on top of what Dan wrote about being nice. We’re not asking you to do this because we think it’s good manners. We actually believe it’s the right way to think and act like the best investors. It’s easy to form some really bad habits when you sit in a position of power to judge the potential of a person, a team, an idea and their executi…
For the sake of discussion, I'll offer a counterargument. Be Nice is a good goal for Apply HN since it promotes civil discussion and stops the threads from devolving into semantic "lol no https u suck" that some Show HN threads tend to devolve into. Users are not nice . They don't comment on HN or Twitter, they just stop using it without fanfare. And what determine a startup's success in the real world is if people w…
Being nice and being direct are not opposite to each other.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#53Promising ! This could be an interesting way to stimulate startups from around the globe. Last time I felt this way was when I discovered Stripe Atlas.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#54If it's both a "Show HN" and an "Apply HN" what do you recommend as a headline? Apply and Show are related but not the same.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#55sounds like kickstarter on HN
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#56Suggestion: Vote with money and use that to fund the company. The people who put their money in to fund the company become collective shareholders alongside YC.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#57I think a mini application with a few questions from the normal YC app as a comment would be helpful. I see a ton of Show HNs in which I have no idea what the product does (either because the website copy is vague/confusing or because I don't know the market). Having a comment template or something reviewers can look at without have to ask the same questions in every thread would be great.
Yes, and a word count limitation for the original post!
I'd rather have "standard form" comment here, so as to encourage clear introductions/pitches by opposition to the inevitable "follow this URL for a presentation". Even if that means a longer read.
I think the equalitarian thing to do would be to encourage apply hn's to be as self contained as possible to avoid biasing on the quality of the landing page or video or whatever else would profit from the exposure
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#58Will there be a new toplink for "Apply HN" submissions? I think random sorting on that page would be a good idea to encourage all submissions get an opportunity for discussion.
Probably a top link, yes, but in good minimalist form we'll wait until it's clear we need it. (Edit: we need it. In the meantime, please use the Algolia link I included at the top. It's not like we wrote code for this in advance or anything—that would be cheating :)) Random sorting is a good idea. We'll think about that.
Maybe put them under Show HN for now?
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#59Ranking by upvotes/comments seems highly problematic, even with HN's antibrigade features. A) There are many external factors that can implicitly cap the number of upvotes/comments. (time submitted, amount of competition, etc.) HN has repost rules to alleviate this problem: would Apply HN posts be able to repost too? B) Not to mention that it encourages sockpuppet voting/commenting, especially since there is a high r…
There's a lot of uncertainty here. Maybe upvote/comments ranking will be a good thing, maybe it will be a bad ting.
High uncertainty is actually good. That's what makes experiments valuable - they reduce the uncertainty and thereby help us better understand something. In this case that "something" is the HN application process.
So even if this process has potential problems, the experiment is still worth it.
Re: Ask HN: Pick startups for YC to fund
#60Hey everyone! I manage and run the Fellowship program at YC. I just want to build on top of what Dan wrote about being nice. We’re not asking you to do this because we think it’s good manners. We actually believe it’s the right way to think and act like the best investors. It’s easy to form some really bad habits when you sit in a position of power to judge the potential of a person, a team, an idea and their executi…
For the sake of discussion, I'll offer a counterargument. Be Nice is a good goal for Apply HN since it promotes civil discussion and stops the threads from devolving into semantic "lol no https u suck" that some Show HN threads tend to devolve into. Users are not nice . They don't comment on HN or Twitter, they just stop using it without fanfare. And what determine a startup's success in the real world is if people w…
Potential YC Fellows are exhibiting their ideas or at best prototypes, not finished products with all possible user polish already applied.