Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

venturebeat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 200 posts

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#151

Post by [deleted] »

fnid2 wrote: post #143
pg wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just digging yourself in deeper by trying to poke holes in these companies based on such incomplete information. You really would be wiser to reserve judgment on them. Startups are so volatile, and good startup ideas so often seem bad at first. You're setting yourself up to look foolish by dismissing them so quickly. What's the rush? Why don't you learn more about these companies before deciding about them?

If I was putting my time and money into them and had the same information on them that you do and had interviewed the candidates, it very well may be that I would pick the same companies you did -- who knows. Some of them I can't imagine picking, because the market doesn't interest me. I'm not digging myself into a hole, I'm making an assessment based on incomplete information, which is all that can be expected of me…

[deleted]

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#152

Post by fnid2 »

pg wrote: post #144
fnid2 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was putting my time and money into them and had the same information on them that you do and had interviewed the candidates, it very well may be that I would pick the same companies you did -- who knows. Some of them I can't imagine picking, because the market doesn't interest me. I'm not digging myself into a hole, I'm making an assessment based on incomplete information, which is all that can be expected of me…

When you have incomplete information, there is another option besides saying things that are, as a result, probably mistaken: to wait till you know more before you express an opinion.

C'mon pg, this isn't that kind of forum. Posts are on the front page for a day at most, mostly a few hours or even minutes. You see a post, maybe read it, then write a comment. By the time I could get to know these companies, this thread will be long gone.

If you like, I'll come sit with you for the next YC evaluations and provide my honest and informed opinions of the companies.

There were only seven minutes for you to have read my long review of them and then compose your thoughts and reply. You put thoughts in my head without knowing me. You don't know what I know or what kinds of predictions I've made. You're doing the same thing to me that you are blasting me for doing to your selections.

This thread has gone way beyond where I wanted. I was just posting a quick comment, man. I didn't want it to blow up like this. It was just an opinion and I don't know how to underail it. Usually, at this point, people tell me to just shut up, so that's what I'll do.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#153

Post by lloydarmbrust »

fnid2 wrote: post #136
pg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You flatter yourself by saying your expectations are high. Actually you're just not a good judge of very early stage startups. If you saw Google when they were Backrub, or Microsoft when they were making Basic for the Altair, you would have said the same thing. Minor, derivative products.

What's with the ad hominem? I was stating an opinion. You don't know when I came to know Google or Microsoft and you don't know what my opinion of them was. You also don't know how good a judge I am of very early stage startups, which is largely irrelevant, because hardly anyone is a good judge of startups at this stage. Almost everyone knows that. In fact, I asked how to predict startup viability right here and well…

Hmm... I'm Seeing Interactive and not an "HN'er". Yeah, we're from the Austin area but I challenge you to find a start-up anywhere with 250 newspaper relationships.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#154

Post by rantfoil »

fnid2 wrote: post #140
aepstein wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the "really hard problems" that were submitted & accepted into YC (which PG has knowledge of and you do not) could not be fully solved in 3 months? I'll bet when Bump came out you thought "Who needs a new way to transfer contact info?" Now they have a partnership with PayPal, and it's clear that their vision is to build the platform for information transfer. Think bigger. You're judging these companies by the…

Actually, I was looking for a list of other YC companies to find some that do impress me and Bump, specifically, was one I was planning on mentioning.

Be the man in the arena, don't be one of the ignorant throng who criticizes the courageous ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Arena

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#155

Post by fnid2 »

lloydarmbrust wrote: post #153
fnid2 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with the ad hominem? I was stating an opinion. You don't know when I came to know Google or Microsoft and you don't know what my opinion of them was. You also don't know how good a judge I am of very early stage startups, which is largely irrelevant, because hardly anyone is a good judge of startups at this stage. Almost everyone knows that. In fact, I asked how to predict startup viability right here and well…

Hmm... I'm Seeing Interactive and not an "HN'er". Yeah, we're from the Austin area but I challenge you to find a start-up anywhere with 250 newspaper relationships.

I remember a conversation here a little while ago with someone from SI. It was many months ago and one of the gentlemen, maybe it was you, maybe your partner -- iirc, both or perhaps it was 2 out of three members of the team at that time participated in the thread, I can't remember the specifics. But you, or he, had been working really hard in the evenings, but it's hard to sell stuff to newspapers in the evenings, and was wondering if he should quit his job and focus on it or keep working on it. There were two of you really involved at that time or maybe two. It was a long time ago, it's kind of fuzzy. I think you were making a few thousand a month at that time and I thought that may be enough to take a chance, but there was a family and a mortgage and credit cards to be concerned with and political capital was running out. You were in the valley of death it seemed and I wanted to get you through it, so you'd keep going.

I remember commenting to someone and then someone else coming in and saying, "I'm the business partner." And your name, Lloyd is very familiar.

Anyway, I suggested to talk to the employer and see if you/he could take a day off a week and focus on sales during business hours and see if you could build up enough revenue.

Unfortunately, the person felt insecure about that idea because lots of concessions had been made by the employer already and it was doubtful that more were available and there was a lot of tension.

So I looked up the company and you had three or four products that you were selling to traditional news papers and you were really passionate about saving local news and I was too and I thought it was good idea and I wanted you to succeed, so congratulations! I think you are on your way! :)

EDIT: Yep, here's the thread. I was just fnid then, but I lost the password: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916035

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#156

Post by maxklein »

rdamico wrote: post #142
maxklein wrote: post #24

My picks for the ones that will be successful from the idea only, without looking at the bios of the founders or the websites: - Notifo - Zencoder (If they drop their prices. Those prices are horrendous for the REAL market they are targeting) - Nowmov (with name change) - Crocodoc (will sell, but will not have too many users) - Gamador - Cardpool - Chromaom - Answerly - Zenedy - Data Marketplace - 140Bets

I'm a co-founder at crocodoc, and would be interested to hear your reasoning behind your "will sell, but will not have too many users" comment. It sounds like you have a specific niche market in mind that you think crocodoc will gain traction in to the exclusion of others?

It's just difficult to explain, innit? I'm trying to imagine explaining exactly what crocodoc is to the misses and it's unclear. Usually, when there is this lack of clarity, it will tend to appeal to geeks or people who already want something like that, and not just everyone.

That's what I mean - it will be big within the crowd of people who take time to understand it, but the other people just won't get it.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#157

Post by allantyoung »

tiffani wrote: post #93
jpatte wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they were single founders from the very start or if the team broke during the program?

I know the Notifo guy, Chad, was working by himself. Dude's amazing. :)

Chad is an animal, a machine, and a nice guy all rolled up into one. As a single founder who can crank out code and prototype fast, I know of few better.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#158

Post by [deleted] »

danicgross wrote: post #128
jacoblyles wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas matter too. If you have really smart and capable people working on a product that not many people are going to use, then they're not going to be very successful. Programming smarts != market smarts.

people matter more. good people know how to fail bad ideas quickly and come up with better ones. good people > good ideas.

[deleted]

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#159

Post by jacoblyles »

clistctrl wrote: post #45

Data Market place looks like a site I will be using in the future, and I really want to know more about embedster.

Do they use any DRM? It seems like data would be hard to sell because it's easy to copy. On the other hand, if you're selling to enterprisey people then they usually try to follow the letter of the law for fear of getting caught.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#160

Post by arthurgibson »

fnid2 wrote: post #136
pg wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You flatter yourself by saying your expectations are high. Actually you're just not a good judge of very early stage startups. If you saw Google when they were Backrub, or Microsoft when they were making Basic for the Altair, you would have said the same thing. Minor, derivative products.

What's with the ad hominem? I was stating an opinion. You don't know when I came to know Google or Microsoft and you don't know what my opinion of them was. You also don't know how good a judge I am of very early stage startups, which is largely irrelevant, because hardly anyone is a good judge of startups at this stage. Almost everyone knows that. In fact, I asked how to predict startup viability right here and well…

Art (founder of embedly) , yea embeddability is the goal ..... We wil be much more than a "video widget", some examples where this is powerful already ..... Posterous ( a blog site based on embeddable content) , Facebook ( embeds hulu and youtube videos) - http://www.facebook.com/hulu , Reddit.com has decided to expand their links and add content to their links
Post reply on HN