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Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

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Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#181

Post by lloydarmbrust »

fnid2 wrote: post #155
lloydarmbrust wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

Right. I guess I don't understand what part of all this makes you "not really impressed" with us?

The other companies in the list you actually gave reasons, but with us you just keep referring to this previous conversation and I do not understand your point.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#182

Post by lloydarmbrust »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #170
pg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much that you're cynical as that you haven't thought about where the descriptions of these startups came from. They came from an event where startups presented to investors in SV. So of course the descriptions sound like they'd be appealing to that audience; that's what they were trying to do.

Honest question: would tech-savvy investors' opinions of a short blurb really be that different from other technical businesspeople? Or, to put it another way: would it really require two completely different statements to appear attractive to both groups? And more critically: I realize that this is your baby, and you have had a large amount of involvement and personal investment in these projects over the last sever…

Were you there? I was and didn't see this "meh" reaction you're talking about.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#183

Post by fnid2 »

lloydarmbrust wrote: post #181
fnid2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, a…

Right. I guess I don't understand what part of all this makes you "not really impressed" with us? The other companies in the list you actually gave reasons, but with us you just keep referring to this previous conversation and I do not understand your point.

I simply didn't remember your name. Months ago when I looked at your website and commented with you here, I was impressed. I was not impressed with SI when I just read the 2 or 3 sentence description, only because of multiple coincidental reasons.

First, I didn't remember that SI was your company and I was impressed with your company, so my thought was, why is this company in the list better than the company I remember chatting with a few months back that was struggling, yet passionate and interested in saving local news. I was disappointed that companies like yours weren't represented in the list. It just so happens that the company I was reading about was your company.

So you're an interesting case, because I knew about you and knowing about you was why I wasn't impressed with the SI I was reading about, simply because I knew of an impressive other company in the space. It supports what pg is saying, that with deeper investigation, some of the unimpressive companies become impressive, because I had done deeper investigation on you months before and was impressed.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#184

Post by _3ex7 »

Rauchg wrote: post #77
emmett wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, me-too products are never really interesting. I mean, does the world really need another search engine? There's already Lycos and Altavista. Calling an internet startup's idea "me-too" is a pretty lame criticism. Most of the most successful startups had "me-too" ideas on paper. The proof is in the eating.

Hey, there's already MySpace, WHY create Facebook?! Why do something similar on the surface, but focus on what the user really wants? Madness.

Ok, I am going to create a Twitter clone

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#186

Post by pg »

kirse wrote: post #179
pg wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be that kind of forum.

I would say that what most people are doing in this thread (using all information available to them to make a best initial judgment), is exactly what you should have expected. This is basic human understanding - taking the available information and drawing a conclusion. I think it's a bit unfair to poke fun at names and such, but the commenters in this thread are performing the exact same process of evaluation and un…

I know it's possible for a forum to do better than what you claim is all people can do, because HN itself used to do better.

There's a new batch of YC startups every 6 months. The startups were about the same quality a year ago. And yet after demo day a year ago the top comment on HN wasn't a content-free dismissal with 86 points. I know both HN and the startups very well, and what's changing here is HN, not the startups. The site has grown so much that the median user is significantly dumber and meaner than a year ago.

I've been thinking a lot over the last several months about how to deal with this. One of the solutions I'm considering is to get rid of points on comments, and that would have worked well here. Fnid2's comment, as he more or less admitted himself, was just a throwaway remark. But displaying points transformed it into a rallying cry leading a mob.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#187

Post by tlb »

Estragon wrote: post #39
fnid2 wrote: post #2

I'll take the contrarian stance and say I'm not really impressed with the list. There are some that may be good, but there's not much new. Mostly me too products. Perhaps my expectations are too high.

Crocodoc looks like a solution for a serious painpoint of mine.

It sounds derivative, but in fact crocodoc is great. While there are lots of document markup tools, I actually use and like crocodoc. Use it a few times to mark up a real document and you'll see.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#188

Post by idlewords »

pg wrote: post #174
and13 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of you making fun of Wufoo's name in this video (1:07): http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6392191576577272336...

The difference is, I wasn't using it as the basis of a judgment about the company.

The difference is, I wasn't even referring to the names, but rather the linked descriptions. For example:

"Embedly is a single source for embeddable of content on the web."

And rather than mockery it was an expression of regret, that it's 2010 and these are the best startup ideas you got. I think the names do a good job mocking themselves without any additional help.

Impressive weaseling, though!

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#189

Post by kirse »

pg wrote: post #186
kirse wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that what most people are doing in this thread (using all information available to them to make a best initial judgment), is exactly what you should have expected. This is basic human understanding - taking the available information and drawing a conclusion. I think it's a bit unfair to poke fun at names and such, but the commenters in this thread are performing the exact same process of evaluation and un…

I know it's possible for a forum to do better than what you claim is all people can do, because HN itself used to do better. There's a new batch of YC startups every 6 months. The startups were about the same quality a year ago. And yet after demo day a year ago the top comment on HN wasn't a content-free dismissal with 86 points. I know both HN and the startups very well, and what's changing here is HN, not the star…

2009 Demo Day - 370 days ago (First comment with 101 points = completely dismissive and a huge rant)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=522675

2008 Summer Demo Day - 587 days ago (First comment = snarky remark about the company logos... sound familiar?):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=276333

2007 Demo Day - 957 days ago (Half the thread is [dead] and full of bickering similar to this one):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41269

So no, HN did not ever do better. It only seems worse because instead of 2 complaints about company logos, HN is now 10x the size and you see 20 complaints. There's still a lot of great articles posted, HN "Ask/Tell" discussions, and it's still full of intelligent people. However, it takes wisdom to know when to shut one's mouth, and intelligence != wisdom.

I've been here about 3 years myself, and that's why I try to stay logged out and make my bookmark to HN = /best. It's just gotten far too noisy and I was wasting tons of time keeping up with the sheer volume of (both good and bad) comments.

Re: Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

#190

Post by [deleted] »

jonknee wrote: post #166
nailer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably don't use a lot of MS products. Outlook 2000 is 4 (maybe 5) versions old. At least 2010, 2007 and 2003 don't load images by default, I wouldn't be surprised if Outlook XP didn't either. More to the point: no large organization is using Outlook 2000 anymore. It's unsupported and you can get 2010, 2007, 2003 or even XP on your current license agreement.

... And yet "Outlook 2000, 2003, Express" make up 32% of all email clients found in their study. My point isn't that these are in high use, but that they are vastly over counted (and even then meaningless to try and find providers as there are plenty of people using Gmail inside of Outlook).

[deleted]
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