Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
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Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#2Well, I'm very glad that he responded so quickly. I was so excited to see something sort of like YC in Seattle but I was worried about the whole very-similar-application thing. I am glad to hear that he just really admires the YC program and is going to fix up the application.
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#3Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#4Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
Very true. I doubt PG and co were losing sleep over a copied application form ;) They're probably watching their competition with much interest. It's not like there's room for only one after all.
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#5Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
Very true. I doubt PG and co were losing sleep over a copied application form ;) They're probably watching their competition with much interest. It's not like there's room for only one after all.
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#6I've written many times [...] so I was caught by surprise
Reading that, it occurred to me that one of the gotchas here is the statelessness of the web. "Statelessness" isn't quite what I mean. "Contextlessness" might be better. URLs are pointers that jump directly to content that mostly gets consumed atomically, without reference to anything else the author has said/done. Of course if readers want context they have ample opportunity to explore: look at what else is on the site, google the sources and so on. But most won't. (I often do, but I didn't this time.) I wonder if one way to mitigate this is to make content more self-describing.
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#7What really bothers me about YC-clones copying the application form is how little it shows the group has thought about the program they're starting.
How is it possible that PG nailed down exactly what every seed investor would ever want to know about startup founders seeking funding? Don't these investors have any other questions? Do they actually call people hackers in real life? Is a couple sentences about each founder the maximum all investors are capable of reading?
So I'm left wondering if the lack of thought that went into the application carries over into the rest of the program.
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#8I've written many times [...] so I was caught by surprise Reading that, it occurred to me that one of the gotchas here is the statelessness of the web. "Statelessness" isn't quite what I mean. "Contextlessness" might be better. URLs are pointers that jump directly to content that mostly gets consumed atomically, without reference to anything else the author has said/done. Of course if readers want context they have a…
Do you have ideas on how to do that?
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#9This was nice of them. It didn't bother us too much. We were indignant the first time someone copied our application form, but at least these guys admitted it.
Re: Sincere Apologies to Paul Graham and the Y Combinator Team (from the Seattle Founder's Co-op)
#10These guys have suddenly gained a lot of respect in my eyes.