Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work' • Hacker News Board

Re: Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

#11

Post by corentin » Thu, May 24, 2007, 10:01 AM UTC

sgoraya wrote: post #8

Richard Barton of Zillow Jack Dangermond of ESRI Also would like to see a gaming founder - Carmack is a fine candidate & -Jason Rubin & Andy Gavin formerly of Naughty Dog & currently with/founded Flektor

Yep, Carmack would be great; on the other hand, you can learn pretty much everything you need to know about how he started id Software with his friends by reading the great book "Masters of Doom" (I strongly recommend it).

George Broussard and the Duke Nukem team would be great, too (the brilliant guy who wrote the then-ubercool 3D game engine was still a kid at the time!)

By the way: web startups are great but they aren't the only ones. "Founders at work" is a great, great resource but it would have been even greater if it focused a little less on web stuff.

A very brilliant guy is Matt Dillon. Not the actor... well, he certainly is brilliant too ;) The software developer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Dillon_(computer_scientist)

He started a few startups but he is mostly known as a BSD kernel developer wizard. He started the very innovative DragonflyBSD project (a fork of FreeBSD with impressive goals).

Chuck Moore (inventor of Forth and computer visionary) started/was part of a few startups, too. Lately, he has been with IntellaSys creating an impressive, radically-different microprocessor ("SEAforth").

The story of Bill Joy (BSD, TCP/IP hacker and co-founder of Sun Microsystems) would be cool, too.

The Lisp Machine guys would be great as well (though there already is some info available of the net).

And why not founders in fields not related at all with computers? The founders of Bose, Hobie Cat, etc.

EDIT: yes, there is a lot of superlatives :)

Re: Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

#12

Post by corentin » Thu, May 24, 2007, 10:11 AM UTC

zach wrote: post #4

bootload wrote: post #2

Reading Founders at Work and going through the stories I was struck by who was not in the list. Another edition is in the planning by JL. What founders would you suggest for the second edition? Mine would be ... - Donna Dubinsky, Jeff Hawkins (Ed Colligan) ~ Palm Computing - CmdrTaco ~ Slashdot - Larry Ellison ~ Oracle - Hasso Platner ~ SAP - David Kelly ~ IDEO - John Carmack ~ Id Software - Peter Molyneux ~ Bullfrog…

Good suggestions. Haven't we all had enough of Molyneux, though? Plus, who out there is starting a game company? Nobody. Maybe Nolan Bushnell would be interesting, though. I have a few suggestions of my own: - Jeremy Wertheimer (ITA) - Justin Frankel (Nullsoft) - Lars Rasmussen (Where2) - Jawed Karim (YouTube) - Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster) Longshots: Bill Joy, Larry or Sergey, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Omidyar

"Plus, who out there is starting a game company?"

The target audience for "Founders at work" is not just news.YC ;)

Re: Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

#13

Post by bootload » Thu, May 24, 2007, 11:46 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #5

++++ Brad Fitzpatrick / LiveJournal ++++ Joe Kraus / JotSpot (not Excite) +++ Chad Hurley or Steve Chen / YouTube +++ Reid Hoffman / LinkedIn +++ Jason Calacanis / Weblogsinc ++ Markus Frind / PlentyOfFish ++ Kevin Rose / Digg ++ Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook + Michael Arrington / TechCrunch

Kraus is in the current edition. I'd have to agree with Fitzpatrick. I know your thoughts on his brilliance. Didn't think of Hurley/Chen. For Calacanis I'd also add Dave Winer. Rose, Zuckerberg are still playing out. What did Arrington do thats so interesting with TechCrunch?

Re: Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

#14

Post by bootload » Thu, May 24, 2007, 11:47 AM UTC

corentin wrote: post #11

sgoraya wrote: post #8

Richard Barton of Zillow Jack Dangermond of ESRI Also would like to see a gaming founder - Carmack is a fine candidate & -Jason Rubin & Andy Gavin formerly of Naughty Dog & currently with/founded Flektor

Yep, Carmack would be great; on the other hand, you can learn pretty much everything you need to know about how he started id Software with his friends by reading the great book "Masters of Doom" (I strongly recommend it). George Broussard and the Duke Nukem team would be great, too (the brilliant guy who wrote the then-ubercool 3D game engine was still a kid at the time!) By the way: web startups are great but they…

'... George Broussard ...'

and the making of Duke Nukem Forever ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_Forever

Re: Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

#15

Post by bootload » Thu, May 24, 2007, 11:55 AM UTC

davidw wrote: post #6

This has been around before, there were some listed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=16901 Personally, I find the "big, but not huge" ones the most inspirational for some reason. Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like have been covered a lot in various ways, and have also had time to let their legends grow in their own minds.

'... This has been around before ...'

I missed this and would have searched for it if I could have :( The ones I want are the side players as well There's lots of interesting going on in the pre PC, PC era, Web 1 & Web 2 era that have yet to be told.

- PC ~ Phil Kahn, borland

- Web 1 ~ realmedia

- Web 2 ~ moo, last.fm, zoomer, photobucket

Re: Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

#16

Post by bootload » Thu, May 24, 2007, 12:01 PM UTC

zach wrote: post #4

bootload wrote: post #2

Reading Founders at Work and going through the stories I was struck by who was not in the list. Another edition is in the planning by JL. What founders would you suggest for the second edition? Mine would be ... - Donna Dubinsky, Jeff Hawkins (Ed Colligan) ~ Palm Computing - CmdrTaco ~ Slashdot - Larry Ellison ~ Oracle - Hasso Platner ~ SAP - David Kelly ~ IDEO - John Carmack ~ Id Software - Peter Molyneux ~ Bullfrog…

Good suggestions. Haven't we all had enough of Molyneux, though? Plus, who out there is starting a game company? Nobody. Maybe Nolan Bushnell would be interesting, though. I have a few suggestions of my own: - Jeremy Wertheimer (ITA) - Justin Frankel (Nullsoft) - Lars Rasmussen (Where2) - Jawed Karim (YouTube) - Wil Shipley (Delicious Monster) Longshots: Bill Joy, Larry or Sergey, Marc Andreessen, Pierre Omidyar

'... Haven't we all had enough of Molyneux ...'

I think Carmack, Broussard, Molyneux represent the leading edge of software in the PC era (and beyond for Carmack). Molyneux is a good study. Created 2 startups in a difficult industry, shipped product.

Nolan Bushnell is definitely a good one. He's still at it with 'uWink'. There's a pattern here. These guys are serial entrepreneurs of technology.

Re: Suggest founders for new edition of 'Founders at work'

#17

Post by startupper » Thu, May 24, 2007, 12:43 PM UTC

Please include some people from the infrastructure world. Founders of companies like Cisco, Juniper, Qualcomm, etc. Even smaller chip companies. How did these people get started?

Here's an example of someone interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bechtolsheim

And another: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Communications