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

Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#81

Post by raldi »

omegant wrote: post #59
pg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because whenever a reporter asks investors at Demo Day for a comment, and they ask themselves "what could I say that would be in my interest to have reprinted?" the obvious choice is "prices are coming down." And it's not true, incidentally. We don't have all the data yet but it's clear valuations remained high last batch.

If they make it a meme, eventually valuations will go down, as VCs will be influenced by the general "mood"(at least a portion of them will).

Hey, did you hear the suit is back?

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#82

Post by w1ntermute »

rhizome wrote: post #57
w1ntermute wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh...you clearly have never worked at a startup with a severe need for more developers. And I'm not talking about the next Instagram. There are legitimate needs for more developers in many startups that are working on real problems. If you can accelerate the growth of your business by taking VC money and hiring more people, why wouldn't you? Contrary to your first statement, there are plenty of startups in markets th…

If you can accelerate the growth of your business by taking VC money and hiring more people, why wouldn't you? Brooks' Law, for one thing. I if I was in the situation you describe, I would try more to use the money to buy time, not so much people.

That makes no sense. By definition, if you can accelerate the growth of your business by hiring more people, then it is a case in which Brook's Law doesn't apply. It is a common misconception that Brook's Law applies to all software projects. It does not. I can think of several real situations where it does not.

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#83

Post by braco_alva »

rdl wrote: post #70
braco_alva wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was talking about what the founders say in the video, not the quality of the video itself.

It would be nice if people would put a tiny bit of effort into the video, specifically making sure the audio is intelligible (levels, lack of noise, etc.) on a normal computer. Just playing it back on a normal settings computer on internal speaker would probably be enough. Maybe don't shoot it in a car while driving, or outdoors with wind?

I agree with you, I'm not saying that the video can be low quality because it doesn't matter, just that the content is far more important to them, but yeah, I think is better if you have a proper camera and mic. Wouldn't leave a nice impression if someone submit a video shooted with their phone.

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#84

Post by mmayberry »

wiwillia wrote: post #54
mmayberry wrote: post #39

Why did Teespring take $1.3M in funding if they were on pace to make $1M the following month? Why dilute your pool when your figure was just a month away (plus whatever else was saved) anyone have any insight?

Hi there - Walker from Teespring here. Both rdl and earbitscom are right. We took money to give ourselves the cushion we need to scale and aim big, and we raised it from people we believe can make a difference to our business. I'm writing a follow up to my first blog post (wiwillia.com) where I'll get a little more into the details of why we chose to raise.

cool. I liked part I. Looking forward to the follow up.

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#85

Post by tokenadult »

crimsonzagar wrote: post #71
ewoodrich wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable heuristic. In which case, what was the ratio of sentences read to ignored in this particular instance?

Looks like hn_id of monsterix has been banned. Didn't expect this from site admins because what he said above was within quality of discussions normally seen here, and his questions are genuine. It's kind of sad that admins are unable to take criticism or face real questions and are overreacting to it.

There was a log-in code change on HN today that made a lot of people think they were site-banned,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650171

but in fact they were not. The comments of the user you mention do not appear dead to me (I have showdead turned on).

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#86

Post by rdl »

braco_alva wrote: post #83
rdl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if people would put a tiny bit of effort into the video, specifically making sure the audio is intelligible (levels, lack of noise, etc.) on a normal computer. Just playing it back on a normal settings computer on internal speaker would probably be enough. Maybe don't shoot it in a car while driving, or outdoors with wind?

I agree with you, I'm not saying that the video can be low quality because it doesn't matter, just that the content is far more important to them, but yeah, I think is better if you have a proper camera and mic. Wouldn't leave a nice impression if someone submit a video shooted with their phone.

No one really cares about the video quality for this; a webcam is fine, and a phone is probably fine. And overproduced video is horrible. I'd just stick to making sure the audio can be easily understood, and making sure it is about a minute; if there is a lot of wasted time in the beginning, edit that out.

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#88

Post by clicks »

rdl wrote: post #86
braco_alva wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, I'm not saying that the video can be low quality because it doesn't matter, just that the content is far more important to them, but yeah, I think is better if you have a proper camera and mic. Wouldn't leave a nice impression if someone submit a video shooted with their phone.

No one really cares about the video quality for this; a webcam is fine, and a phone is probably fine. And overproduced video is horrible. I'd just stick to making sure the audio can be easily understood, and making sure it is about a minute; if there is a lot of wasted time in the beginning, edit that out.

It seems (at least from your HN profile) that you're a founder, not a YC partner, but yet you're giving advice as if you have seen some of the videos that have been submitted by YC applicants. So I'm just curious now... are you or are you not a YC partner?

Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine

#90

Post by monsterix »

tokenadult wrote: post #85
crimsonzagar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like hn_id of monsterix has been banned. Didn't expect this from site admins because what he said above was within quality of discussions normally seen here, and his questions are genuine. It's kind of sad that admins are unable to take criticism or face real questions and are overreacting to it.

There was a log-in code change on HN today that made a lot of people think they were site-banned, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650171 but in fact they were not. The comments of the user you mention do not appear dead to me (I have showdead turned on).

I am pretty much back in. Yes, there was some problem last night and some of the lines I edited/wrote got lost when I hit submit. Couldn't login for a long time thereafter, and unfortunately misunderstood the situation.
Post reply on HN