but no mention of photosharing? videosharing? the current YC batch had this smuggling startup, where is the black market stuff?
great marketing, kudos.
New Requests for Startups
281–290 of 407 posts
Re: New Requests for Startups
#282While I've always felt a strong attraction to YCombinator (especially the cameraderie that comes from being a part of it) and been very inspired to apply, I can't help but feel that I am in a phase of life that's simply not a good fit for YC, or at least the narrative that's pushed. I'm no longer a mid 20-something that can live on Ramen and 16 hour days. I'm married and have a young child. Are there YC founders in t…
I was in that boat, but now if I was really motivated I could leave the family home for 3 months to do YC. The problem now is that everyone I know is in that same situation, so I've got NO co-founders to bring along. PG wrote a whole essay about why middle-aged guys don't do startups, but he also wrote one about the importance of cofounders. You solve one and end up not having the other...
Re: New Requests for Startups
#283> What comes after programming languages? I've been working on this for several years, though a startup seems the wrong vehicle for it. I think the description in the RFS is misguided: "We’re interested in helping developers create better software, faster. This includes new ways to write, understand, and collaborate on code, and the next generation of tools and infrastructure for delivering software continuously and…
I'm also surprised at this one. The software fulfillment process has a lot of issues. We are stuck in a local maxima and jumping the chasm to the next maxima with ideas like "what comes after programming languages" is really really hard. Sadly, one of the biggest hurdles is self preservation because software developers don't want "software development accessible to the widest part of our society". I hate to say it, b…
> Sadly, one of the biggest hurdles is self preservation because software developers don't want "software development accessible to the widest part of our society". I hate to say it, but there are Luddites among us.
It's a strange form of Luddism that seeks to limit opportunities to integrate the existing skills of the labor force into the structure of production. We don't have much in the way of unions or guilds, so perhaps the only effective way to restrict the labor supply is to keep the tools user-unfriendly.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this one was licked in 1885. The problem is not something amenable to a startup company. It's a huge entrenched cultural preference for terribly inefficient vehicles and development patterns that go with them. Bicycles are not an 80/20 solution, they're a 99% solution, with the appropriate kind of bicycle and accessories. You can haul all kinds of crap - construction equipment, children, appliances, etc. - with…
How do you deal with weather? It's certainly a lot more comfortable to drive somewhere in pouring rain than it is to bike, even when well prepared. And that preparation takes time and effort. Not to mention trying to bike in winter. I really really hate cars, but I can see why people prefer them.
Or in the extreme heat you can get during the summer. Not fun showing up to work drenched in sweat because you biked in.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#285This is a great list! Our startup, Glassbreakers, is focused on diversity and enterprise software to help women within organizations find mentors- applying for YC's winter batch!
Re: New Requests for Startups
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say we need to teach people to write elegant code. See my examples at http://akkartik.name/post/tracing-tests . I take this perverse joy in coming up with ugly code that is suited to its surroundings, and I'm extremely well-suited for programming because when it comes to code our aesthetics are like George Costanza's instincts ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opposite ). I want programming to be like readi…
Good luck. I'm still not going to read terrible code no matter how easy it is. It took me a while to come to this realization but aesthetically unpleasant code is indicative of the author's abilities and without elevating the level of all programmers I don't see how making code easier to read is going to make much difference. Some tooling might make it easier/faster to come to the conclusion that some piece of softwa…
Thanks for the luck. We might be in violent agreement or disagreement depending on what code you consider aesthetically pleasant. Everyone can agree on the crap, but can you share examples of code that you liked that might help me triangulate on your aesthetics. Alternatively, I'd be interested to hear if my published projects are pleasant or not. To help you triangulate on mine: http://akkartik.name/post/readable-bad.
To reiterate, you're responding to things I didn't say. Code shouldn't have to be perfectly designed to be readable, and nobody should have to wade through utter crap either. Very often code starts out nice when it has one author or three, and gradually turns to crap as more cooks are added. I want to eliminate that dependency on author churn, to have it be beautiful or ugly based on the capabilities of the programmers involved, not on the difficulty they had understanding those who came before. To make progress on this project, I find it most valuable to utterly ignore aesthetics.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd have to replicate Silicon Valley first.
Ok, put that on the list then
I think pg has written about this a couple times. Checking...
Yep. In order from oldest to most recent:
http://paulgraham.com/maybe.html
Re: New Requests for Startups
#288An important trend is the API-ification of everything. As more and more businesses are accessible with a web API, the Internet becomes more and more powerful. I'd like to invite people to try the early release of Empire API, which is one API for every enterprise SaaS: http://empiredata.co Empire is an API for accessing enterprise SaaS services such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Apps, etc. It provides a uniform, data…
neat, but SFDC alone is unbelievable ... as in i do not believe it. API limits, governors, etc. will all kill your fancy meta-api. working a lot with SFDC, an API on top of an API is simply performance hell.
co-founder here. it's a good point. yes the Salesforce API limits are still there, and you still need to work around them, but we don't make it worse.
you also get the advantage of having a datastore to conveniently persist data that you extract from Salesforce and other data sources, so that you can process data in batches easily.
Re: New Requests for Startups
#289It's a fantastic list; I'd like to comment on how some of the problems are already solved (outside the U.S.) or not cast properly. > Healthcare in the United States is badly broken. We are getting close to spending 20% of our GDP on healthcare; this is unsustainable. That's mostly a policy problem, not a technology problem. Countries with single-payer healthcare spend massively less on it per % of GDP than the United…
> That's because we dedicate most of our water and land resources to feeding cattle that we then eat. As a farmer, I'm struggling to picture how we could change that land utilization in a significant way without technology to enable it. It's not quite as simple as consumer desires, although you are right that changing consumer habits changes the flow of money and where it is invested which would also spur on the nece…
From someone who is not a farmer and doesn't know so much about this, for example could we grow vegetables and feed them to humans directly, rather than feeding grains to cattle?
Re: New Requests for Startups
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Countries with single-payer healthcare spend massively less on it per % of GDP than the United States with its pro-profit healthcare system Countries with universal coverage through other-than-single-payer systems do this, too. (every OECD country other than Mexico and the US has universal coverage -- but not all of them through single-payer -- and every OECD country spends massively less per GDP, let alone per cap…
But those systems tend to look like a "single-payer donkey with a free-market tail stuck on." The government decides the content of the basic packages, funds them for the poor, etc. If that sounds exactly like the ACA, you're correct, but you may have missed a very subtle and very important distinction -- take a closer look. Page 6 of http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/F... gives a very thorou…
A friend of mine ran across this in Switzerland. It has a nominally free-market system, but when he moved there, he ended up automatically enrolled in a plan without doing anything at all. He was remiss in reading and translating all his mail upon moving there, and after some months of inaction: 1) he was signed up to a default insurance plan; 2) which was partially subsidized based on his estimated income; and 3) he was billed for the remainder. Nominally private-sector, but still quite state-supervised. There is a minimum standard for plans, you must have one, and subsidies ensure that everyone can afford it. Unlike Obamacare, the "must have one" part is not enforced by fining you $700 on your taxes, either, but rather by actually signing you up for one.