Free Online Crash Course in Startups from The Founder Institute

Why are they limiting it to only a 1000 people?

It also forced me to go register without reading anything about the course and site, because only 1000 invites were available, and HN just linked it.

Spoiler alert, that password is "readwriteweb"

First of all I was going to complain that I couldent get in. I was going to reply as an angry raging code monkey and demand a password. Then I kept reading. =\

The first 1000 readers that use the code "readwriteweb" will get access to the course materials, which is currently available by invitation-only.

First off I feel as though I dont know much about how a startup works yet. Im trying to learn so I could eventually launch something in the future.

Watching the first video "Holy shit , my idea sucks" around the 15:30 mark or if you look at the slides, its slide 11, the guy says that an idea "Must be NEW or BETTER".

How true is that? Why MUST it be (only) one of those two?

I was reading one of 37 signals books' "Rework" and they said their model was not to make something new or better, but to simplify. They admit there are better applications out there, jam packed with more features but they found that to be to cumbersom.

If someone from YCombinator watched these videos first before starting up their idea(s), would they be where they are right now? How informative would someone suggest these videos are that has some experience in the Startup field?

In that case the word better is relative in both the presenters point of view and 37signals.