Five Years’ Time • Hacker News Board

Re: Five Years’ Time

#11

Post by jamesk_au » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 3:15 AM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #7

Rejection letter from YC: > I’m sorry to say we decided not to fund you. We liked you as individuals but we had a hard time seeing how developer API documentation was the right beachhead. Perhaps I'm looking too much into it, it's just surprising to see, on the record, the polar opposite of what pg claimed on several occasions: people, not ideas. Or did I misunderstand it?

Given the closing line was "You guys are clearly great hackers and we’d be happy to hear from you again in the future," my impression was that YC's answer was not so much 'no' as 'not yet'.

The OP says in his article: "Looking back, I never could have started a company without this [freelancing] experience."

Re: Five Years’ Time

#12

Post by ntumlin » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 3:31 AM UTC

Just a note, clicking the link at "ReadMe.io has finally launched" sends me to http://%28http//readme.io/blog/product-hunter-becomes-the-hu... which is not a valid url as opposed to http://readme.io/blog/product-hunter-becomes-the-hunted/

Re: Five Years’ Time

#13

Post by christop » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 3:32 AM UTC

The pedant in me wants to point out that the title should be "Five Years' Time".

Re: Five Years’ Time

#14

Post by specialk » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 3:33 AM UTC

dmak wrote: post #8

This is a bit of a tangent, but I really wanted to comment on the product he is making. I have been using apiary.io, and I always felt that it was lacking in many aspects (versioning, ghetto note editor, parsing issues in the preview, etc...). I just discovered readme.io and played with it briefly and it has solved every issue that I had with apiary.io. I will definitely migrate over, but having to re-do all the docu…

I'm also an apiary.io user. I must agree there is something lacking in the hosted API docs space. What I find most lacking from apiary.io is features. They have such a limited way of expecting APIs to behave that it can be hard to represent some things inside the API docs system they have.

I wonder is it is possible to create an apiary.io to readme.io auto-migration tool. Even if it does require me copying the markdown behind the apiary.io docs manually into some tool that spits docs into readme.io. That would honestly save me many hours, probably many hours for many folk too.

I've requested access to the open source pricing plan, after I hopefully get approved it is probably something I'll look into in more detail. I'm in need of a new (probably) needless automation side-project.

Edit: wow I completely missed the free trail. If you're an open source project they'll upgrade you to the Dev Hub pricing plan. Ugh feeling so stupid for missing that the first time around and not getting started 10 minutes ago.

Re: Five Years’ Time

#15

Post by dpeterson » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 4:01 AM UTC

Do these people not see how easy they have it? I am pretty sure no one would hire me at Mozilla with just php experience then get an interview with y-combinator without a product. I'm guessing he went to Stanford or some other Ivy League.

Re: Five Years’ Time

#16

Post by bobbles » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 4:07 AM UTC

dpeterson wrote: post #15

Do these people not see how easy they have it? I am pretty sure no one would hire me at Mozilla with just php experience then get an interview with y-combinator without a product. I'm guessing he went to Stanford or some other Ivy League.

He went to http://www.rit.edu/ but I'm not sure where that fits on your exclusivity scale

Re: Five Years’ Time

#17

Post by patio11 » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 5:26 AM UTC

dpeterson wrote: post #15

Do these people not see how easy they have it? I am pretty sure no one would hire me at Mozilla with just php experience then get an interview with y-combinator without a product. I'm guessing he went to Stanford or some other Ivy League.

Some people complain about privilege while others are out there putting in the hours. One gets to pick which group they belong to. He picked wisely.

Re: Five Years’ Time

#18

Post by volaski » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 5:30 AM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #7

Rejection letter from YC: > I’m sorry to say we decided not to fund you. We liked you as individuals but we had a hard time seeing how developer API documentation was the right beachhead. Perhaps I'm looking too much into it, it's just surprising to see, on the record, the polar opposite of what pg claimed on several occasions: people, not ideas. Or did I misunderstand it?

Simple. There are tons of these "good people" who apply, and they can only accept as many per batch.

Re: Five Years’ Time

#19

Post by dpeterson » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 5:42 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #17

dpeterson wrote: post #15

Do these people not see how easy they have it? I am pretty sure no one would hire me at Mozilla with just php experience then get an interview with y-combinator without a product. I'm guessing he went to Stanford or some other Ivy League.

Some people complain about privilege while others are out there putting in the hours. One gets to pick which group they belong to. He picked wisely.

Ha, talk to me when you are 34, have a CS undergrad, a Master in Software Engineering, spent every second of your life programming since 19 and have been working on your startup for over 7 years, then get rejected flat out from y-combinator.

Re: Five Years’ Time

#20

Post by manigandham » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 5:54 AM UTC

Nice article, just came across readme.io a few days ago when coming across another product (GridGain) for the first time. Thought the makers of readme.io had something really nice, interesting to read the history now.

Goals and plans, especially 5 years in the future, can be hard to keep up with but the feeling of achievement at the end if truly amazing. I think even the practice of just sitting down and setting goals and making realistic plans goes a long way to helping you get there.