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

New Requests for Startups

ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 407 posts

Re: New Requests for Startups

#371

Post by johan_larson »

yaur wrote: post #179
bradleyjg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling to governments is very difficult and time consuming. The company I work for has spent over a year now trying to get approved to sell our software to the NYC schools (not land a sale, just get approved to try to land sales), and it looks like we may have hit a dead end.

One of the previous places I did some freelance stuff for solved this by partnering with a vendor that was already on the approved list.

So there is an opportunity here for a company that does nothing by handle the ugly administrative stuff on the government end, presenting a cool hacker-friendly work environment on the other? And pocketing a hefty cut for the service, I presume. Sort of a general contractor with very different inside and outside cultures.

"Yes, we launched it and it works. We have a great technical staff, and we've won some very lucrative contracts. We called it EnterpriseAdaptor, thinking the geeks would go for that but everyone persists in calling it CondomCo."

Re: New Requests for Startups

#372

Post by TeMPOraL »

sgustard wrote: post #192
atonse wrote: post #68

While 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…

One should consider statements Paul Graham has publicly made as to where he places his bets. "This is one reason I'd bet on the 25 year old over the 32 year old." "By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids" I would be wary approaching an organization that has publicly expressed such age discrimination.

It's not "age discrimination" (in the negative-connotation sense), it's sober rational thinking.

"By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids" is a statement of fact.

"This is one reason I'd bet on the 25 year old over the 32 year old." is a reasonable conclusion.

Calling this age discrimination is like saying all employers are evil because they discriminate based on having or not having skills required for a job.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#373

Post by srcmap »

sqs wrote: post #298
akkartik wrote: post #32

> 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…

Yes times 1,000! This is what we're trying to address at Sourcegraph ( https://sourcegraph.com/ ). 80% of programming is about reading and understanding code, not writing code. Why don't existing tools focus more on helping people read and understand code--and, more broadly, collaborate on a development team? Things like: * seeing everywhere a function or class is used, in context (like https://sourcegraph.com/github…

I have similar needs to understand complex code base such as 5-20gb of Android platform code, so I wrote an webapp/site for that:

It lets you cross reference and document any language with gigabytes of code, e.g. Android platform code. Jelly bean ~9 gb of code.

Try it out: http://www.srcmap.org/s/sl.htm/p=android-4.2.2_r1

Sample Documents created from that app are here:

http://www.srcmap.org/p/1/4af293f91271/Android_Init_startup_...

http://www.srcmap.org/p/1/80c16319d25e/Docker.html

http://www.srcmap.org/p/6/4a88339ceef3/mtpd_source_code_stud...

http://www.srcmap.org/p/1/212c9a285186/Google_IO_2014____sch...

The ux is ok. A few gigabytes of code db running in a cheapest $5 instance of Digital Ocean.

The app is very simple ~8 mb of standalone binary, no external dependency do any other app/db.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#374

Post by srcmap »

srcmap wrote: post #373
sqs wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes times 1,000! This is what we're trying to address at Sourcegraph ( https://sourcegraph.com/ ). 80% of programming is about reading and understanding code, not writing code. Why don't existing tools focus more on helping people read and understand code--and, more broadly, collaborate on a development team? Things like: * seeing everywhere a function or class is used, in context (like https://sourcegraph.com/github…

I have similar needs to understand complex code base such as 5-20gb of Android platform code, so I wrote an webapp/site for that: It lets you cross reference and document any language with gigabytes of code, e.g. Android platform code. Jelly bean ~9 gb of code. Try it out: http://www.srcmap.org/s/sl.htm/p=android-4.2.2_r1 Sample Documents created from that app are here: http://www.srcmap.org/p/1/4af293f91271/Android_…

What does the yc folks/alum think? Good enough to get into yc?

Re: New Requests for Startups

#375

Post by TeMPOraL »

zanny wrote: post #167
S4M wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. IMHO programming languages should become more and more expressive to the point of being as closed as possible to spoken language, in a distant future.

Spoken language makes no sense. Maybe you just mean expressive, but the last thing I want is a programming language anything like the spoken word, because at least English is a colossal mess of inconsistent jibberish. I've always been interested if someone ever tried to make a sensible spoken word - use all the enunciable syllables of the human voice (go read wikipedia on all the sounds you can make that are defined…

> because at least English is a colossal mess of inconsistent jibberish.

Yup. Every natural language is. The reason we can work that way is that conversation is a tight feedback loop and people look for voluntary and involuntary clues telling whether the others understood them properly, and keep correcting until the (perception of) understanding is reached.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#376

Post by Iftheshoefits »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #372
sgustard wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One should consider statements Paul Graham has publicly made as to where he places his bets. "This is one reason I'd bet on the 25 year old over the 32 year old." "By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids" I would be wary approaching an organization that has publicly expressed such age discrimination.

It's not "age discrimination" (in the negative-connotation sense), it's sober rational thinking . "By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids" is a statement of fact. "This is one reason I'd bet on the 25 year old over the 32 year old." is a reasonable conclusion. Calling this age discrimination is like saying all employers are evil because they discriminate based on having or not having skills…

Even if we suppose it were "sober rational thinking" that doesn't mean it's also not a "negative-connotation". Fifty years ago a southern business would have been engaged in "sober rational thinking" to deny service to blacks or at worst to make sure they were "properly" segregated.

In more modern times a more apt comparison would be with respect to pregnant women. Suppose he'd written instead "This is one reason I'd take the childless, single 25 year old woman over the married 32 year old. By 33 she'll probably be pregnant or have a baby."

That's very clearly discrimination, and very clearly in the negative-connotation sense.

For similar reasons, PG's statements re: age are very clearly "negative-connotation" age discrimination. Moreover, there's nothing particularly "sober" or even "rational" about it, considering the heaps of evidence regarding age and people who are very successful in running businesses (hint: "young" isn't exactly a word that comes to mind).

Re: New Requests for Startups

#377

Post by farazhaider »

spyder wrote: post #351
akkartik wrote: post #32

> 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…

There are some interesting ideas that could help with reading and writing programs: from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/ and intentional programming from Charles Simonyi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSnnfUj1XCQ

The first article is a great read.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#378

Post by yaur »

johan_larson wrote: post #371
yaur wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the previous places I did some freelance stuff for solved this by partnering with a vendor that was already on the approved list.

So there is an opportunity here for a company that does nothing by handle the ugly administrative stuff on the government end, presenting a cool hacker-friendly work environment on the other? And pocketing a hefty cut for the service, I presume. Sort of a general contractor with very different inside and outside cultures. "Yes, we launched it and it works. We have a great technical staff, and we've won some very lucr…

Interesting thought. One of the challenges will be that they look at stuff like how much capital you have and how long you have been in business.

There are a number of companies that can help you (Lockheed Martin, CSC, and IBM being three) if you find yourself in a position where you have something you need to sell in to government and don't have the credentials to land the contract directly. They do essentially what you describe... take a cut off the top in exchange for doing some of the paper work and taking some of the liability if things go awry.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#379

Post by ploj »

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #146
impendia wrote: post #114

Would somebody please disrupt the textbook publishing industry? http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susa... $264.39, for students that work part time jobs at $7.00 an hour (before taxes). Not only students are angry about this. Professors are angry, and authors are angry too. Bitter fights between professors and publishers are common. Everybody wants to see the big players in this industry fail .…

The bigger question may be why do we even still have "textbooks," at least in their traditional form? Are textbooks the optimal way to learn given all the technology we have today? I'm sure there are quite a few start-ups working on this problem.

I thought textbooks was a bad fit for me until I started my university studies. Turned out to be the most superior option...

Re: New Requests for Startups

#380

Post by kfcm »

(US-based comment.)

While a great list, the mistake is being made of assuming disruptive startups (through technology, business processes, or both) will solve problems in several of the sectors. Some being Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Energy, Transportation & Housing, Telecommunications, and--most of all--Government.

It's not because smart people haven't developed solutions to the problems they see in these sectors. It's that government--through policy and/or bureaucracy--often prevents those solutions from being implemented.

For example, I have family who are in the pharmaceutical industry. PhDs and all. The amount of money spent on the bureaucratic steps to obtain government approval (FDA and others) to bring a new drug to market is the vast majority of development costs.

I won't even go into my experiences working with various levels of government on technology projects. Suffice it to say, never again.

You want great, efficient solutions to hard problems? Get government out of the way. Government involvement hinders progress, and makes what progress there is extremely expensive.

Post reply on HN