
Yet Another YCombinator Clone - usablecontent
http://startupmeme.com/2007/04/27/yet-another-ycombinator-clone/
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sethjohn
Sounds like good news to me. YC can't pick every good team, and can't be the
right fit for every good team. Highland seems to be specifically seeking life
sciences and what looks like some more techie (non-software) ideas.

They seem to have their dates confused in the article, though. How can this
program have "just launched" if the application due date was 11 days ago?

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gyro_robo
Not only can't YC pick every good team, but they have a bias towards certain
types of start-ups: fairly simple websites (reddit, octopart, pollground,
etc.).

CRV loans up to $250k which opens up a wider range of start-up possibilities.
E.g. if you are working on something involving hardware; remember Apple really
got moving with a $250k line of credit backed by Mike Markkula (consumer price
index says $250k in 1977 is about $855k in 2006 dollars).

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pg
Actually we'll take any promising startup, and some of the most promising
we've funded weren't "simple websites." Particularly Loopt, Xobni, Textpayme
and an as-yet unlaunched database startup.

Though frankly, Octopart isn't exactly a "simple website" either. It's a
search engine, and in some ways more complicated than Google. Is Google a
"simple website?" (If so, bring 'em on.)

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gyro_robo
Running a search on a few catalogs is orders of magnitude less complex than
searching the entire web. I don't know what tricks they may have up their
sleeves, but it looks like a normal keyword search.

For example, use the suggested "red led" search and compare octopart to
newark. With newark you select criteria that apply to the part; with octopart
you "keep quoting" "keywords" "to:narrow" "it down" and you can't select a
range -- like a range of voltage, for example. I'm not sure if you can even
"or" a few keywords together to get a range.

There's nothing wrong with it, I'm just saying it isn't that complex. Reddit
is cloneable in a weekend (remember all the "reddit in 20 lines of Lisp" posts
after it switched to Python) and most likely owes its popularity to you
personally; it had a good foundation because its earliest users were your
readers.

Obviously it was a _smart_ investment. I'm just saying it wasn't a hard
technical problem. The barrier to getting a large (smart) audience was solved
by having a PG to promote it. You're (personally) essentially a catalyst, like
start-up yeast.

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pg
Ok, now respond to the first paragraph. (Reddit is harder than you think to
write, but did I say anything about it in the comment you're replying to?)

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gyro_robo
Wait a minute, you aren't one of my investors, I don't have to ;)

If you re-read the OP, I said YC has a _bias_ towards a certain type of start-
up, not that it was exclusive. If you list all the YC'dlings it may hold true
for the majority.

As for the exceptions you mentioned, Xobni hasn't released anything, nor has
the unlaunched unnamed start-up, so I'll have to take your word for it. I
don't have Boost so loopt isn't something I can even use yet. As for
TextPayMe, it reminds me of the pre-web Paypal, and a natural extension of
what Paypal's doing now: adding an SMS option. (Perhaps less clunky than using
your phone's web browser to go to paypal.com.) However, sending and receiving
text messages is not exactly rocket science and the barrier there is really in
handling the money and dealing with the applicable regulations, then having a
large enough network to be useful. Paypal already has the hard part done, and
I can think of numerous reasons to add SMS capability in-house instead, but
eBay has so much cash they might just decide to acquire you. (I'm personally
impressed with TPM's gumption in dealing with what I imagine is quite a lot of
red tape.)

Was implementing Reddit harder than I think? I think the original route was
circuitous, fighting a buggy CMUCL and lack of web frameworks.

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pg
This isn't news; it was posted here several weeks ago.

