

LikeALittle's Ridiculous Hacker House - thankuz
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/04/tc-cribs-likealittle-lal/

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jmtame
It all looks pretty easy when you see a TC write-up on them and VC business
cards sprawled out on the floor, but some interesting back-story from Evan on
how LAL got started (from the _Startups Open Sourced_ interview):

"As soon as I graduated from business school I started a company called
ProFounder with two cofounders, Jessica Jackley who had started Kiva before,
and Dan Mauriello. While doing that, I met my current cofounders for
LikeaLittle, Shubham and Prasanna. They had left Microsoft, came to Stanford,
and used to hang out there because they were trying to start a company. A
mutual friend introduced us and after a month or two we decided to join
forces.

So we started ProFounder. I worked there for about six months and then it
moved on to L.A and I didn’t want to go to L.A; I decided I wanted to stay in
Silicon Valley and do some consumer Internet things. So, Shubham, Prasanna and
I came back to Palo Alto, lived together in a one-bedroom apartment with no
furniture, slept on the floor, subsisted off of rice, and tried a bunch of
stuff until we caught something that worked.

This was January 2010. For several months we just brainstormed; it wasn’t
until October that we actually came up with LikeaLittle. We had probably tried
10 ideas before that and they all failed miserably. So, in October 2010, we
created a first edition of LikeaLittle.

We’ve been working together for almost a year, but before YC we had not done
any fundraising. We were bootstrapping the entire time; we were living in a
one-bedroom apartment our entire time together and then for a two month
period, [my cofounders] lost their visas, so we had to go and live in India
together. So we lived with my cofounder’s family in India and were doing the
startup from there. It was interesting, the power would go out all the time
and our users were in America so we had to be on U.S. time; all kinds of crazy
stuff was happening.

But, in India there were no expenses. The family would make us food and we’d
stay with them; we literally had a zero dollar burn rate in India. So that was
pretty fantastic; we kind of had an infinite runway. We’ve basically spent the
entire year living off of rice and beans and sleeping on the floor, together."

~~~
guynamedloren
Wow, just wow. This is why I read Hacker News. Three guys living in a single
bedroom apartment, sleeping on floors, being forced to move around the world,
failing 10 times, and still pushing forward. That's dedication if I've ever
heard it, and these guys have just earned my respect a hundred times over.
Often times, especially when TC is involved, the startup life seems like fun
and games, with a hackathon thrown into the mix here and there. It's obviously
not the case, but the media likes to portray it that way.

I wish there were more firsthand accounts like this. Keep up the great work,
LAL team!

~~~
jmtame
The media's portrayal of startups is something I have a split opinion on right
now. On one hand, I feel bad criticizing the media because several founders
have cited jealousy as their reason for starting a new company. "Kevin Rose
was on the cover of BusinessWeek, why the heck couldn't that be me?" So on one
hand, it's a somewhat healthy amount of jealousy. On the other hand, I think
it hurts people because there's a shock they experience when they do their
first startup. "Wait a minute, startups aren't supposed to be like this. The
magazines and newspapers had guys on the cover smiling, holding a thumbs up.
This isn't what I signed up for!"

It's like digital crack. You get a sensational story, and it's kind of cool
because it makes the startup world seem more attractive and now you have this
overconfidence that you can do it, because well it's just easy and it looks
like fun. It's probably better to read the full stories and get the full
context. The founders aren't usually in the media to talk about themselves
anyway; they're out there promoting their startup, so you're mostly walking
away with a sales pitch (although startups do this to varying degrees,
Indinero comes to mind when I think of startups who are most intent on using
media coverage to grow, just an example). This video was definitely cool
though, it's fun to see how they all work. They have one of the best pitches
for hiring: "we have some of the smartest engineers" is an easy sell.

Check out the book if you want all the back-stories. It's pretty sobering; a
nice break from the koolaid, so to speak.

~~~
physcab
> They have one of the best pitches for hiring: "we have some of the smartest
> engineers" is an easy sell.

I actually didn't get that impression when I read (and heard) their hiring
pitch. To me, their pitch was "the people who work here are geniuses and you
have to beat them to be recognized. Oh did we mention they are the best in
<insert continent>?" Not exactly as humble as saying "come and work with
brilliant people. you too can have a massive impact."

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dstein
This was a lot more entertaining than the typical Techcrunch blog spam. They
should maybe try to do more things like this "boots on the ground" sort of
stuff. I'm so tired of hearing about so-and-so getting funded by so-and-so,
that stuff was never interesting. But here we're getting some actual honest
content. We get to see a startup doing tech stuff, where and how they work, in
their natural habitat.

That aside, these guys kinda look like they're following the Social Network
playbook to the T. I wonder how long it'll be until they hire Sean Parker and
dilute one of the founders' stake in the company.

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pnathan
I am so glad these guys are happy. I would not be okay working in that
environment.

I already have had (and left) a dorm room.

My perfect coding environment is a quiet office, alone, with an awesome view
of mountains. High speed internet. Silent computer. Company IM. Garguntuan
monitors. On the walls, whiteboard, and a bookshelf somewhere. So, totally not
LAL!

~~~
tuhin
Exactly my thoughts. Dorm rooms is like so 2 years old. I want a decent setup,
a good view, high speed internet and a vision to win the world.

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esmevane
This is interesting to me. How can I put this as diplomatically as possible?

I'm glad that there is a culture like this out there. It espouses productivity
and gives a real view as to what folks will do in order to try their hand at a
serious venture.

Clearly the guys here are aware of exactly what they're doing by putting this
whole thing on film. They're happy, they believe in their projects, and
they're not ashamed to put this on the record.

Having said that, I remember my early 20s, too.

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3dFlatLander
I'm older than these guys--late 20's, married, no kids (yet). I just don't see
this lifestyle bring very practical for married/family folks. But then again,
I've never heard any stories of people other than young singles doing stuff
like this. Anyone know of any outliers like this in the valley?

~~~
nostrademons
I'm the same age but single, and I applied to LaL but realized that I just
don't have the energy anymore to sustain the pace they want. I could've done
it at 19, I probably could even have done it at 24, but now that I'm 29, I
just can't code for 14 hours a day, let alone 20. (Actually, that's not
entirely true - I've pulled 14 hour days for 4-5 day stretches working on a
Google doodle or coming up to a launch, but I need like 2 weeks of recovery
time afterwards.) Alas, I wasted my twenties on college and 3 failed startups.

It's certainly _possible_ to start a company in your 30s - PG did it, founding
ViaWeb at 31 and selling it at 34 - but it does seem like a bit of an uncanny
valley without many founders. My theory is that people who are the type of
person that's going to found a startup probably would've founded it by 26, and
then if their first couple attempts failed, they're licking their wounds at 30
and trying to figure out how to give it another go.

Those same people often end up starting follow-up ventures much later, after
the kids are self-sufficient. I have one friend from elementary school whose
dad is working on his second startup at the age of 70. His first venture -
founded at around age 60 - ended up IPOing at a market cap of several billion
before crashing and burning.

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flynnwynn
Any shot at hiring female engineers is out the window...

~~~
msredmond
Actually, I think the "inspiring" (his words) Aston Kutcher poster makes it so
the shot at hiring anyone with actual taste is out the window.

~~~
jacobolus
It's pretty clearly a joke...

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physcab
lal is a curious site. I've known about it since december when my sister told
me about it. She used to spend hours on it reading to me funny little flirts
that people wrote. The initial users had a great sense of humor and it was
really lightweight and fun. Now though, it is so heavy and serious! It seems
like half the people who post are depressed by a breakup and are looking for
an outlet. Also, since the site is less popular now than it used to be the
posts stay up for a while and the content is rather stale.

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myprasanna
If you guys want to join the mess, we're hiring :)

<http://lal.com/about/the_game>

~~~
wyclif
"We are hiring the best _in_ the world."

EDIT: I wish I was experienced enough to work with you guys.

~~~
angusgr
_I wish I was experienced enough_

I'm pretty sure in the video the CEO says they're much more interested in
aptitude than experience, after all they hired a college freshman.

~~~
wyclif
Thanks, that gives me hope. I was thinking about raw coding experience, not
years though.

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edw519
My favorite bit:

Evan: This is one of our recruiting strategies. We literally go to recruiting
events...and we just tell them, "Hey, I'll give you a thousand dollars if you
can beat my co-founder, Prasanna here, in a coding challenge."

Jason: Do you usually win?

Prasanna: Ah, I mean, if we lose...

Jason: Then you're going to hire the guy...

Prasanna: Yea.

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cemregr
The story is impressive... And I hope they're on to building something big and
serious. Am I getting this right, 5 ACM finalists working on a nicer version
of craigslist's missed connections?

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juiceandjuice
When I was looking for an room 6 months ago in Palo Alto I thought it would be
cool to live with hacker/programmers/whatever. I quickly changed my mind when
_every_ house I saw with self-proclaimed hackers ended up looking like this.

------
codelion
Nothing against LikeALittle, but I really wish people with such kind of raw
talent and dedication were doing something better than solving the problem of
anonymous flirting.

~~~
emreas
stay tuned ;)

------
Smirnoff
I love LAL team. I was one of the active admins at my school. I flew to Cali
for a week and Evan let me stay at their place for a week.

These guys sleep like for 3 or 4 hours and code for the rest of the time.
Amazing company :)

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corin_
Startups may need to live on a budget, but good to see that they didn't
overlook the importance of nice whisky with the Johnnie Walker Blue. No office
should go without a good scotch.

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MatthewB
This is why I'm moving to Silicon Valley. I want this.

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mattberg
is it just me or does it remind you of the house from the Facebook movie?

~~~
fungi
allot more partying and girls in the myface movie... that looked pretty smelly
and claustrophobic to me, but going by the comments i'm in the minority.

e: just to clarify, you guys are awesome and i admire your work and
attitude... just each to their own and when in rome yada yada

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sandropadin
How much coding can there be that these guys need to live like this?

~~~
d0m
What do you mean _need to live_? I'd pay to live their and work on lal. The
only thing I didn't see what the coffee machine, hope it's a good one.

~~~
sandropadin
A slip of the keyboard. Obviously if they received $1 million in funding, the
team is smart enough to choose how they live. I'm just saying, it probably
wouldn't burn through their funding if they hired a maid to come in
occasionally. :)

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guynamedloren
Loved this episode.. Now this is what I picture when I think about a startup!
Kinda makes me wanna move out west...

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sonoffett
I'm so glad they mentioned Philz, some of the best coffee I can find in the
bay area and filled with hackers.

~~~
phodo
When I saw that Philz, I recalled all the long hours I spent at that table
outside working on my at-the-time first iPhone app... the valley is a very
special place.

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etherael
This to me is one more link in the chain of evidence that this is not just the
2000 bubble rehashed. Not just different people but different _kinds_ of
people are in charge this time, different methods are being employed. The
focus is less on sheen and who has the biggest flagpole or best in house sushi
chef and more on results and methods.

I like that a little, even on the chance that it does fail again at least this
time it will be on our terms.

~~~
jrockway
I think this just means that software and software development is cheaper this
time around. Back in the day, your CRUD app needed a proprietary compiler
using proprietary libraries running on a proprietary operating system talking
to a proprietary database. This cost mucho money, and was super buggy. So you
needed a lot of smart programmers and a lot of time to get anything that
worked.

These days, you just use Ruby or Perl or something and its 100x faster to
develop and probably runs faster than 1999 C++ on a mainframe did. So there
goes your main cost. (Netscape is a good example from that era. Not that great
a piece of software -- it ran super slow and needed a lot of people to write
it.)

Also, good startups are pretty easy to do with just one person. So when you
only have one or two people, you don't need flashy offices or sushi chefs...
you just rent a nice apartment and order out. Expensive, but much cheaper than
what people did in 1999.

~~~
hncommenter13
Just for the record, as someone who worked on web apps in 1999, we used Perl +
MySql. No, they were nowhere near as effective as those tools and others are
today, but I didn't know anyone using a mainframe. We did use expensive Sun
gear instead of cheap linux boxes, though.

------
mcxx
The LAL designer posts some stories and photos here
<http://musho.posterous.com/> (unfortunately, it's in Slovak only).

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jmtame
Speaking of Hacker Houses--if anyone is looking to join one in SF with a few
other hackers (one YC founder, one Facebook coder, and myself) let me know
jmtame at gmail

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astrange
<http://lal.com/gatech> is more or less a horrible wasteland… it's certainly
no <http://onlyattech.net/>. Is there supposed to be something entertaining
about this, besides reading the submissions from creepy people in the CS
building?

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crocowhile
I don't understand one thing: if they raised already millions and believe so
much in their future, why do they eat $1.5 red beans and why they don't hire a
cleaning lady? It looks to me they are way past the ramen profitable phase,
aren't they?

~~~
olalonde
Doesn't seem to make them too miserable either...

~~~
crocowhile
You don't know this, do you? Also, I happen to be sleep researcher. There is
TONS of literature that says that people, when sleep deprived, make all sort
of mistakes. I don't care what they say: I would not trust a line of code from
someone who claim to sleep 3 hours a night no matter how smart they are (and
they surely are smart).

~~~
olalonde
I was referring to the place. Did they really say something about sleep in the
video?

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knodi
Damn, I can't believe I turned down there job offer.

~~~
chegra
If they want you then, they want you now; give them a shout.

------
sebastianhoitz
I love this startups attitude. Awesome!

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namank
I like the bit about the free projector..."yeah so old startups just give us
stuff"

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Aarvay
I just love it

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tkahn6
This looks so much fun. Wow.

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jacobbijani
Buy a fucking vacuum.

~~~
danilocampos
> Buy a fucking vacuum.

<http://i.imgur.com/CuFuD.png>

~~~
fungi
my god man... that's impressive

