
A New Experiment: The RFS - pg
http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html
======
wheels
I fear that this will hit the same problem that I've seen over and over again
in the open source world when people show up with the question:

 _"What should I work on?"_

If they weren't driven enough to already have a _list_ of things they would
like to do, they rarely were motivated enough to latch onto ideas when given
them. A much more promising question was:

 _"How do I...?"_

(Blog entry of mine from 2006, "On Being Unresponsive":
<http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2284>)

~~~
pg
Not all motivated people have a list, and the ones who are inexperienced may
have a list, but can't prioritize it.

~~~
jbr
If you've got a group of people you trust (a team), let the group prioritize
the list together. The result will be higher quality and more people will feel
ownership of the ultimate selection.

Shameless plug, but on topic: My company makes a tool for exactly this
problem, <http://www.stormweight.com/>

------
old-gregg
I wonder what sparkled this? The lack of good ideas in submitted applications
or you guys just wanted to be more involved, i.e. wanted to see your own
vision of the future materialize in front of you?

I also wonder what happened to idea #2 on this list:
<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

Seemed like pikluk.com applied to solve precisely that (even before the list
was published) but we got rejected, then exhausted our savings, burned out and
just quietly returned to our day jobs, yet no YC-funded solution emerged up to
date. Being rejected is one thing, but getting _"Your idea is great, but we'll
wait for someone with a better pedigree to work on it"_ message hurts much
more.

~~~
amichail
Why not also add a link to "Startup Ideas" beside "Feature requests" so anyone
can contribute ideas and vote on them?

~~~
colins_pride
This is one of those ideas that seems so obviously good after the fact that it
just makes one marvel

------
huhtenberg
Regarding the _RFS 1: The Future of Journalism_ , and specifically the "So
what will the content site of the future look like? And how will you make
money from it?" part.

The answer to latter appears to be something along the lines of
<http://contenture.com>. I.e. pay in one place, reap the benefits in many. The
definition of benefits may vary, but this _is_ the most consumer-friendly
model that involves explicit paying.

But even if one has a good understanding how it's going to work, it is not
clear how to get there. This project is going to be more of a business
development and sales effort rather than anything else and so it is
unrealistic to expect a random startup with no existing ties into the news
industry to succeed.

So while I understand where this RFS comes from, I am not sure if it's
realistic. It seems to be a _very_ long shot. Correct me if I'm too
pessimistic.

~~~
pg
It's not so much that you're pessimistic as that you're assuming too much
about the solution.

~~~
huhtenberg
Well, I am pessimistic in that I don't think there is a simpler solution :)
Assuming the consumer of the content is paying.

~~~
thunk
But the solution _is_ simpler, and the consumer's definitely not paying. I
mean, everyone's a stringer now, right? Sites run on ads and buy content from
stringers through an auction market that takes a cut of each transaction. You
are that auction site. Competitive bidding for genres of content; reputation
indices to incentivise quality journalism -- most of the details have been
worked out already in other contexts. I mean, it's so brain-dead it must've
been tried already, right? What am I missing?

~~~
thunk
I think this would actually produce higher quality and better paid journalism
than the current system. Since there's no formal approval process required to
enter the market, good journalists who were previously stymied by old-style
institutional filtration will have their day. And since journalism under this
system is essentially free-agency, the possibility of bidding wars for pieces
by (forgive me) "rockstar" journalists is highly probable, and provides a
powerful incentive to do groundbreaking work. A journalist who's scored a
comfy gig under the current system has no such incentive.

~~~
brandnewlow
How the heck do you get access to closely guarded sources when you write for
"j-auction.com"?

~~~
thunk
Hrm. Well, you don't write for the auction site any more than eBay sellers
work for eBay. You're your own brand, and win or lose source-cred on your own
merits. And it's called "stringerbell.com" :)

~~~
brandnewlow
I hear you. And that's how it will be for more and more folks, no matter what
happens.

Example, Megan Cotrell is a Chicago-based reporter who covers housing issues.
She was with one news org (ChiTownDailyNews.org) for a while and now blogs for
the Tribune company. Maybe in a year or so she'll be somewhere else. Wherever
she goes, however, she takes her sources and contacts with her. So yes, she
can pretty much get what she needs no matter who she's writing for. but
getting to that point is a lot harder without a brand backing you up.

------
ryanwaggoner
This is a half-thought-out and cynical musing, but couldn't you use something
like this as a honeypot to weed out the people who are less likely to succeed
and thus give them less scrutiny?

I'm guessing YC gets a LOT of applications and going through them has turned
into something of a burden, a problem not easily solved without adding more
staff or lowering standards, neither of which is probably attractive. So how
can you use the process itself to get people to sort themselves somewhat?

Hypothesis: you come up with a bunch of startup ideas in big spaces where no
easy solutions exist, but many many startups have gone and failed. These apps
go in the "paint-by-numbers" pile and get less scrutiny, because you figure
two things:

1\. For someone who doesn't have an idea or a problem to solve, they'll look
at YC and see this list of pre-existing problems that need solutions. They
could learn a domain or a space really well and organically come up with their
own idea, or they could use one of these. We assume that people in that
situation who pick the easier path will probably come up with solutions that
suck, but that's ok, because it keeps fewer apps from the "artisan" pile,
which get much heavier attention.

2\. If someone does submit an app to the "paint-by-numbers" pile that is truly
novel or brilliant, it'll probably leap off the page, so all is not lost.

I guess my overall hypothesis is that people who _need_ to pick an idea off a
list like this and/or don't know enough about a space to come up with their
own idea are probably unlikely to succeed. This just gives them an opportunity
to declare so more readily :)

I'm sure that YC isn't doing this, but would it be useful?

~~~
alain94040
Your point is 100% valid and probably completely against the philosophy of YC.
But it would be a perfect (evil) plot for an incubator called Black Combinator
(instead of White-Combinator :-)

------
ZachPruckowski
I'm not sure this is a great idea, but I'm no expert (and you, PG, are). Here
are my concerns:

1) It seems like it encourages people who are more passionate about having a
startup than it does people who are passionate about their particular idea.

2) Is selecting a RFS as your startup's core going to help or hurt an
applicant? I suppose this is something we won't know the answer to until after
we see the scope of this round's applications (or get a more general
approximation for them). If the RFS is popular, you're going to have half your
applicants with similar start-ups. Assuming you select your classes such that
you have some measure of diversity in your portfolio, then ultimately groups
doing a RFS will be at a disadvantage (since they'll be competing against
everyone who did that RFS for a few slots, instead of competing generally),
and the program's popularity will dwindle. Note that this assumes there are
only a handful of RFS options.

~~~
dbul
1) I think there are several people without ideas but who also want to be
polymaths. So they would become wrapped up in whichever RFS they chose.

2) I think the applicant pool is getting large enough that it is worth the
risk. pg said the applicant pool was eclipsing 1000. The first round had,
what, 220? And most of those companies were successful. If I were to apply, I
would stick with one of the 5 ideas that I have brewing, and I think a lot of
other people would stick with their ideas too.

~~~
mofey
"most of those companies were successful" - that's not even true

~~~
dbul
My bad. Leave out that bit of information. Restating what I meant in point 2
is that there is a large applicant pool, and ideas are just one factor.
Doesn't YC choose based mostly on the applicants themselves? The idea is
hardly relevant. One of the factors in funding "smart" founders I think is
that they know when to abandon an idea and select another one.

------
GavinB
I can't help but think that while pg may be hinting that he has a solution in
mind, it's just a trick to get people to think harder about it and come up
with new ideas.

Sometimes, getting people to believe that something is possible is the best
way to get them to come up with a solution.

~~~
pg
Sometimes I have no more than a gut feel that something is possible, but in
this case I feel like I know more precisely what the right answer is.

~~~
knightinblue
Would the right answer be niche reporting? Basically sites like Talking Points
Memo or Techcrunch where a small but focused group produces quality reporting
on a specific niche?

~~~
rms
This is a relevant article about Politico and their model.
[http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/wolff200...](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/wolff200908?printable=true&currentPage=all&);

------
dbul
RFS1: write a crawler to gather as much information as possible on trending
topics, rank the sources, then have a writer look through the autatically
gathered data and use his intelligence and skill to put it into a nicely
flowing story that makes sense?

~~~
aristus
You've just described the standard news editorial process. Instead of a
"crawler" they have the wire services, and source rankings are fairly static,
but otherwise, yep, that's how it's done. The problem is not the means of
production (so to speak) it's how to make money from it.

------
csbartus
The Personal News Agency

Dealing with information follows the (almost universal) five-step pattern:
sensing > filtering > reasoning > creating > enjoying. It is like noise >
signal > information > action > flow, or, fear > accept > share > use > love.
And many more.

No one has to consider the existence of information sources. They will grow up
instantly from individuals, local groups, global communities and professionals
specialised on production.

The most important is to find the right channels for you and open as many
channels possible inside you to let information flow through your senses.

Don’t bother about acquiring exact knowledge. Let your brain automagically
store whatever seems to be important, go and discuss frequently your ideas to
distill thoughts and opinions about what you have read. Create knowledge based
on feedback.

The tool you need must focus on helping you channeling, tagging, formatting
information and producing, sharing results/knowledge. The return will come
from surprisingly unseen and now unpredictable receivers. Once you shift from
consuming to producing you’ll open channels in other systems willing to
recognize your effort.

More at [http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-
per...](http://clair.ro/blog/2009/08/17/future-of-journalism-the-personal-
news-agency/)

~~~
brandnewlow
Twitter?

~~~
csbartus
Can you distill knowledge from tweets on Twitter?

You'll have to add tweets to a wiki or a mindmap, tag them and visuzalize
later in several contexts ...

A Personal News Agency would offer a complete solution:

\- deal with sources of information

\- add filters/metadata/semantics in a completely free way: multiple tagging,
categories, microformats, etc.

\- help you visually organize information to distill knowledge (mindmap like,
multiple lenses, timeline, treemaps, etc etc)

\- package the result in formats others can consume (blog, tweets, multimedia,
wiki, widgets)

\- built in mechanism for monetization / usage metering

------
jbr
Ideas are cheap and I'm already committed to a project, so here's my take on
the RFS. Imagine a site with the following attributes:

\- Anyone can submit content in any language.

\- Anyone can translate any content.

\- Editors (initially the founders) select content that meets topic and
language standards.

\- Editors independently vote on content priority; site layout adjusts
automatically based on editor consensus.

\- Content authors (and translators, if any) get points proportionally to the
editorial vote.

\- A certain (large) number of points grants editorial access (having proven
that they are invested in the site and get the standards).

\- Points can be exchanged for world currency in either direction
(bought/sold).

\- People pay in points to access content (per article or per month).

\- People start with enough points to give them access for a month or so.

\- Eventually there would be editorial boards in different languages and
ideally with different topics.

\--

I know newsvine is kinda like this, but without the monetization. Newsvine
also seems far more editorial than factual, and doesn't have the same "gotta
earn editorial access" feel. Graduated karma-based community systems like
stackoverflow (and HN) keep quality high longer. What do you think, would
something like this offer a viable alternative to the journalistic status quo?

------
wmeredith
"Groups applying to work on this idea should include at least one person who
can write well and rapidly about any topic, one or more programmers who are
good at statistics, data mining, and making sites scale, and someone who's
reasonably competent at graphic design. These functions can of course be
combined, and in fact it's even better if they are. Xooglers would be
particularly well suited to this project."

It seems like that paragraph could be copy-and-pasted at the end of every RFS
they put out...

------
jbr
To respond to the general idea of the RFS, not RFS1 specifically: I think this
sort of feedback to the startup community is incredibly valuable. I take it as
an statement of "what they think the world needs/wants/would-pay-for right
now." Having a sense for markets seems a bit like being able to predict the
weather based on the way an old injury aches, and young entrepreneurs with a
whole lot of energy don't usually have that sense. As one of them, I have to
say it's nice to see suggestions of unsaturated/needy markets. It's icing that
the advice is coming from someone who also can help bring proposed solutions
to market.

As a side note, I'd really love if someone similarly informed did this with a
philanthropic eye. Think "things the world could really use right about now,"
since those who feel the pains rarely are the ones with the ability to fix
them on a replicable scale. Like a giant to-do list for humanity, maintained
by people with a great degree of perspective. But I also have a hankering for
a philanthropic equivalent of YC that funds and supports non-loss startups.

------
thunk
RFS1 asks what the content site of the future might look like. I think what it
might be driving at is a deeply entertaining and aesthetically pleasing
narrativization of some hardcore data-mining and pattern recognition on
current events -- a real-time story spun by smart people with writing and
design and artistic chops. It'd be news as art and serial novel and near-
future prediction -- news as a thing of beauty. It would have to be something
people are willing to pay well for, because to succeed at its purpose it would
have to be ad-free. If this is at all true, it's pretty rad. But, well, it
isn't so much a startup as a sort of content band. It would depend sooo
heavily on the artistic sensibilities of the founders. Perhaps that's why you
want a greater hand ...

------
ZachPruckowski
I don't know if the goal of this thread is to discuss this particular RFS, but
it's one that I've thought about frequently in the recent past.

To me, it seems like anything wanting to hit "google-levels" of success in the
news sector has to be more than profitable - it has to solve one or more
current flaws in the news-media. Approaching this problem and building a
better media mousetrap would seem to require at least some thought as to what
those flaws are, which appears to be (wisely, IMHO) left as an exercise to the
implementers.

------
pegobry
I love the idea of an RFS.

As for the first one, I think the problem is already largely solving itself.
There are plenty of blogs out there that are profitable, like the AOL blogs,
the mommyblogs, TechCrunch, Mashable, etc. The recipe is simple: focus on a
monetizable niche and churn out quality content. I'm not sure if the Business
Insider is profitable yet but I think it's well on track to becoming the Wall
Street Journal of the 20th century.

------
ErrantX
The only thing that always strikes me about news and people reading it is that
feed readers are more and more popular..

This is a problem (because your not getting "bums on seats" all the time).

My approach would be to create something that had a good revenue model even
with feed readers being used.

EDIT: micro content and things like edited news Aggregators also come to mind.

------
windwil
This is a good way to seed the discussion. I think good ideas often come out
of iterative discussion and tweaking.

So it would be good to provide a platform where people can vote, tweak,
enhance, branch out new ideas, etc. similar to <http://uservoice.com>.

~~~
jbr
My company makes a product for exactly this purpose [1]. It's better for this
sort of task than UserVoice because it works with an ordered list of
preferences, not just plus/minus points, which yields far more granular
voting. It allows realtime interaction and chat, too. I built it specifically
because UserVoice wasn't meeting my needs for internal brainstorming/idea
discussion at my previous startup. Let me know what you think if you try it
out (jacob@stormweight.com).

[1] <http://www.stormweight.com/>

~~~
shiranaihito
> <http://www.stormweight.com/privacy>

Your privacy page feels really shady to me.

 _WebBeacons (also referred to as GIF files, pixels or action tags) help
Stormweight System Inc recognize a unique cookie on your browser. We use this
tool to compile aggregate information about you, and it is not personally
identifiable. This information includes IP addresses, search terms, domain
names, and browser types. We use this information to track usage and other
patterns on our Websites. We may share this aggregate information with our
partners or service providers._

"WebBeacons"? -I knew "GIF files" as "images". And an IP-address is not
personally identifiable? Right, as long as your ISP is not forced to
personally identify you. How do you track an users's search terms with your
WebBeacons?

I'd recommend talking to your users like a normal person, not in vague half-
legalese.

~~~
jbr
Truth be told, we thought it looked weird, too. We don't use "webBeacons" or
anything weird; just cookies. Google drops a few cookies for analytics, too,
but that's it.

I'm going to go over the privacy policy today and make it reflect the reality
that privacy, security, and ethical business practices are at our essence.

Since you read privacy policies closer than we do, could you recommend a good
examplar of a friendly, non-legalese privacy policy?

Thanks for the feedback!

[Edit] I removed the weird WebBeacons reference, simplified the language, and
added an additional message at the top. Does it feel less shady?

~~~
shiranaihito
You thought it looked weird too? :) Does that mean it's just a copy & paste
from somewhere else?

It's better now, of course, but it still feels like too much text.

 _Without prejudice to your rights under applicable data protection or privacy
law, Stormweight Systems Inc may amend this Privacy Policy from time-to-time.
We will notify you of such amendments or changes by updating the Last Updated
date at the top of this Privacy Policy._

You will _notify_ me by updating a date on your website? Sounds a bit passive
for a "notification" :)

The problem with legalese is that it never really tells a normal person
anything. It's an impenetrable wall of text which no one wants to read, but
_possibly_ should, in case it contains some outrageous evil to which you'd end
up agreeing.

That's why I want to avoid it when I get my own stuff out there. Since I'm not
planning to do anything evil, I don't need to distract & confuse anyone with
legalese.

And since I don't live in the US, I don't have to use legalese to cover my ass
from ridiculous lawsuits either :p

------
prakash
_but is rather a direct though somewhat atrophied consequence of a very
successful 20th century business model._

I am curious to know more about this? Can you please provide a few links or
talk a little bit more about this? thanks!

------
vijayr
_Really_ neat idea. It could also happen someone outside YC could take the
idea and work/improve on it.

Where do these ideas come from?

~~~
ZachPruckowski
"Where do these ideas come from?"

Probably from <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>, which is roughly a year
old. RFS#1 is #3 on that (presumably unranked) list.

~~~
robfitz
They come from that list in the same way food comes from a grocery store.

------
sayrer
so RFS #1 starts with advertorials and sell data about the readers? that is
the model you see on TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, etc run on.

