

Applications now open for summer 2008 YC funding cycle - jl
http://www.ycombinator.com/s2008.html

======
danielha
I liked the Cambridge YC HQ quite a bit. It's much homier than the one in MV.

~~~
ivankirigin
Much smaller too, right? I wonder how they'll fit all the groups if next year
they have even more.

~~~
pg
I'm wondering too. We were pretty much at the limit last summer. When we had
investors there for demo day, we literally had to put the founders outside in
a tent.

Fortunately we can expand in time if constrained in space: just have multiple
dinners per week. That would get us 7x without needing to find a new building.
I've had my eye out for places in Cambridge, but it would be really hard to
beat the current one.

~~~
gibsonf1
If you need a good architect to build something remarkable for YC, let me know
:)

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Tichy
Plug: word count Greasemonkey script for yc application form
<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13291>

~~~
tlrobinson
Bookmarklet version (Safari and Firefox compatible):

javascript:function update(e) { var a = e ? e.target : window.event.target;
var s = a.nextSibling; if (!s) { s = document.createElement("div");
a.parentNode.appendChild(s); } var words = a.value.match(/\S+/g); var num =
words ? words.length : 0; s.innerHTML = "word count: " + num; s.style.color =
(num > 120) ? "red" : "green"; } (function() { var a =
document.getElementsByTagName("textarea"); for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i++)
{ a[i].addEventListener("keypress", update, false); update({target:a[i]}); }
})();

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wumi
Not to throw a racial stick into the wheel, but are there any black or latino
founders out there applying to Y C?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104919>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104728>

~~~
DaniFong
Suspend your disbelief, and irrationally accept what quantcast tells you:
(<http://www.quantcast.com/paulgraham.com>)

African americans, latinos, and asians all outrank caucasians in pageviews on
paulgraham.com. It also shares with ycombinator.com a slightly female
audience, and members who visit also enjoy shopping for horses. ;-)

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Tichy
"Are any of the following true? ..."

You forgot "are you a terrorist" ;-)

That question seems to indicate that there will be automated screening out of
applications?

~~~
pg
No, there's no automated screening. We added this question because people's
answers are sometimes so unclear that we can't be sure of the answers to
these. It serves the same purpose as a check digit in a credit card number.

We certainly wouldn't automatically reject a group that answered this question
yes. Loopt would have, among others.

~~~
Tichy
Thank you for the clarification!

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mcxx
Is there any chance of YC expanding to Europe in the future?

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sharpshoot
What do you mean expand to Europe? European founders can apply.

~~~
mcxx
Yes, I know that but we would have to move to US for the summer and thus get
visas, which could be difficult.

~~~
pmjordan
I'm hoping that getting a visa is easy compared to getting a successful
startup off the ground. :) pg's views on this have been widely documented.

~~~
DaniFong
From <http://www.paulgraham.com/america> :

 _"US immigration policy is particularly ill-suited to startups, because it
reflects a model of work from the 1970s. It assumes good technical people have
college degrees, and that work means working for a big company.

If you don't have a college degree you can't get an H1B visa, the type usually
issued to programmers. But a test that excludes Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and
Michael Dell can't be a good one. Plus you can't get a visa for working on
your own company, only for working as an employee of someone else's. And if
you want to apply for citizenship you daren't work for a startup at all,
because if your sponsor goes out of business, you have to start over."_

Getting a visa isn't always something you have control over. My best friend,
having found a job at a YC startup, is currently held up at the boarder. The
guards didn't seem to believe it was a real company. I was rejected for my TN
visa once, and had to prove that the company I was to be working for was
incorporated, along with a plethora of other documentation.

I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to get a visa to work at my startup. The
rules for the TN-1 visa (for Canadians, I presume the TN-2 for Mexicans work
similarly) say you can't be a controlling owner of the business you'd work
for. Could you then get a whole bunch of Canadians together, no one of whom
would have a controlling share, and found a company in the US?

I've tried to hunt down an answer to this, but to no avail. By the letter of
the law, yes, one should be able to: this means that many college educated
Canadians could bypass immigration entirely. But in practice it's up to the
whim of the immigration guard, and people are kept out of the US, not allowed
to work for completely legit companies.

~~~
pmjordan
It strikes me as odd that this would be decided by some random immigration
official at the border. Surely, you'd chip away at getting an appropriate visa
at the US embassy back home? Or are there in fact two possible points of
failure?

~~~
DaniFong
For most programmers, there's the H1-B Visa. This is tied to a specific
employer, they're given out on a roughly first come first serve basis and
there's a quota of them: only 65,000 are given out per year at last count.
Last year there were so many people applying that all the visas for FY 2008
(starting October 07) were given out on April 1st -- the next time you'd be
able to apply would be April 1st 2008, for October 2008!

For Canadians and Mexicans there is a different visa, called the TN, created
under NAFTA. If you read the NAFTA proceedings, you'll come to understand that
the method of getting verified at the border was meant to make it _easier_ and
_quicker_ to get a Visa, for certain classes of professional. The one
professional category involving computers, 'computer systems analyst', was so
vaguely defined that one could only interpret it was meant as an umbrella
term.

But what's happened in reality is that small-minded border guards have been
given the authority to simply reject people. They demand all sorts of things
that aren't in the law, and they make no apologies.

~~~
jward
I wonder how well it'd go over to attend a 4 month long entrepreneurship
seminar in Boston. I also wonder how they define 'working in the US'. If my
start up is incorporated in Canada, can they stop me from working on it while
I'm visiting the US?

~~~
DaniFong
The law isn't very refined on this point. It's perhaps best to talk with a
lawyer, taking the attitude "I'm going to do this, now keep me off the
waterboard".

US law doesn't ban individuals from being international actors. It barely even
acknowledges the possibility. But ultimately you're subject to the whims of
whichever boarder guard your happen to meet.

Canadians are legally allowed to vacation in the USA for up to 6 months. I'm
not sure, but I don't think the law is too specific on not being able to
_work_ (the semantics of the word are too tricky), but you need a visa to be
in someone's employ. That may leave certain possibilities open.

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rms
ooo, new question:

 _Please tell us about the time you, username, most successfully hacked some
(non-computer) system to your advantage._

~~~
pg
There are a bunch of new questions. That one was suggested by Sam Altman.

~~~
Alex3917
That's a really awesome question.

If you don't already have a copy, you might enjoy Rod Beckstrom's book
Brainticklers. It's basically just a book of questions about the year 3,000.

The questions range from

"When we can match or exceed many or all human physical and mental skills with
computers or appliances, how will we define our reason for being?"

to

"What will be the most popular baby shower gift in the year 3,000?"

It would probably be a fun toy for the YC dinners.

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secgeek
suppoes someone in india then will u consider them?i mean cost of relocating
there is high so is it ok?

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ajkirwin
I applied, because, well..

he who never tries, never succeeds? One should never be afraid of failure or
rejection!

