

Super last minute advice for startups applying for Y Combinator - rantfoil
http://garry.posterous.com/super-last-minute-advice-for-s

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delano
That's a thoughtful post.

But why do I literally need to get out onto a life raft in the ocean with my
co-founders? Are there customers out there?

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rantfoil
It's a metaphor for the fact that all you have is your cofounders, so choose
wisely.

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whughes
I assume he's playing off of the usage of 'literally' regarding a metaphor.

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carlosrr
This is a very interesting article about how "literally" is used to mean
"figuratively." <http://www.slate.com/id/2129105/>

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unalone
There's always something awesome about reading a guy's blog that's hosted on
the engine he himself built.

Excellent post, as always.

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cperciva
_There's always something awesome about reading a guy's blog that's hosted on
the engine he himself built._

There is? He didn't write nginx, or the C libraries it uses, or the linux
kernel it's running on, or the Xen virtualization layer slicehost is using, or
the C compiler which was used to compile all of the above -- but each of those
is far more sophisticated than the blog engine. What's so awesome about a very
thin layer at the top of a very deep stack?

~~~
unalone
One memorable Thursday I got to eat dinner with a writer and a teacher of
mine. He cooked an excellent meal. Part of me was thrilled that he cooked for
me and my peers.

He didn't plant the seeds that grew into the vegetables he used. He didn't
grind out the flour he used to cook. He didn't raise the cattle, or clean the
meat. He just took some finished products and he made a meal.

Every step of any process requires an awesome effort. I'm just as impressed
with the people who wrote those many, many laters. But in the end, design is
that layer you're talking about, and Posterous is very well-designed, and when
I use a web site that's all that I care about. That's the product of the
Posterous team, and it's a pretty awesome one.

Why bother doing anything if all you're ever doing is building a thin layer?
Could it be that any product is a result of lots of people working on
something, and that each contribution is integral? Nah, couldn't be. We're all
insignificant and nothing is awesome.

What happened to the ability of hackers to look at something cool and say "Gee
golly wow"? I still do that all the time, and every time I do I get these
little snide remarks. Why? What harm is there in thinking that _lots of
things_ are awesome? Lots of things _are_ awesome! Life is so awesomely super-
duper cool! Let's not ruin it by sneering.

~~~
cperciva
Allow me to clarify somewhat. This isn't the first time I've seen someone make
a comment like yours; but I have never seen anyone say "wow, it's really cool
that a FreeBSD developer is running FreeBSD on his server" (substitute
"nginx", "Apache", "linux", "Xen", etc. for "FreeBSD" as required). It's more
the opposite -- it seems that those of us who work on the lower layers only
ever get attention if we _don't_ eat our own dogfood.

To turn my question around: Ok, so the blog engine _and_ all the underlying
layers are all awesome; but why don't all the underlying layers get as much
attention?

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nostrademons
I think it's cool that Linus Torvald's is using Linux to teach his daughters
computing (with handy parental controls he wrote himself).

I think it's cool that Guido van Rossum uses Python in most of his daily
programming.

I think it's cool that thet Lighttpd website runs on Lighttpd.

I think it's cool that I use my own project for my daily websearching needs
(okay, bad example, since I'm in Search UI and most of my job consists of
putting a pretty web interface on the stuff the backend engineers do. I think
it's cool that I use lacker's stuff that I slapped a frontend onto for my
daily websearching needs. ;-))

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Hexstream
Where you use "cool" I'd use "expectable"...

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nostrademons
That was cperciva's point, I guess. I still think it's cool though.

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ThanksBudRJ
Great post Gary! My favorite is #5 "A little help from friends." It took me a
long time to realize the value of letting everyone know what you're doing and
what you need. I use to try to keep everything secret until launch. Now I
realize that if you tell people what you're doing and what you, they're much
more likely to HELP you.

~~~
jlees
Even if they can't help you, they get excited about you and tell other people
who can help you. I'm amazed at the amount of support, help, advice and ideas
I've been getting from people even in entirely unrelated fields. Of course,
dealing with it all and not following every last piece of fishwives' wisdom is
another story... ;)

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malvosenior
While good design is important, I'd think twice about having a
designer/cofounder. Look at this site for instance; design easily done by a
developer, yet the service itself fills a niche and built a community.

As a side note, I've seen early design hires hold back the company in later
stages as they tend to wield too much power over the product (often playing a
pseudo product management role).

It's easy enough to outsource a logo and some paint. Think about your use
cases and make sure the service caters to them but good product is often
"designed" at the functional level.

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rantfoil
A good designer is a good designer. If someone holds back the company later,
that's not good design.

Design is way way more than logo and paint. Interaction design is just plain
being able to make stuff that works well for people -- that's the kind of
design I'm talking about. Should have made that more clear.

~~~
malvosenior
It looks like you are the "designer" on your team. It also looks like you have
an amazing background in software development, program management and
entrepreneurship. That's the kind of designer you want as a cofounder ;)

As you say, design is a lot more than some paint and a logo. Interaction
design, information architecture... are all VERY important at the early
stages. I do think the early devs should have this as a skillset though (much
as you do) opposed to cofounding with a straight up interaction designer (no
matter how good they are).

Given the amount of equity a cofounder gets it I would tend to look for people
who could be 100% utilized (working all the time to get the company up and
running). It can be hard to keep a full time designer busy unless you have a
team of devs pumping stuff out for them to craft.

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sgrove
Thanks to garry for posting this, always nice to hear a bit of advice
distilled down.

Even nicer when you're able to check off most of the points :D

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markup
This useful article comes from Garry Tan, cofounder @ Posterous.

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david927
Paul, can we have a feature that when we save an application there's also a
'feedback' button, which sends the application to select YC alumni and others
who have time to give feedback?

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mrtron
Nobody is going to hold your hand when you are starting up.

It would be unwise to have a feature that gives you that false impression.

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david927
What are you talking about? The whole YC program is explicitly about getting
your hand held. Anyone can get a credit card or family/friend loan for 5,000
for a three month project. YC is not about the money; it's about the advice.
YC is about nurturing seeds to see what comes up, rather than testing them for
the Winter. There's a reason seeds sprout in Spring -- to give them as good as
possible running start before Winter comes. They'll get tested soon enough.

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utnick
Is posting your application here for feedback in the form of an ASK YC post
frowned upon?

Surprised I haven't seen anyone do that.

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unalone
In my opinion that's a little bit tacky. I don't know if I'd like people
seeing exactly how I answered every application question a week before
applications were due, and I don't think that an application post would be HN-
worthy. (Especially not if a bunch of different people all posted theirs at
once.)

I'd advise emailing a few people that you think could give you feedback. I
sent Garry a rough draft of my application, and his feedback helped a lot.
Either write to a few HN people (and don't get upset if some people you write
to are really busy right now), or join the IRC channel and ask people there.

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mcdowall
Didnt know there was an IRC channel! Does anyone have the channel and the
server?

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fallentimes
freenode #startups

