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What if I don't have an idea? | Brennan: As I look at trying to start something myself, it's not the lack of "good" ideas that ever worries me (although if you tell someone you're interested in starting a company the first question they always ask is "what's your idea?"), it's finding the right partner or "someone else to work with" that seems to be ... |
What if I don't have an idea? | hendler: There are many many great people in industries/services that just haven't led them to be technologists. They might have everything you don't - which is key to building a great team. |
What if I don't have an idea? | alex_c: Don't fret about finding The Big Idea (or even not having a List of Possible Big Ideas to choose from).I'm sure you get small ideas now and then. When you do, don't think about them too much, just jump on them, especially if they're small enough to finish in a couple of days. Something Bigger might grow out o... |
What if I don't have an idea? | mde: Enjoy this phase! Idea generation can be a lot of fun. Get some books to stimulate. I've gotten a lot of mileage from "A Whack On The Side Of The Head" and "Creativity" (Csikszentmihalyi). Watch some TED talks. Go to your local unconferences and meet people and see what they're working on. Team up on those c... |
What if I don't have an idea? | mrtron: a) Go work for another startup with a great team.b) Do some contracting. This will help you meet people and get your first taste of the business world. Learn to sell yourself, it should be much easier than selling any product. You also learn how to manage expectations, people and products.c) Start making pro... |
What if I don't have an idea? | markessien: How about doing something pointless but interesting. For example, a self aware web app.Anyways, I have a list of about 100 ideas, so here are two:* A generic API to access bank data from banks all over the world
* A site where one can list all the people that one hates, and what one will do to them when one... |
What if I don't have an idea? | steveplace: Wrote a post about this a month back:http://www.graduatedtaste.com/2008/09/12/lists-of-successful... |
What if I don't have an idea? | ram1024: Off the top of my head, you could make a nationwide collaborative blog for teachers/professors to voice their opinions and/or publish short educational pages. get some sponsors for it and funnel the money back into some kinda foundation/fund for the education community.like a techcrunch for teachers, TeachCrun... |
how quickly do you answer support emails? | callmeed: We have a ticket system (which is just a basic Rails app I built). When a ticket is submitted, the customer gets an auto-reply that we're looking into it. The ticket is emailed to almost every staff member (6 of 8 people). An initial reply is usually submitted within 30 minutes (not necessarily a resolution).... |
What if I don't have an idea? | dineshshah: Lots of good comments suggesting you focus on what you love and are passionate about.But also ask what you hate; what makes you mad? It could be a little thing (e.g. why can't I browse the library of the DVD rental places in my neighborhood?) Is there a computing solution to that maddening thing? |
What if I don't have an idea? | asdflkj: The way to have ideas is to understand the field really well. That sounds kind of banal, but I haven't seen anyone approach startups this way explicitly.So, I would study history of technology and of money, and especially recent history of computing and the Internet. Then I'd try to simulate it all in my mind,... |
What if I don't have an idea? | mde: Another good idea resource from PG: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.htmlThat serves as a helpful litmus test. Not falling somewhere onto that map doesn't invalidate your idea, but the 30 items cover a lot of ground. |
What if I don't have an idea? | jdavid: ok, step one skip the great idea thing. the reality is that the internet is a large enough for competitors in any market.step 2 is build something you know well, it will make it easier to copy and you might find a few things to innovate on later. i have tried the big bold approach and i end up having to scal... |
What if I don't have an idea? | markm: If you want to talk about some ideas just send over an e-mail and we can discuss. |
What if I don't have an idea? | bretthoerner: I imagine this will be lost in the fray, but thanks everyone for the great replies.More ideas about how to uh, have ideas than I had ever imagined. Thanks a lot, seriously. |
What if I don't have an idea? | danielhodgins: I understand where you are coming from, and I would like to share what worked for me. I just finished university, and have been in 3 startup situations so far, none of which have gone anywhere. That's not to say I didn't learn some very valuable lessons. In fact, I learned things in these failed startups... |
What if I don't have an idea? | louisadekoya: Check out http://www.ideatagging.com and see if one of the ideas there grabs you. |
how quickly do you answer support emails? | manmanic: My answer seems to differ from most people here.I do all sales and support once per day, first thing in the morning, getting the mailboxes to completely empty. I then glance at the mailboxes a few more times during the day, but don't send any more replies till the next morning. The only exception is if there'... |
how quickly do you answer support emails? | lux: I've been using email for my main company, which isn't great. Just finished putting together the new support system, which is still email-based, but also logs everything in a private ticket system and texts if there's an emergency.Response time: it varies, but it's definitely good to send a "hey we're looking int... |
How do we add a second reply to a question we were asked re. our application? | cofejay: Nice, looks like you have interest shown..did you receive a question via email or was there a separate page you're suppose to check on yc reponse? |
What if I don't have an idea? | portfolioexec: all of my ideas have been bourne out of experience. is there an industry that you like outside of web? my passion has been in real estate and it's led me to create a web app for real estate investors that solves many of their needs. |
What are your Favorite Feeds? | dpapathanasiou: That link is: http://www.seeksift.com/asp/suggest(not sure why urls don't appear in the discussion text) |
ASK HN: Who would you use to host a Dot Net Nuke site? | jason: http://discountasp.net/sp_dotnetnuke.aspx .Net hosting tends to more expensive but discount has been good to me in the past. |
What if I don't have an idea? | radu_floricica: Ok, a strange ideea: if you want to do a startup but don't have an ideea you like, you can try something ourside IT. I did it for about a year (a local courier company). It failed, of course, but I learned _a lot_, about startups, about people, some about myself. And more importantly, one year later I h... |
What are your Favorite Feeds? | mixmax: What are you going to do when the list becomes larger? The signal to noise ration will fall sharply. |
What are your Favorite Feeds? | fuzzy-waffle: You should probably index the tags on the feeds also. |
What are your Favorite Feeds? | mg1313: Is this another Alltop.com sort of...? |
What if I don't have an idea? | qqq: Good ideas aren't worth anything, remember? Just buy one on the cheap. |
What if I don't have an idea? | YuriNiyazov: I am in a surprisingly similar situation, except I, in addition, have the experience of a failed startup (was working on a friend's idea, not mine). I have a contract job that's ending in December, and then... |
What if I don't have an idea? | shimon: I've been in a pretty similar situation recently. I quit my day job in May, wanting to pursue my own projects. For two months, I worked on my own projects, releasing something new every week or two.That was fun and I learned a bunch of new things, but in retrospect it wasn't the best way to spend those two mo... |
How should I approach selling ideas? | ram1024: i think a seeding arm like Y-Comb is something you definately should look into. grab a technical minded programmer co-founder and enroll to it or one of its copycat sister-programmes. a sort of startup-camp like Y-comb will be able to fill in your gaps and give you the support you need to bring a product of ... |
What if I don't have an idea? | jfornear: Hey, I'm in Dallas... currently a senior at SMU. Dallas has plenty of resources depending on what you want to do. Of course it's nothing compared to the valley, but just off the top of my head, http://viewzi.com, http://www.texasstartupblog.com/, http://www.biggu.com/, http://woot.com, http://match.com, http:... |
What if I don't have an idea? | LPTS: Ask Psychedelic Mushrooms for an idea. |
How should I approach selling ideas? | ScottWhigham: No matter what, to me, it seems that you need the capital up-front; without it, you are going to have a much tougher time finding developers. That capital could come from you - it doesn't have to come from investors - but you probably have to pay your developers.You don't mention your background with resp... |
Using a hosted mail server with a CNAME that isn't your domain name | SwellJoe: Nonsense.You have a weird idea of what information SMTP servers care about when determining spamminess. DNS is vitally important to getting your mail delivered...but what CNAME is in your MX record is completely and utterly unimportant (it's like worrying about what the name of your mailman is...George or Fr... |
Using a hosted mail server with a CNAME that isn't your domain name | tihomir: add TXT SPF Record on your domain that includes your MX recordIN TXT "v=spf1 a:mx1.theemailserversdomain.com a:mx2.theemailserversdomain.com a:mx3.theemailserversdomain.com ~all"and then check out http://old.openspf.org/dns.html
If you want on that site you can look on other domains examples. |
Using a hosted mail server with a CNAME that isn't your domain name | mixmax: How did this story get 0 points? Is there a downvoting button somewhere? |
What if I don't have an idea? | TweedHeads: Develop for the iPhone, you'll make some money for sure while you learn some interesting technology.You'll never regret it, if Japan and Korea are indicators of mobile consumption.The future is mobile! |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | okeumeni: First post it on HN, if you can take the though review it shows how thick you skin is. If you pass the review, you’re ready to go show off to the rest of the world. |
What if I don't have an idea? | jsmcgd: Make tech friends. There's bound to a bunch of people in Dallas that would like to team up with you. Go find them. They'll give you the ideas you need. |
What if I don't have an idea? | symptic: Move to Austin. |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | iamelgringo: Amazon's Mechanical Turk can get you beta testers and first users for $.01-.05 a piece. It's generally cheaper than using ad sense. |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | petercooper: You could write a book on this. Heck, I probably should - I've done it a few times :)A short list (but by no means anywhere near complete!):- Find as many blogs in your niche as possible. Pitch them properly (a lot could be written on that point alone) DON'T JUST GO FOR THE BIG ONES! The smaller blogs are ... |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | webwright: http://andrewchenblog.com/2007/11/22/why-bloggers-and-press-...Interesting contrarian viewpoint. I don't agree with it entirely (the truth always lies somewhere in the middle) but the important takeaway is that active promotion is expensive as hell (either time or money).I'd say the most important thing is ... |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | MicahWedemeyer: I just gave a presentation on this at Barcamp Atlanta. The slides are up on my blog if you're interested:http://blog.aisleten.com/2008/10/18/generating-buzz-without-... |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | jfarmer: Promoting a website is the same as promoting any other product:1) Identify your target market
2) Find a distribution channel
3) Pursue your target marketMany startups go the TechCrunch route, but unless your target market is Silicon Valley technologists it's probably not a smart move. Put another way, not all... |
Buying a new desktop | sfamiliar: sounds like you want a mini-dvi adapter, a big standalone screen, a usb keyboard and mouse, and a steelcase chair, not a desktop computer.if you want processing power for web servers and databases, get a slice somewhere -- they're pretty affordable. don't buy an entirely new machine when you can get everyth... |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | palish: http://www.reflected.netThey're very good. I have a dedicated server with them. They also host www.ytmnd.com, which has had a long history of copyright trouble. |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | r00k: Make it so good that everyone talks about it. |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | callmeed: I asked about Euro-based hosts here recently:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295949That might help |
Buying a new desktop | ScottWhigham: I bought my last rig from newegg - parts and then put it together. For my newest one, I went to Frys to buy an off-the-shelf box and was pleasantly surprised that I could get a very powerful machine for $800 or so.Frys and Microcenter offer great choices in Dallas (where I am) and I'd assume elsewhere if ... |
Buying a new desktop | watmough: Buy a refurb 20" iMac.I'm working on mine right now, and it really is one of the nicest machines I've ever used. |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | natch: Host offshore, but put heavy assets on AWS S3? I don't have an answer on the host, but thought this idea might help, since offshore hosts can be slower for US access. Amazon might be pussies too, I don't know; but this might buy you time. |
Buying a new desktop | ram1024: if you can wait it out a bit, USB 3yum![edit] aww crap, now it's saying i have to wait till 2010 till USB 3 hits. that... that's longer than Longhorn 7! |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | mixmax: Try and look into where the pirate bay is hosted. They seem to have balls of steel. |
Buying a new desktop | strlen: D.J. Bernstein (yes, "that" djb) has a fairly good recommendation page, albeit out dated:http://cr.yp.to/hardware/build-20071203.html
http://cr.yp.to/hardware/advice.htmlMy advise is build your own: the price may actually be higher, but the upside is being able to select your own components (for better performa... |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | cstejerean: Can you at least name the company that's bullying you so we can go out of our way not to do business with them? |
How to find the best buyers for your website/app | noodle: why not post it on here or on your blog? i mean, i'm not looking to buy something, but if it looks like a good thing to invest in, i'd give it some thought.techcrunch just posted up a for-sale type section, that might be a decent place, too. |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | Harkins: I've heard NearlyFreeSpeech.net is good. No colo or dedicated, tho. |
How to find the best buyers for your website/app | jacobscott: Do you have competitors? Large customers? Know any experts in this area? Those are the people I would look into first. |
What are your favorite idea pitches? | utnick: For a role model/inspiration I would go rent a couple seasons of Entourage and try to mimic Ari. |
What are your favorite idea pitches? | lanceweatherby: I suggest tuning into Presentation Zen on a regular basis. http://www.presentationzen.com/ |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | needahost: You guys rock. I'm checking out nearlyfree right now but I think PRQ might be the way to go. Moving our site over is going to be painful and expensive so we want to get it right the first time and not have to deal with it again. With PRQ, it looks like we can do just that.The best part about all this - the c... |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | revicon: Apparently dropping your company name in this thread is a good way :)- http://mattcrampton.com/flickr/ |
Best intro to Emacs, Latex, Python? | makecheck: For LaTeX, Google the "Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2E", a fairly short PDF which I found covered almost everything I normally used.There are a million EMACS cheat sheets out there, but honestly I would find someone you know who uses it. Their enthusiasm will probably help you to learn it better. [Per... |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | zitterbewegung: I would host in sealand by havenco see http://www.havenco.com/ |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | pasbesoin: Thanks for this thread. I've been becoming increasingly concerned about both stability and liability in the face of today's legal climate. Even the little discussion community that I've managed on my own nickel I see increasingly as a potential liability. One nut whose posts get some official or professio... |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | lsc: redundancy is keykeep complete copies in different hosting companies on different continents.For details beyond that, we'd need to know what kind of trouble. The US is pretty good for most kinds of political speech, but horrible for many kinds of commercial speech. Many other countries are the opposite.But yea... |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | webwright: As long as you're posting anonymously, you should tell us all who your current (vaginal) host is. |
iPhone friendly Hacker News? | twism: I think buxfer makes one. I forget the URL though. |
iPhone friendly Hacker News? | pstinnett: looking for this as well. |
iPhone friendly Hacker News? | PieSquared: Hey, I think just being away from HN for a while is good for me. I haven't been here in a week or so and I'm pretty sure my productivity rose. Though it's fun to come back and read some of the stuff here when I feel burnt out :) |
iPhone friendly Hacker News? | jwilliams: To be honest, I don't mind the site as it is on the iPhone. The pages themselves are simple, so it renders quickly and it's quick to navigate.Not sure why - But a lot of iPhone versions seem to cut the number of articles/elements back quite considerably. Of the iPhone-friendly news sites that I use, most of ... |
iPhone friendly Hacker News? | enomar: Works pretty well through Google Reader. |
iPhone friendly Hacker News? | markbao: http://buxfer.com/yc/ - this one is the fully featured one, but it has been down for a while.http://code.seedlessmedia.com/iCombinator/#_home - this one works. |
Why haven't signup confirmation emails died yet? | vivekamn: Unless its an e-commerce site, just don't do it! |
If you have ever played WoW please critique my new site | henning: Looks cool. Too bad most WoW players are 13 year old jerks. |
iPhone friendly Hacker News? | kriyative: VenueM.com makes a great RSS to iPhone-friendly web site interface. Check out their Hacker News site (ideally on an iPhone/iPod Touch) at:http://i.venuem.net/ychn |
If you have ever played WoW please critique my new site | sbarski: It does indeed look very good. Nice design and a good concept to boot.I hope it does well. |
If you have ever played WoW please critique my new site | Caligula: The design is nice. One suggestion would be to better mimic the ui/colors/look and feel of WoW's ingame ui. Also add some sort of clan feature where someone can register a clan that they could also use as their clan/guild website so like a facebook group.But disturbing too... A social network where instead... |
If you have ever played WoW please critique my new site | mattmaroon: FWIW, I'm not a player, but your design looks great. I'm a little iffy about the menu links near the top. I feel like they shouldn't be separated, and could maybe use a background that's a little less translucent. Also the word "legend" is a bit tough to read and should have a period after it.But the color-... |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | jbert: Would it be possible to create a web hosting system which doesn't have a single point of "legal failure"?I guess by definition, it couldn't be run as one company. But you could have independent but co-operating companies in multiple countries, each holding a copy of the hosted data.Would the directors/shareholde... |
If you have ever played WoW please critique my new site | arien: Very nice, it could be a great resource for roleplayers (but then I'd remove the 'uber l33t' line, heheh).I'd like to mention that the navigation through the journal entries didn't feel too easy. I'd suggest adding a link at the bottom of each entry to show the previous one, for example :)Good luck with your sit... |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | morphle: We can accomodate you in the Netherlands. As the first ISP here I know my way around. We applied to Ycombinator this cycle with a site that we host ourselves, but I am happy to help find you any type of hoster you'll like. Merik at Knoware.nl |
How much revenue should we give to content creators? | ld50: i think you should do a cost analysis from a user standpoint of competing services. once a "fair" or "market" rate has been established, i'd then adjust your price significantly below that (of course you can't forget to maintain sufficient cash flow to stay afloat). then market the hell out of your service (make ... |
How much revenue should we give to content creators? | ld50: "So far we've agreed that we should distribute 70% of the revenue generated from song sales to artists.I don't think this is enough though -- I think we should distribute some specific percentage of our total revenue (including song sale revenues and advertising revenues)">not important"Anyways, it's difficult to... |
If you have ever played WoW please critique my new site | Raphael: "Critique" ain't a verb. |
Most cost-effective method of achieving physical redundancy | jwilliams: Interesting question :)1. The most cost effective in terms of immediate capital outlay is active-passive - which is pretty much #1 that you described. This is generally also less effort... and is generally easy to test.2. The most cost effective long term strategy is active-active as you get ongoing use of b... |
Most cost-effective method of achieving physical redundancy | brk: Get your own ASN ;)You are on the right path with your approach #1. Setup a failover server someplace and keep it sync'd at an interval that is the right balance between too-often and too-stale.You could opt to get a small dedicated machine from a larger-scale true multi-homed hosting company. Run haproxy on thi... |
Back-testing system? | ScottWhigham: Wow - I don't think I'd ever heard of "back-testing" before. Google'd it - interesting...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtesting |
Most cost-effective method of achieving physical redundancy | smoody: A quick question: When replicating mySQL across data centers, is there an easy or perhaps built-in way to encrypt the replication data streams to prevent prying eyes from potentially intercepting the data? If not, might that be a problem if one is passing replicating credit card numbers, etc.? |
iPhone? Blackberry? Android? Prayer? - How do you remotely monitor your startup? | shergill: iPHone. :) |
Most cost-effective method of achieving physical redundancy | vaksel: why not just auto-copy everything to AWS and do checks for uptime of your host. Then if the check fails, auto-forward the url to the AWS location.This way if it hits the fan, the only problem the users will notice is the 5 mins of downtime between the checks, before the site becomes slower due to the switch to ... |
iPhone? Blackberry? Android? Prayer? - How do you remotely monitor your startup? | tuukkah: I prefer an n810 (great screen, hardware keyboard, Linux) with internet access over bluetooth and a small cell phone. |
Need a host with some balls, offshore maybe? | lacky: SoftLayer is an amazing US host. They have a quality service, the support is great, and the price isn't bad, although they do have their 'premium'. I can't vouch for how they'd act with legal matters, but I'm sure the sales reps can give you a good idea.Don't go with PRQ. I've had a server with them before, and ... |
Is there a name for the 'web shortcut' services? (tinyurl, tinypaste, cli.gs, etc) | ram1024: call em plinks <-- cause it's cuteshort for hop-links maybe? |
Is there a name for the 'web shortcut' services? (tinyurl, tinypaste, cli.gs, etc) | pwoods: I think they are referred to by there services. Like tinyurl is a tinyurl. But if you wanted to coin plink I'll support it! Only 1,499,999,999 internet users to go |
What is the best way to promote your new fancy web application? | wastedbrains: Petercooper shared a great list here are some of my thoughts...We failed to promote our last start up very well (Seekler.com), and our new start doesn't rely on eyeballs so we aren't really promoting it. That being said we did learn a few things. Some of these are probably specific to our type of site whi... |
Back-testing system? | fbbwsa: yes, i'd be interested in seeing it put on the web for use. for casual observers, this is interesting.no, i don't think it could be built into a viable online business. most people who have backtesting needs have access to the necessary data via existing subscription services.unless a new service provides "clea... |
What's the YC company that lists electronic parts for sale? | mccon104: is it bountii.com? |
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