startup on SWiK

Coppermine Photo Gallery

Sat, 17 May 2008 12:15:36 -0700

Coppermine Photo Gallery is a photo-gallery web application with multimedia capabilities. It requires PHP, MySQL, and ImageMagick or the GD Graphics Library, and works with most web server software such as Apache.

Dojo and AOL | dev.aol.com | The AOL Developer Network

Thu, 15 May 2008 21:16:40 -0700

serve dojo from AOL

nextthing.org » On Regret Minimization, Leaving Apple, and Playing Pinball

Sun, 11 May 2008 22:15:53 -0700

pinball

The F|R Interview: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham

Sat, 03 May 2008 02:15:25 -0700

Editor’s note: For the sake of accuracy, we have replaced the edited questions and answers with their unedited version (save for some minor stylistic changes). We sincerely apologize for any confusion.

This week Found|READ interviews software entrepreneur Paul Graham, co-founder of the influential startup incubator, Y Combinator.

Since 2005, Y Combinator has seed-funded 250 founders and over 45 startups including Justin.TV, RescueTime, Weebly and Zecter. Many other “YC shops” have quickly achieved liquidity events, among them Reddit (Condé Nast) and Auctomatic (Live Current Media). Fresh from Y Combinator’s fourth annual Startup School ‘08, Graham talks about the competition, various success factors, and how Y Combinator picks its winners.

F|R: What is the mathematical function from which Y Combinator
takes its name, and why did you choose this?

Graham: It’s a function that builds recursive functions without them needing to have names. The Y Combinator is one of those things that seems miraculous when you first encounter it. You wouldn’t necessarily have expected such a thing to be possible. We named the company after it partly because we thought it was such a cool concept, and partly as a secret signal to the kind of people we hoped would apply.

F|R: How quickly can you now tell whether a startup will make it? And what are the key characteristics that indicate potential success to Y Combinator?

Graham: We can never tell for sure. No investor can. But we are trying hard to get better at predicting.

I think the key quality is determination. The founders who do the best are the type of people who just refuse to fail. Most startups have at least one low point where any reasonable person would give up. That bottleneck is the reason there are so few successful startups. The only people who get through it are the ones who have an unreasonable aversion to failing.

F|R: I know you’re not a fan of Y Combinator copycats (TechStars, Y Europe, Seedcamp, BoostPhase, Basecamp etc.) but what is it about the original Y Combinator model that distinguishes it from these copycats? What aspects of your model cannot be copied and how is Y Combinator positioned to succeed where these others may not? Or, has you opinion changed, do you think your model be replicated and is that a good thing for entrepreneurship?

Graham: There are a few things they haven’t copied correctly, but really it’s not our model that distinguishes us. It’s the people that make the difference — not just us, but the 250 or so founders we’ve now funded. The amount of knowledge accumulated in all these heads is remarkable.

F|R: I read that when you call Y Combinator winners, the founders have only five minutes to accept. (”If people turn us down,” he says, “as far as we’re concerned they’ve failed an IQ test.”) Have startups turned you down? Are there any that have turned Y Combinator down and still gone on to succeed with a liquidity event?

Graham: You’re confusing two separate things. The reason people are supposed to decide quickly whether or not to accept is that they already know everything except the percent we’ll ask for. They’ve already seen the deal terms, and they already know as much as they’re going to know about YC before actually working with us. So they should already know when we call what percentage they’d be OK with. Since all they have to do is subtract one integer from another, five
minutes should be enough.

The “IQ test” quote refers not to how fast they have to decide, but the amount of equity we usually ask for. In the median case it’s 6 percent. If we take 6 percent, we have to improve a startup’s outcome by 6.4 percent for them to end up net ahead. That’s a ridiculously low bar. So the IQ test is whether they grasp that.

There was one startup that turned us down because they received an acquisition offer during the weekend when we did interviews. It was a pretty good offer. I’d have taken it in their position, and
they did. But other than that I don’t know of anyone who turned us down and went on to succeed. There have only been about three others who turned us down.

F|R: For practical purposes, how did you determine the 12-week term of each Y Combinator class? Why is three months the right amount of time, but two too few, or six months too long to properly “incubate” these startup ideas?

Graham: We discovered it by accident. When we first started YC, we began
with a summer program. We were trying to learn how to be investors, so we invited college students to come to Cambridge and start startups instead of getting summer jobs.

Now we’re looking for founders who consider the startup as a real job, not just a summer one. But we kept the 3-month cycle because it is a good length of time to build a version 1. Some startups may not be able to launch in such a short time, but they should all be able to build something impressive.

F|R: What is the ONE thing founders can/should do to increase their odds of succeeding in the Y Combinator “American Idol-meets-WIRED” competition? Is Andreessen right that “the market” matters more than the idea, the tech, and even the talent?

Graham: Get good co-founders. You can’t change who you are, at least not in a short time. And the idea doesn’t matter to us as much as the people. So the best thing any individual can do is find good people to work with.

I think Marc may be right that market is the biggest determinant in the outcome of successful startups. But that’s not unrelated to the qualities of the founders. Smart people will find big markets.

StartupCamp 5 in SF This Weekend

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:18:05 -0700

Sun Microsystems will bring its StartupCamp, a free, two-day “unconference” that gathers together founders, entrepreneurs and technologists, to San Francisco’s Moscone Center starting this Sunday, May 4th. The event will feature a keynote from Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz that will include an on-stage interview by our own Om Malik, plus panels on topics ranging from cloud computing to social networks to media launch how-to’s. To register, click here.

Turbo Charging Eclipse

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:48:53 -0700

I primarily use CFEclipse, Mylyn, and Subclipse but started using Flex and getting an OutOfMemoryException. I am not a JVM options expert, but I referenced several articles. These settings are suggestions and you may need adjust them. I changed my eclipse.ini file around after researching some JVM option settings.

Aviary - Creation on the fly

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:29:03 -0700

StartUp Essentials - Now Also in Sweden

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:20:55 -0700

One more nation for the Startup Essentials Program. Sweden joins the US and 7 other nations in the program that makes hardware and software available at very discounted prices for startups.

GlassFish support (GFB) is included in SSE - see this earlier TA entry.

According to OnTheRecord, there have been over 2,300 applications to SSE.

eContent: Changing Your Nokia N800 Start-Up Image

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:57:45 -0700

Did you ever have an image that really bugged you? For me it was the Nokia N800 (or N810) start-up image...

Oracle Emerging Business Programme - Introduction

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:55:48 -0700

Open Source Pioneer Larry Augustin Joins Appcelerator Board of Advisors

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:47:18 -0800

mult.ifario.us

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:43:37 -0800

mult.ifario.us

GlassFish in Startup Essentials - All you need, now in 8 Countries

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:44:17 -0800

The Sun Startup Essentials (SSE) program aims to provide all the essentials needed by startups, including: Free Software and Services and Discounted Systems, Storage and Partner Hosting. GlassFish is included in the deal: you will get free developer assistance from the SSE team (which works closely with GF engineers), and - of course, GlassFish is free Right-to-Use.

In addition to the US the program is available in 7 other countries so far: India, China, Israel, France, Germany, Canada and now also in the United Kingdom.

The program has a 93% satisfaction rating; check it out and provide your Feedback.

Added - I just saw the announcement on the new Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor-based blades (Blog, PR) - they look nice, and I believe they will be included in SSE in the "near" future.

[from deep] Как повлияет финансовый кризис на мировую венчурную индустрию.

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:41:46 -0800

Dr Nic " Using Git within a project (forking around)

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:41:53 -0800

As developers, we know how exciting it is for a project/website to "go live". You'll get some praise from users, some bugs reports, but mostly, you will get the thrill of having finished something and seen it in action.

Semansys Technologies

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:41:08 -0800

Zimbra

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:39:06 -0800

Zimbra offers Open Source email server software and shared calendar for Linux and the Mac

Making FireFox a whole lot faster

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:39:12 -0800

make firefox start quicker

Ideawicket Open Innovation Portal

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:58:56 -0800

[from eggywat] KillerStartups.com_ - The Next Big Thing on the Internet is here. You pick it

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:10:58 -0800

RunMyProcess > On demand business integration and process management (BPM)

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:11:45 -0800

Photo Matt " Act Two

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:05:20 -0800

Automattic

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:23:54 -0800

fabFORCE.net

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 11:00:05 -0800

open source database designer

Automattic

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:50:22 -0800

Blogging is too hard. Through WordPress we've enabled hundreds of thousands of people to effortlessly publish to the web. Now we want to enable millions more.

Automattic

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:45:30 -0800

Blogging is too hard. Through WordPress we've enabled hundreds of thousands of people to effortlessly publish to the web. Now we want to enable millions more.

MySQL, JBoss, Zimbra...What is an open-source company worth? | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET Blogs

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:51:18 -0800

Welkom op de voorpagina

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:31:56 -0800

Joomla??

HOWTO Autostart Programs - Gentoo Linux Wiki

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:13:00 -0800

[from deep] Интервью с Константином Карчмарчиком ("Санкт- Петербург Капитал")

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:18:46 -0800