3 ms·

Maybe it should be called "WhyCombinator?" -- position it as an open community of startups which compete (in a serious but friendly manner) to the official YCom

Maybe it should be called "WhyCombinator?" -- position it as an open community of startups which compete (in a serious but friendly manner) to the official YCombinator companies.

nostrademons 20y ago
That's probably better, but I'm thinking it may be better off with a name that doesn't derive from yCombinator at all. After all, there's YEurope too, which got similarly panned for ripping off the name. Unless it were a name with an obscure wordplay in it. For example, we could call it Ackermen.com because the Y-combinator is a function that lets you bootstrap recursive functions, while the Ackermann function is one of the simplest examples of a function that is not primitive recursive. ;-)
- dpapathanasiou 20y ago
  But unlike YEurope, which is just a copy-cat, your source of members (at least initially) are those whom YC didn't accept. And in terms of fostering a (again, friendly) rivalry with YC, it's a neat conceit (especially if any of the YC rejects outshine those that got accepted).
  - nostrademons 20y ago
    So, I was talking with my cofounder, and we came up with Bootstrapacitor.com. It has "bootstrap" in the name and also has the capacitor connotations of storing energy and letting it build up until it escapes like a lightning bolt. Also, there're tons of flux-capacitor jokes we could include (we - meaning the site users - are collectively inventing the future, after all), and the flux capacitor is even shaped like a Y! What do you think?
    - dpapathanasiou 20y ago
      Sounds good; remember to announce when it's up and running.
russ 20y ago
If you want to call it WhyCombinator, you're going to have to buy the domain off me ;-) Also, the red logo reads that you were not rejected.
- dpapathanasiou 20y ago
  If you want to call it WhyCombinator, you're going to have to buy the domain off me ;-) Ha!

3 ms·

Maybe it should be called "WhyCombinator?" -- position it as an open community of startups which compete (in a serious but friendly manner) to the official YCom

by dpapathanasiou 20y ago

Maybe it should be called "WhyCombinator?" -- position it as an open community of startups which compete (in a serious but friendly manner) to the official YCombinator companies.

nostrademons 20y ago
That's probably better, but I'm thinking it may be better off with a name that doesn't derive from yCombinator at all. After all, there's YEurope too, which got similarly panned for ripping off the name. Unless it were a name with an obscure wordplay in it. For example, we could call it Ackermen.com because the Y-combinator is a function that lets you bootstrap recursive functions, while the Ackermann function is one of the simplest examples of a function that is not primitive recursive. ;-)
- dpapathanasiou 20y ago
  But unlike YEurope, which is just a copy-cat, your source of members (at least initially) are those whom YC didn't accept. And in terms of fostering a (again, friendly) rivalry with YC, it's a neat conceit (especially if any of the YC rejects outshine those that got accepted).
  - nostrademons 20y ago
    So, I was talking with my cofounder, and we came up with Bootstrapacitor.com. It has "bootstrap" in the name and also has the capacitor connotations of storing energy and letting it build up until it escapes like a lightning bolt. Also, there're tons of flux-capacitor jokes we could include (we - meaning the site users - are collectively inventing the future, after all), and the flux capacitor is even shaped like a Y! What do you think?
    - dpapathanasiou 20y ago
      Sounds good; remember to announce when it's up and running.
russ 20y ago
If you want to call it WhyCombinator, you're going to have to buy the domain off me ;-) Also, the red logo reads that you were not rejected.
- dpapathanasiou 20y ago
  If you want to call it WhyCombinator, you're going to have to buy the domain off me ;-) Ha!