4 ms·

YC does not look much like a University. Apart from the application process, there is not much to YC that you can find in traditional academia. YC looks like w

YC does not look much like a University. Apart from the application process, there is not much to YC that you can find in traditional academia. YC looks like what a University should be. YC is a model that is constantly changing and ameliorating itself using what it learned in previous semester. At YC there are no professors. There are mentors. OMG. Imagine the amount of knowledge students would actually accumulate if they were taught from a young age to find solutions to problems and not take someone else's answer for it. By the time you get to university you have already developed a curious mind and if you were to use that for 6 years to challenge your own thoughts on any subject and seek your own answers, you will come to the work place with a hell of a ability. Mentors should be available when we need them or to frequently stop and take a look at what students work on and only only suggest how they can do better or how to look at problems in a better fashion YC tells you "Ok, so you want to be the solution to that problem, go ahead wow me". There is no A or B. There is only a continuous effort to fix the problem and after you fix it, keep improving the solution. YC is not like a University, but Universities (Heck the entire Schooling system) can learn from this model.

brentr 18y ago
If anything, from what I have read, it seems more like a university at the graduate level. You know of a problem, you have the tools to tackle the problem, but the solution is a big question mark. Your goal is to create a solution. In essence, you are doing original work.
- furiouslol 18y ago
  true but the diff is that with startups, if you tackle the problem well, you will be heavily rewarded
  - brentr 18y ago
    I don't deny this at all. That's the glory of capitalism! The problem I have is that I can't find a problem that I could do on the cheap legally. I'm heavily involved with finance and market data. I can think of numerous ways something like Bloomberg could be improved, but the costs are prohibitive when you consider all the data feeds. The only other idea I have managed to come up with is a Digg-like site with a social network aspect attached to it. The idea is people submit just like on Digg but they also make recommendations as to what would happen in the market. They then earn a credibility rating based on whether or not their prediction was accurate. The problem with that is this: I don't think there are enough people who would use it to make developing the site worth my time.
    - rokhayakebe 18y ago
      Make it private and charge a hefty monthly fee to participate. Apparently in Wall Street scarcity and limited access is what makes people rich.
      - brentr 18y ago
        That's what I am trying to avoid. One of the problems I see with Bloomberg is that it costs $1500+/month/terminal. My idea involved the concept: data for the masses.
      - furiouslol 18y ago
        This would only work if your product gives the subscriber an edge over their competitors. They wouldn't pay for a product like Google Finance because it doesn't give them an edge. Your plan would work for Monitor110 if the product actually worked.
    - sutro 18y ago
      Sounds like a pretty good idea. You should go for it.
    - furiouslol 18y ago
      Tell that to the boys over at Dealbreaker. They've been waiting for a Bloomberg killer for eons now. But i don't think it'll be easy to build a Bloomberg killer because the main reason why Bloomberg is so popular in the financial circles is that it provides breaking news and lots of historical financial data that you won't find elsewhere. So it is not much of a technology edge than a content edge. As for the Digg-like site, you are right in saying there would not be enough people who would use it. I would think most online investors are those who thrash talk on Yahoo Finance boards. A site like yours would require input from intelligent investors, which unfortunately form a small subset of the online investing community. Hence the lack of scale may render this idea ineffective.
      - gaius 18y ago
        I used to work for Bloomberg's biggest rival, and I know exactly why they are so popular: they understand their end users. RivalCorp doesn't really get it at all. R (as we'll call them) tries to sell to a bank's IT department, and Bloomberg tries to end-run IT and sell to the traders (guess who has the most power in an investment bank). R spent years and hundreds of millions retrofitting TCP/IP onto everything (which traders simply don't care about), Bloomberg spent that time and money setting up deals with tailors and wine merchants (I'm not kidding) for users of its terminals. They made their users feel like insiders, a privileged elite, which is something all bankers crave. Plus, Bloomberg terminals are sexy. They look like something out of Star Trek. R terminals looked like beige-box PCs. Sure there are technological reasons too, but Bloomberg's success is cultural first and foremost.

brentr 18y ago

If anything, from what I have read, it seems more like a university at the graduate level. You know of a problem, you have the tools to tackle the problem, but the solution is a big question mark. Your goal is to create a solution. In essence, you are doing original work.

furiouslol 18y ago
true but the diff is that with startups, if you tackle the problem well, you will be heavily rewarded
- brentr 18y ago
  I don't deny this at all. That's the glory of capitalism! The problem I have is that I can't find a problem that I could do on the cheap legally. I'm heavily involved with finance and market data. I can think of numerous ways something like Bloomberg could be improved, but the costs are prohibitive when you consider all the data feeds. The only other idea I have managed to come up with is a Digg-like site with a social network aspect attached to it. The idea is people submit just like on Digg but they also make recommendations as to what would happen in the market. They then earn a credibility rating based on whether or not their prediction was accurate. The problem with that is this: I don't think there are enough people who would use it to make developing the site worth my time.
  - rokhayakebe 18y ago
    Make it private and charge a hefty monthly fee to participate. Apparently in Wall Street scarcity and limited access is what makes people rich.
    - brentr 18y ago
      That's what I am trying to avoid. One of the problems I see with Bloomberg is that it costs $1500+/month/terminal. My idea involved the concept: data for the masses.
    - furiouslol 18y ago
      This would only work if your product gives the subscriber an edge over their competitors. They wouldn't pay for a product like Google Finance because it doesn't give them an edge. Your plan would work for Monitor110 if the product actually worked.
  - sutro 18y ago
    Sounds like a pretty good idea. You should go for it.
  - furiouslol 18y ago
    Tell that to the boys over at Dealbreaker. They've been waiting for a Bloomberg killer for eons now. But i don't think it'll be easy to build a Bloomberg killer because the main reason why Bloomberg is so popular in the financial circles is that it provides breaking news and lots of historical financial data that you won't find elsewhere. So it is not much of a technology edge than a content edge. As for the Digg-like site, you are right in saying there would not be enough people who would use it. I would think most online investors are those who thrash talk on Yahoo Finance boards. A site like yours would require input from intelligent investors, which unfortunately form a small subset of the online investing community. Hence the lack of scale may render this idea ineffective.
    - gaius 18y ago
      I used to work for Bloomberg's biggest rival, and I know exactly why they are so popular: they understand their end users. RivalCorp doesn't really get it at all. R (as we'll call them) tries to sell to a bank's IT department, and Bloomberg tries to end-run IT and sell to the traders (guess who has the most power in an investment bank). R spent years and hundreds of millions retrofitting TCP/IP onto everything (which traders simply don't care about), Bloomberg spent that time and money setting up deals with tailors and wine merchants (I'm not kidding) for users of its terminals. They made their users feel like insiders, a privileged elite, which is something all bankers crave. Plus, Bloomberg terminals are sexy. They look like something out of Star Trek. R terminals looked like beige-box PCs. Sure there are technological reasons too, but Bloomberg's success is cultural first and foremost.