sethjohn

10 ms·

61.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I think it's also much easier to zing off a facile negative comment. Forcing yourself to write something positive (or at least non-negative) helps me focus on writing something truly insightful.
62.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Even more exciting than the possibility of switching from ATT to Verizon will be in 15 years when wireless is everywhere and the iPhone runs by VOIP. That's how they'll really take over the wireless industry.
63.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Paul seems to have a negtive attitude towards every one of the recent crop of YC clones. (Of course, perhaps I'm simply misjuding his tone due to insufficient use of emoticons! ;) Is he worried they will crowd the marketplace and diminish t
64.
by sethjohn 19y ago
That's pretty much the point of voting, only the relevant stories appear on the front page. Good voting practices are probably more important than good posting practices. Unless, I suppose, the number of stories posted gets so large that pe
65.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Interesting to see growth that is both slow and consistent. I always figure websites are either exploding or imploding. Do many sites grow this slowly, or is there something unique about YC news?
66.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I'll give it a try. Thanks.
67.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Anybody know how to hack the Brightcove video (rss feed) onto my iPod (preferably just the sound!)?
68.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Agreed, building an advertising-supported startup is complicated...as starting any company would be. Advertising is VIABLE business model, but this certainly doesn't mean it will always work. Many startups will rely on advertising and many
69.
by sethjohn 19y ago
$12 billion was spent in online advertsing in 2006...Google has built their business almost entirely on advertising...Online advertising $ is skyrocketing while TV and print are stagnant. Advertising is a perfectly legitimate business model
70.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Agreed, this topic is getting old. (Edit: no pun intended, seriously, I just noticed this!) Still, I have a theory about all this... The stats compiled by Valleywag are impressive, they show that almost all of the top 0.1% most gigantically
71.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I'm no expert on this, but isn't the conventional wisdom that this time around the economic factors are much more solid. There is a much more revenue being generated, simply because by now people are making a lot of $$ of purchases on the i
72.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I would ammend that to "$12k, a few weeks, and an incredibly powerful platform for self-publicizing his site." As with most things Web 2.0, there's a catch-22 at the beginning; Nobody posts, so nobody visits, so nobody posts. Guy's PR abili
73.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I'm sick and tired of Reddit-knockoff social vote-on-something sites, the idea is simplistic and derivative, I can't imagine taking advice from 14 year old internet trolls about what I should do with my time... ...and yet, for reasons I can
74.
by sethjohn 19y ago
About 5 years ago I heard Bill Gates give a talk proposing a system to charge 1/10th penny charge for anyone to send you an e-mail. After the e-mail is accepted, you can excuse the charge for anyone sending legitimate e-mail...but spammers
75.
Will overhear.us translate outside SF? - "corporate america is not centered in California"(uncov.com)
2 points by sethjohn 19y ago|3 comments
76.
by sethjohn 19y ago
We have some founders, some ideas, and some demo products...hopefully we'll start pitching in the next few weeks. Do we need a lawyer now? Or can we wait until we get a term sheet and go from there?
77.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I agree that the rise of the "MBA-google" submission was significant. I've been impressed by the complexity and sophisitcation of the content that suceeds YC news. Such high quality content is diluted on most other social news sites among a
78.
by sethjohn 19y ago
So maybe the article doesn't enlighten those of you with extensive knowledge of the technology/market, but it did a great job of answering my basic questions. I can think of about a million cool cell-phone apps, none of which exist yet. Con
79.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I believe this article discussed only convertible debt, and only regarding seed-round funding. No matter what the situation, though, aren't the investors going to own your company if you really run out of money? And if your company is doing
80.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I was sort of surprised the first time I learned that anyone would give you financing for debt. Even at a 20% discount rate, it seems like a successful startup should be increasing their valuation by a lot more than 20% between rounds. Conv
81.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I suspect there's a hidden upside to a startup that require a lot of money...it's going to be more difficult for competitors to get off the ground as well.
82.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Somewhere down the line you're going to sink many $K into marketing, I don't see why paying for a domain name that already has some traffic and name recognition is a categorically bad idea. Was it a bad deal for 'freedrive.com'? Depends on
83.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Sounds like good news to me. YC can't pick every good team, and can't be the right fit for every good team. Highland seems to be specifically seeking life sciences and what looks like some more techie (non-software) ideas. They seem to have
84.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I would steer clear of .org, .net, or many others...but I think that .tv domains can be a great choice if you're doing something video-related. .tv is different enough from .org/.com to be memorable, and can be quite descriptive about what
85.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Looks like a fine way to get data out of Excel...but how do I get it back in?!
86.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Yes, I work on a Mac. The nice thing about VBA was that you could mostly work in Excel, only using VBA to supplement when neccessary. (Open another file to import data, for example. Or take a value from cell X, and plug it into cell Y a cou
87.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I haven't looked much at Slashdot lately, but they have certainly put a lot of work into designing a good system for moderating comments. You are right that they have some dimensionality, and a way to "fade" trolls by adjusting your setting
88.
by sethjohn 19y ago
I was fooled by a troll yesterday. (Then people started docking ME points! Oh, the injustice! ;) ) Anyways, the simple up/down voting seems to reward trolls with lot's of attention (negative points) and prime real-estate (bottom of the page
89.
Multi-dimensional voting, a better defense against trolling?
1 points by sethjohn 19y ago|4 comments
90.
by sethjohn 19y ago
Oh @#%! It's a little embarassing to admit on YC news ;), but pretty much all of the code I've ever written was Visual Basic interfacing with Microsoft Excel! As a scientist, most data from most instruments gets spit out into Excel files. B

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