startingup

17 ms·

121.
by startingup 19y ago
Your instinct - that it looks like a bunch of bureaucracy - is exactly right. These courses are designed to churn out IBM or EDS "consultants", so they can do CYA -they followed all the rules, so they are safe.
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by startingup 19y ago
My beef with Scribd (and all other similar sites, including YouTube) is all those copyrighted stuff. Just go verify for yourself - you will find entire books there. Yes, YouTube has established a "role model" here, but just because they got
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by startingup 19y ago
Excellent point. The result of financial speculation of recent years was the allocation of credit to the real estate industry, distorting the real economy in multitude of ways, by pulling resources in an unsustainable fashion. In 2000, ther
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by startingup 19y ago
My point is that real owners of capital (i.e people who saved the capital) will not lend to create the kind of leverage these hedgies have employed. Imagine you are a billionaire. Will you lend to (which is different from having an equi
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by startingup 19y ago
Let's remember that this is not "capitalism" in a classical sense. Federal Reserve policies have created "financialism" where leveraged speculation has been exceedingly profitable. The typical leverage of a hedge-fund is 5-to-1, even 10-t
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by startingup 19y ago
This raises another question: how long are we going to fight the losing battle of reclaiming the word "hacker" from its current shady connotation? After reading news like this, I would be really ashamed to call myself a "hacker". Note that
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by startingup 19y ago
I personally think Google 2008 is Yahoo 2000. We will see.
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by startingup 19y ago
Ambition can and does expand with time, so you have to give it time. Microsoft is a classic example. It started off with an interpreter for BASIC. No one could have said within 20 years later that company would reach the very top of the IT
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by startingup 19y ago
I grant that they are not that old yet. One counter-example of a software company that has kept growing organically is SAS Institute (now $2+ billion and counting). Don't know anything about their internal culture - they say attrition rate
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Ask YC: Which YC companies are currently active?
6 points by startingup 19y ago|1 comments
131.
by startingup 19y ago
Actually, staying a while in business is a good way to learn those managerial skills!
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by startingup 19y ago
What about the other possibility, Paul? 37Signals or Smugmug stay small & profitable, grow organically, but never straying from their true self. There is no big exit, but people (founders as well as other employees) are happy. Would tha
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by startingup 19y ago
This is a great post, by far the best response to PG's post. I had much the same question, but I am not as good at formulating it the way this guy has done it. I have a feeling PG was aware of this logical implication when he wrote his essa
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by startingup 19y ago
This is a great post. A much more balanced perspective. I worked at a large well-known company, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit there and learned a lot of engineering. My leaving had almost nothing to do with them - I had to relocate
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by startingup 19y ago
My research advisor was a star professor in a big name school. Also very arrogant. He considered me one of his best students (so no personal axe to grind), but I was turned off by his arrogance. Moral of the story: you can't generalize!
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by startingup 19y ago
"The black family" refers to the typical black family. Given the number of kids born out of wedlock quoted in the article (71% of all black kids) this is a sound characterization. "The black family" does not mean "all black families" but on
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by startingup 19y ago
OK, I agree with 70% of pg's essay, but here is something that worried me. Most YC start-ups want to sell to large companies (they pay better!). Is pg saying that they go from being free men/women to caged animals? Or is he telling them "ta
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by startingup 19y ago
280Slides caught my attention - sounds like Zenter - The Sequel? In fact, RescueTime & 8AWeek also sound awfully similar, don't they? This raises an interesting question. As number of YC companies increases, the chances of "collision" i
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by startingup 19y ago
Good point - start-ups do create new wealth. So I wondered - where does that wealth come from? In the web world, it comes (ultimately) from the healthy growth in user count, and the time they are spending on the web (which makes them either
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by startingup 19y ago
Thanks for your response. I often wonder if increasing supply means prices will fall so low - for example, get hired in a big company, and bring your code free, as a reverse-sign-on bonus. A little disturbing to think about ... Before someo
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Ask YC: Supply & Demand for Startups
6 points by startingup 19y ago|10 comments