Gawker
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scribd
Startup guru Paul Graham's "greatest success" may be floundering
I've always thought Scribd, the online document-posting startup, was set up mostly so its investors had an excuse to throw parties. They may not have that excuse much longer, if FuckedStartup's report that Scribd is running out of money is accurate. At a time when any number of startups are running out of money, why fret about Scribd's bank-account balance? Because Scribd was manufactured in angel investor Paul Graham's Y Combinator startup factory. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Shadowlayer: @Figaro: Word, whoever buys it will get an extra serving of lawsuit from the print industry. Anyway, I feel bad for... more » | Other threads
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nerdfight
Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham vs. "one cranky attendee"
Why might this this summer's batch of incubator Y Combinator's startups bore you, as they did "one cranky attendee" who told Silicon Alley Insider so? Because you're not as talented at spotting early stage startups as Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham, says Paul Graham in a comment on the SAI post: More »
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Comment by Whocares: @Shadowlayer: Yeah, no.. MeetCast has never been done before... evar.. The picture frame idea was legit, but I believe its allready... more » | Other threads
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venture capital
30 startup ideas Y Combinator wants to fund
Y Combinator partners Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham only married in June, but they're ready to start popping them out. More $6,000 checks to fund startups, that is. Together with not-married-to-each-other partners Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris, the pair put out a 3,000-word list of 30 "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund." Sure, a lot of them are obvious, most already done — but the Y Combinator version, with Graham's seal of approval, has a better chance than your run-of-the-mill startup of getting quickly flipped to a gullibly starstruck buyer. A version you'll be able to finish before this fall's application deadline, below. More »
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Comment by Patricia2: I didn't agree with a lot of that list. Fixing advertising is in the analytics, which are a wash right... more » | Other threads
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sex trade
Weebly, the worst Web 2.0 app to make an escort site with ever
If there's a legitimate use for Weebly, it has been seared from my brain by the one-two assault of Pierce89's escort site, which is also one of the webpage-building service's most-trafficked subdomains. It's not that running a girl-for-hire agency off of a free website generator backed by Paul Graham's Y Combinator is illegitimate. It's just that Pierce89 is doing it wrong, with an autoplaying loop of Mariah Carey and the Slide-powered rotation of escort photos with dancing flower blossoms layered over them. User-generated Ajax-and-widgets nonsense has lowered the barrier for every aspiring player with a Boost mobile phone and an Internet connection, but this is a new sex-trade low. For god's sakes, if you can't be bothered with a real URL, why not just really let yourself go and cobble together Xanga and Photobucket? More »
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Comment by raincoaster: @thinkofme: Right, because girls can't learn tech. Shouldn't you be over at Deadspin? more » | Other threads
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geek love
Reddit cofounder blabs about Y Combinator founders' secret wedding
We'd heard in April that Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, the pair behind startup factory Y Combinator, were partners in love as well as life. The two tied the knot over the weekend, Twittered Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, a graduate of Y Combinator: "Sorry ladies, PG said 'I do' - 'twas a great wedding." We're sure it was — anyone have pictures — or insights into why the two have been so secretive about their romance?
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By Owen ThomasComment by MalcoveMagnesia: He kind of has that "Bubba" (Bill Clinton) look. Does this startup get lunch catered from McDonalds? more » | Other threads
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flipmeat
Justin.tv's Emmett Shear makes Freudian slip about selling company
Kicking off a thread on Hacker News about how to sell a business, Emmett Shear, CTO of live-video startup Justin.tv, accidentally typed the name of his current employer instead of his previous company, Kiko Calendar, which was sold on eBay for $250,000. A sign the company is desperately looking for the exit? Who knows. But it certainly doesn't help to answer part of the original question about flipping a startup:How would you do it without causing problems (ie people thinking you're up for sale)?
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geek love
Yahoo millionaire Paul Graham secretly engaged to Jessica Livingston
Commenters on Hacker News, a Web discussion board, got their panties in a bunch over the weekend over whether to ban stories from Valleywag from the site. The move netted the otherwise obscure site, mostly frequented by graduates of Paul Graham's Y Combinator startup incubator, some coverage from Michael Arrington on TechCrunch. It also netted us a tipster who let us know Hacker News founder Graham, best known for flipping an e-commerce startup to Yahoo more than a decade ago, was engaged to longtime lover Jessica Livingston, author of Founders at Work. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by abmw: I believe that Ms. Livingston has been the organizational and marketing brains behind the desk at Ycomb Cambridge. The pic of... more » | Other threads
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rumormonger
Yahoo to sell at $36?
A little more grist for the Yahoo/Microsoft rumor mill from Y Combinator:Husband of a friend works in management over at Yahoo. She says the word is around the water cooler, that Yahoo's looking for around $36 a share, and then will sell.
Y Combinator, a startup incubator, is unaffiliated with Yahoo, but was founded by Paul Graham, who sold a company to Yahoo a decade ago. More »
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Comment by BartKela: Lemme guess, they need the extra dough to buy OC-80? more » | Other threads
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toogle many googlers
Chris Sacca leaves Google, continues do-nothing plan
In a long-overdue move, Chris Sacca, Google's "directorhead of special initiatives," has left the company. Cleverly, though, he's moving into a new career where he can continue to talk a lot and let others do the work: He's becoming an angel investor, working with Evan Williams's Obvious, the company which spun off Twitter, and Paul Graham, whose Y Combinator specializes in funding companies with utterly adorkable names. We figured Sacca's career at Google might be foreshortened when Google listed an opening for a "director of other," since that pretty much sounded like Sacca's job. Doing anything other than work. Congratulations, Chris: In a Valley that unfairly discounts laziness, you're now the ultimate value stock.
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By Owen ThomasComment by salingerjt: Sounds to me like some obscure director is jealous that his or her projects are unknown and meaningless and that... more » | Other threads
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nerdspotting
Yahoos and hacks clutter The Lobby
Really, we're confounded. David Hornik's Lobby conference is ostensibly an invite-only affair. But some of the attendees had us scratching our head. Spotted, Yahoo's Bradley Horowitz, Brad Garlinghouse and Kiersten Hollars enjoying some sun instead of participating in Jerry Yang's 100-day turnaround of the company. Then there's Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham from Y Combinator. There's nary a 22-year-old wantrepreneur in sight, so what's the draw of this conference for them? Other inexplicables: Kara Swisher from AllThingsD, and TechCrunch heavyweight Michael Arrington, two notoriously gossipy hacks. Wasn't this event supposed to be off the record? And does Arrington even know what that means? (Photo by bradley23) -
scribd
Justin.tv not cool with porn, but startup pals are
Lifecasting site Justin.tv may be afraid of adult-only broadcasts. But some other startups also born from the Y Combinator startup factory are not so leery. Scribd, the self-ascribed "YouTube of documents," which allows any document to be stored and viewed on the Web, appears to be gaining traffic on the back of adult content. "Adult" is one of Scribd's most popular and largest document groups. In the company's words, "At Scribd, we are cool with adult content, and you should feel free to upload as much as you'd like." As a result, its traffic far exceeds Justin.tv — even though you'd think video would be more compelling than documents. More » -
vloggers
Y Combinator's webcam can't touch MC Hammer
MC Hammer's rap career may have been over more than a decade ago, but to the startup kids at Y Combinator, he'll always be a superstar. First, he awkwardly pitched Weebly's MySpace profile editor SnapLayout to lifecaster Justine Ezarik, better known as iJustine of Justin.tv. Now, Hammer has made an iminlikewithyou profile. The washed-out rapper hopes to extend his attempts to revive his career beyond being a hanger-on of startups by fighting Vanilla Ice. Only problem — he needs someone with a videocamera, and he's trolling the iminlikewithyou community for volunteers. So what does that tell us about the state of Hammer's career? More »
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By Tim FaulknerComment by Whocares: Julia Allison also has an actual job of some sorts.. I'm still pondering how Justine manages to pay her bills.. more » | Other threads
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xobni
Email startup takes on filmmaking
A note to venture capitalist Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. Remember the cash you plunked down on Xobni, the party-throwing email startup? This is where your money's going. More »
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Comment by ChiefCynic: >This is where your money's going. Stupid, but a waste of time more than money. Making this video probably cost less... more » | Other threads
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acquisitions
Paul Graham's near-death experience
We suspect Paul Graham will not be very popular in Sunnyvale today. The entrepreneur sold his e-commerce venture, Viaweb, to Yahoo for nearly $50 million in 1998 — a rich sum for the time. He's gone on to success coaching and funding other startups through his Y Combinator incubator. In a speech he gave to his latest hatchlings called "How Not to Die," on the mortal perils faced by startups, Graham makes a striking revelation. Even as he was negotiating the sale to Yahoo, Viaweb was on the verge of running out of money. Was Viaweb really worth $50 million? Or nothing? Then as now, in the Valley, there's a fine line between worthless and wealthy.
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By Owen ThomasComment by kingryan: This is not news. PG talks about this all the time and its even in one of his books. more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service
Ever since Justin.tv moved in, Crystal Tower Apartments in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood has gotten the reputation as a dorm for 20something startuppers. A recent elevator breakdown, now fixed, left some residents to hoof it all the way up the 12-story building. Justin.tv has moved out, but current residents include the entire staff of email startup Xobni and Web-page builder Weebly, as well as employees of Snipshot and Scribd. The connection? All four companies were backed by entrepreneur Paul Graham's Y Combinator incubator. And more are moving in soon, Weebly CEO David Rusenko says. The proximity is a bonus for the tightly networked group of companies — but the elevator episode should be a sobering reminder to all of them of what happens when your startup has a single point of failure.
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By Owen ThomasComment by mblevin: Now I know what kind of donkeys would live in such an travesty of a building. Thanks Valleywag! more » | Other threads
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party report
Bow down and worship Xobni's party-throwing skills
On the left, beatific investor Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. On the right, worshipful Xobni cofounder Adam Smith, genuflecting before the man who graced his startup with the tall dollars, and helped fund a night of excess last Friday. More »
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Comment by guffman32: I'm actually a 3rd tier MBA and have to admit that I would rather watch reruns of "The Larry Sanders... more » | Other threads
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lists
Game the system
We've dissected Time's list of the five worst websites. Now it's your turn to tweak their poll for the best ones to your satisfaction. (Time.com is still using the same weakly protected polling system as the heavily gamed People Who Matter Now poll from Business 2.0.) The kids from Y Combinator, entrepreneur Paul Graham's startup camp, have already admitted to artificially beefing up the votes for Weebly, a Y Combinator-backed startup — but why let them have all the fun? Here are Valleywag's picks on whose ballots to stuff. More »
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By Tim FaulknerComment by Figaro: Weebly?! Wow.. what a job. Never heard of this site and just checked its alexa rankings. The site is deader... more » | Other threads
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