I was a bit shocked to hear about Justin (yet another media outlet) on NPR - this is truly becoming a global phenomenon. The value of the PR they've received to date is unbelievable - I'm interested to see how they convert all this fame into a business model, which I'm sure they'll be able to do. Nice job believing in their radical idea PG.

I don't know how "radical" the idea is. Justin.tv is "Web 2.0" for Jennicam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JenniCam).

Justin.tv is not Jennicam. Justin.tv is a business and has a business plan that can be executed. Think reality TV... think internet television.

50K is a small investment to make for a company that you believe will hit the big time. I guess YC will get more equity.

Fair enough. Is this the first startup to get that sort of treatment?

I believe there have been a couple of others. This is probably the reason the application no longer requires an idea: YC figures if you're talented/persistent enough, you'll eventually hit on something good.

There was one other one where we invested as angels in the series A round. Ordinarily we wouldn't invest that late, but these guys seemed exceptionally smart and driven.

And how much are you taking from them for this contribution?

I hate the censoring of comments on reddit & news.yc. It seems contrary to the entrepreneurial mindset.

If Steve Jobs got on a board like this in the '70s, and announced that he was going to start a company building PCs when mainframes were sexy, he probably would've been downvoted too.

Ok, I might've over reacted there. I should've said I LOVE everything about News.YC except the censoring of down-voted comments :)

Regardless, it looks like other comments w/ negative karma are grayed out (like http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13764 ). So I imagine this comment was probably deleted by the author...

Can anyone explain what is exactly so great about this idea?

It's the 90's all over again...