Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by louismg on Friday November 12, 2010 @03:08PM
(#1899047)
Paul is a very smart guy. He is a tech visionary, and is extremely practical financially. He will be a huge boon for YC even more than he already has been, and a loss for Facebook. He previously stated he was not involved in any e-mail platform for Facebook, but the timing is interesting indeed. Great news.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by pg on Friday November 12, 2010 @04:30PM
(#1899356)
I have no idea what Paul was working on at Facebook, but I believe the timing has to be coincidental, because we drove it. The reason this had to get announced today is that interviews for w2011 start on Monday.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by palish on Friday November 12, 2010 @07:04PM
(#1899789)
Question --- I haven't done much webdev stuff so this may sound silly, but --- why can't PMs work that way? Like, why can't I send markbao a private message by sending an email to [email protected]? And then the site could forward it on to his email address, or if the site wants to get fancy they'd store it in a database and display them as "comments" in the target user's "editing profile" screen (whenever you edit your own profile).
More than that though, I'd like to learn about the nitty-gritty of e-mail. As a game developer I do mostly C++ application code, so everyone else probably has way more knowledge than I... But for example I'd like to be able to embed the ability for my programs to send emails (as a debugging mechanism). Or even receive emails! (Imagine taking down some number of your servers, for patching purposes, by sending a "console command" as an email to [email protected]. Or running queries on your servers by sending the query as an email, and then they email back the response.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by smanek on Friday November 12, 2010 @07:36PM
(#1899850)
When I've needed to send mail from C, I just call a CLI mail user agent like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx, and configure it to talk to a local MTA (traditionally sendmail), which buffers messages locally before sending them to a real mail server on the internet (I use authsmtp). Python has a nice builtin library for talking to my local SMTP server like, I suspect, many other modern languages.
There's no technical reason why email addresses like [email protected] can't work. In fact, I'd argue Tumblr/Posterous have some of the same core ideas you're proposing.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by mweatherill on Friday November 12, 2010 @07:34PM
(#1899842)
A primary reason why a site wouldn't support PMs to [email protected] is that there is no access control. The address would get spammed too easily from senders with no affiliation with Hacker News. The current mechanism of only supporting messaging within the site limits this.
Honestly, a large part of that talk has stayed with me and kept my main outside-of-work project quietly in the background. I'd like to think I had the confidence and motivation before that talk. But somehow that talk just clicked for me. And has encouraged me to keep at it.
His approach is sort of what we all, I think, aspire for. A really clear, honest core outlook. And then entrepreneurship as bottom-up programming. It's actually much more difficult than it seems -- because you have to look ahead compared to a lot of people and then insist on relearning things in a bottom-up approach. You see it with all great founders (Zuck, etc.). On the outside, they seem lucky. But if you look more closely, they have a habit of putting themselves in the right position by looking two or three steps ahead (as I think Adam D'Angelo's talk @ Startup School 2010 was partly getting at). But then they insist on revalidating things from the ground up (e.g., Paul B's 'winging it' and deriving the overgeneralized nature of advice without a particular context, etc.). Anyway, they all make it look easy. But if you're smart, I think you look at them as real inspiration in terms of getting things done the right way.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by Jun8 on Friday November 12, 2010 @04:58PM
(#1899458)
Forget about Facebook, etc, YC is the news. I've been following it (and HN) for close to three years now, it went from a locally cool incubator to a place where people look up for world-class innovation.
Someone should write an in-depth story about the rise of YC, would be an excellent read!
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by logicalmoron on Friday November 12, 2010 @02:29PM
(#1898872)
Hey Swah, I pinged Anthony (the writer of the article) to get his butt in here and answer your questions. You might get a direct answer more quickly if you comment directly on the site or email him, though.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by devinj on Friday November 12, 2010 @07:34PM
(#1899843)
Not particularly. What's odd about it?
It's slightly more complex than desirable for good writing, but it's certainly well within normal bounds for size, especially for news articles. News articles do that sort of thing a lot.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by brandnewlow on Friday November 12, 2010 @11:30PM
(#1900283)
Increasingly famous just seems like an odd thing to use to describe YCombinator in the lead of a news story, out of all the things the writer could use to add context.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by swombat on Saturday November 13, 2010 @05:51AM
(#1900687)
Yep, YCombinator is famous. It's been featured in many mainstream publications, it's known around the globe in pretty much every country that has a startup community. I'd call that famous.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by radioactive21 on Friday November 12, 2010 @09:01PM
(#1899998)
Wow, very interesting, now there is a whole different angle to FB's Titan killing gmail system.
Why would Paul leave just before launch? To me it means Paul either was never involved even though he was told he would be, or it's crap and he's leaving before the shit hits the fan.
Re:Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit Leaves Facebook for Y Combinator
by andrewhillman on Saturday November 13, 2010 @02:52PM
(#1901526)
facebook should have tied him up with a long term contract. I thought ff was acquired for the talent not the platform. big loss esp if they acquired for talent and not platform.
Congrats to Mr. Buchheit and YC, you're both making out like bandits.
More than that though, I'd like to learn about the nitty-gritty of e-mail. As a game developer I do mostly C++ application code, so everyone else probably has way more knowledge than I... But for example I'd like to be able to embed the ability for my programs to send emails (as a debugging mechanism). Or even receive emails! (Imagine taking down some number of your servers, for patching purposes, by sending a "console command" as an email to [email protected]. Or running queries on your servers by sending the query as an email, and then they email back the response.
How would I write a C++ function like:
There's no technical reason why email addresses like [email protected] can't work. In fact, I'd argue Tumblr/Posterous have some of the same core ideas you're proposing.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/24/startup-school-gmail-frien...
Honestly, a large part of that talk has stayed with me and kept my main outside-of-work project quietly in the background. I'd like to think I had the confidence and motivation before that talk. But somehow that talk just clicked for me. And has encouraged me to keep at it.
His approach is sort of what we all, I think, aspire for. A really clear, honest core outlook. And then entrepreneurship as bottom-up programming. It's actually much more difficult than it seems -- because you have to look ahead compared to a lot of people and then insist on relearning things in a bottom-up approach. You see it with all great founders (Zuck, etc.). On the outside, they seem lucky. But if you look more closely, they have a habit of putting themselves in the right position by looking two or three steps ahead (as I think Adam D'Angelo's talk @ Startup School 2010 was partly getting at). But then they insist on revalidating things from the ground up (e.g., Paul B's 'winging it' and deriving the overgeneralized nature of advice without a particular context, etc.). Anyway, they all make it look easy. But if you're smart, I think you look at them as real inspiration in terms of getting things done the right way.
Someone should write an in-depth story about the rise of YC, would be an excellent read!
FF was acquired about 15 months ago, so that's about how long Paul was at Facebook.
Also, I imagine being a partner in YC is very much a fulltime job.
In the mean time, thanks for reading!
What an odd modifier.
It's slightly more complex than desirable for good writing, but it's certainly well within normal bounds for size, especially for news articles. News articles do that sort of thing a lot.
YCombinator is "famous"?
Er, 3 + 1 == 2? Or maybe they mean "web startup world"?
Why would Paul leave just before launch? To me it means Paul either was never involved even though he was told he would be, or it's crap and he's leaving before the shit hits the fan.