Kind of a 20/20 hindsight thing too. I wish people would write these type of posts right after the startup launches.

It's very easy to bash startups and think you're an expert because you picked who would fail (the vast majority of them do). It's much harder to pick winners.

I've written them right after the startup launches. My track record:

1.) Reddit. The day after it launched: "Well, this is interesting, but I can't ever see myself using it." 3 months later, after I started using it: "Well, I use it, but I can't ever see it getting popular." Early 2006, in response to PG's comment about "This sucker's profitable": "But are they profitable enough to cover the opportunity cost's of the founder's salaries?" Mid 2006: "Okay, they're profitable through bizdev deals, but I can't imagine them ever getting bought." I believe they were acquired on Halloween 2006.

2.) Infogami: I thought they were the most likely of the SFP05 startups to be successful, right until they launched.

3.) Wufoo, when it came out: "I don't get what the point is." About 9 months later: "Incidentally, I'd put Wufoo, VirtualMin, and DropBox at the bottom of the deadpool, i.e. most likely to succeed."

4.) Xobni: "Personally, I'd put Xobni at the top of the YC deadpool." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51982

5.) VirtualMin: Already mentioned that this is one I'd invest in if I actually had money. I'd used Webmin for previous websites; there's a lot of money in easy-to-use server admin tools for folks who don't really know what they're doing.

6.) RescueTime: Loved it from the moment I heard about it. Immediately recommended it to friends; if I had money, I'd invest.

7.) Thinkature: I thought this was really cool when it came out, and that it'd be one of the survivors of its batch.

8.) Flagr: Thought this was succeeding for sure when one of my RL friends linked me to a Flagr map.

9.) Justin.TV. "This is pointless, I can't believe YC gave these guys $50K, I'll probably never visit it again."

Somebody remind me never to become a VC.

That's not bad.

And for the record, most VCs should never have become VCs.

neither of you guys mentioned loopt, but it is supposed to be one of the startups that PG has the most expectation. do you guys think it won't succeed, or what is it?

personally, I don't get it either.

I'm on record as saying that it won't - I could very well be wrong (just look at my track record ;-), but that's my prediction.

we'll see. =) i'd say it won't too, or it morphs into something totally different and succeed.

He actually was pretty honest-- he put pairwise up there because he (at the time) believed in the team but isn't even sure if they are still working on it. And, FWIW, RescueTime is still a helluva gamble with a hard road.

I did try to not make it a hindsight 20/20 thing -- but it's really impossible to know at this point if I have a predisposition.

Also, I didn't write about the ones that I "predicted" would fail (and, not even the ones that I thought would succeed). The list simply identifies the startups that I would have invested in.

Yeah I didn't mean to direct my note at you - it was more of a general comment than anything.

More impressive than writing about them is investing in more winners than losers!

Shoulda/woulda/coulda... Is that worth anything?

Well, I'm biased (being the author of the article), but it was worth something to me for two reasons:

1. Writing it helped me think about the topic.

2. I got a chance to compliment some folks that I think deserved it without seeming overly silly.

Well... I think it is.

It was a nice piece of text, outlining good points of the mentioned startups, and the author doesn't seem to be very biased by its success or lack of it.

I hadn't ever heard of Pairwise, for example.

Good job.

Dupe. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264139

Well... that's one more bug in the duplication detection routine. Apparently adding a "/" to a url causes it to count as a different one.

Well, technically, adding a "/" at the end of something is a different URL.

Indeed... but in this particular case the "/" was added in the middle where it has no effect:

http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/6119//6-Y-Combinat...

http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/6119/6-Y-Combinato...

Notice the "//" before the filename in the first version.

The point is that we don't want duplicate content, even if it's at slightly different URLs.

I think the counter-point was that it may actually be different content. How often that is the case, I don't know, but assuming it will never happen doesn't necessarily seem like a great idea.

Maybe the system should actually check what's at each page.

And you should read more carefully. I did not suggest the thing you say is a bad idea.

Boring