Do they ask angel funds focussed on the USA to "come to India" and sponsor their visas to France ? :-) news to me - please send some references.

"you base your argument on a assumption that India should already be SV"

Huh? I said there is little demonstrated high quality technical (significant contributions to open source projects) or entrepreneurial (in the Y fundable startup sense) activity in India.

That doesn't mean I argue that "India should be SV" as you claim.

you say

"YC should actively look for great ideas from all over the world and then support the best, this may involve moving them from their current location, such as India, to one which is more conducive to their pursuits, such as SV"

The problem is , this is very easy to say and very very hard (if not impossible), to do "all over the world" . As Paul Graham pointed out, it will be a (very) long time before YC can deal with all the great ideas in the USA.

I don't think (I could be wrong) YC has the bandwidth to run some kind of United Nations "Save the Startups and Good Ideas Worldwide" effort. They do their thing well in the scope they choose to work in. We should respect that choice.

Now you (or I) can ask them to consider coming to India , but if they reply "not in cards for now, we have lots to do here" then we should shut up and look for alternatives (imho) than whine that YC is not looking "worldwide" or "not helping with the visas " or whatever.

FWIW, my advice (as an Indian ,based in India and thinking of a startup of my own) is to put fingers to keyboard and start coding and "build something people want". That's great advice and that's what I plan to do, YC or no YC.

You can build software from India and you can host anywhere in the world (hosting fees are cheap enough that 3 months of work in Bangalore will get you enough funds. And someone pointed out the cost of living is so low in India you don't need angel funds) till you get a few hundred thousand users . At that point believe me you won't need YC to "get a visa" or get you VC funding.

Now as to the YC 's more intangible benefits,

Would I like Paul Graham's connections and advice working for me? Certainly.

Do I think I am somehow entitled to them just because "I want"? certainly not!

" great example is an IIT Chennai startup that works in a huge and untapped Indian rural market - can't recall the name"

I hope you can see the humour in that statement.

Anyway this is my opinion. If you think you can persuade YC to "come to India" or are depending on or hoping that YC will come to India to help your startup be successful, I wish you luck :-D

I'll go back to my code now. Thanks for listening.

2. I suggested that there is much demonstrated capability, I also suggested you do some research starting from the 1980s. I also highlighted why I think there has been lack of resident Indian success in this arena while non-resident Indians have had a better game.

3.I do not think it is difficult to identify good ideas from all over the world - YC already does it in an unorganized format. My contention is that in a virtual platform such as our trade offers us, thinking local is unnecessary and perhaps outdated baggage we carry. There is no need to deploy talent scouts or some such to find the necessary hackers, they will find YCombinator or other such oppurtunities - it just needs to be a more encouraging process than it already is.

4. I have no clue what gave you the notion of a YC United Nations save the world thingy?!

5. I am certain YC has lots to do, and I put up my thoughts for discussion on this thread that someone else started, pg has since then responded but the discussion on the Indian startup scenario can carry on nonetheless. Your comment about 'whining' is inappropriate. I will not regard it as a personal comment, just a poor choice of words - correct me if I am wrong. :)

6.I agree with your advice about hacking away and building something that people want. I hack too, have been doing it for a long while, intend to do it forever, thanks for the advice nonetheless.

7.I have some advice too, I suggest you study hosting costs along with hardware costs - there is no way any salary in Banglore(for a techie) is going to take care of your hosting costs and just how long are you planning to host for before you need help. If your startup is anygood, it will need some serious servers, If you need references for good hosting providers and thier price charts, send me an email and i will send you some. keios.titan (at) gmail. Obviously, hardware or hosting requried depends on your application. My startup project has fairly high hosting demands.

8.You said: "Do I think I am somehow entitled to them just because "I want"? certainly not!"

I said: What!?!

I would like Paul's advice and YComb's resources too, I do not think they will come to me - I will go to them.

9. Well if you suggest the humour is because i cant recall the name, then I don't see the humour. The IIT Chennai startup targets a rural population, I am not a target customer.

10. I am not in the least persuading YC to come to India, and certainly I am not betting on that. I am saying "that they should help hackers who don't know any better through all the other rigmarole involved if they shortlist them."

Its there decision and this is a discussion board you know.

Best of luck with your project, do let me know if you come to Delhi sometime :)

Really? my last job at Bangalore was a little bit more than 80,000 $ - 38 lakhs to those who want the Indian equivalent - (but I have about 10 years of experience and if I do say so myself, I am pretty good at what I do.) . I plan to take care of my n hosting for a while.

Do you mind sharing (here) how much you think hosting would cost? YCombinator companies seem to get by for quite a while on comparaitive amounts of money.

But I could be wrong I was estimating about 250 $ or so per month for your own rackmounted boxes to start with.But let's say about 900 $ a month - . Do you seriously estimate spending more than 10,000 $ a year on hosting before hitting ,say, 100,000 users , at which point you'd have no problems attracting funding?

If you have about 2 years of experience, you can earn 10,000 dollars in 6 months (trivially easily) in Bangalore (if you are any good at coding). As I said earlier people just out of college are paid about 1200 $/month.

Also for "significant contributions to Open Source" (by which I mean something like "wrote and maintains the tcp/ip stack in Linux" or "added and maintains SSA based optimizing phase to the GCC trunk" or even "wrote Ruby on Rails or Django" (not things like "contributed documentation to Ubuntu" or "localized Strings to Hindi"), please name specific people and specific achievements. of the magnitude stated above.

And then tell me how many of those people live in India so that folks like YC should look for them here.

And you can't brush the "not resident in India" part away. That is the point. The really good technical people from India move to the USA or Europe for the tech and startup culture (and of course $$$ :-P ).They still do. To find he most talented Indian Hackers therefore, a search in California is better than one in Bangalore. .That was MY point.

Ahh I am spending too much time on this. I have work to do and code to write. Ciao

Server costs can vary, but I would estimate my needs at around $1300+ within 6 months of launch (I will know exactly only once we have launched, I am hoping this turns out to be an understimation ;) and I am looking at service providers such as rackspace.com, servint.com, datapipe.com and serverbeach.com to name a few. Also what kind of servers are we talking here - in terms of hardware? Are you considering a separate db server? Can you refer me to some reliable host who has rack-mounted, dedicated servers at $250 and provides decent support.

I don't know how long most ycombinator companies get by and on how much. It might be interesting to know. I would 'assume' that $15,000 finish in the 3 months. That's a fully loaded cost of $5000 per month. Typically people and hardware are the biggest costs, because there are no employees I think the larger cost may be servers and connectivity. And so it seems server cost is significant. Maybe someone with facts can add to this.

anyway , using your figures, 1300$ for 12 months = (approx) 15 k.

Are you saying a good technical person with about 3 years in the Industry can't get together with a couple of friends to fund their hosting ? (A good dev with 3 years exp can get 15k annual pay easily in Bangalore)

Yes it is a little bit more difficult for people just out of college but hey all of us have to tailor our plans to our resources. If you can manage a decent user base in 3 months (3 months is how long YC funds their teams iirc ... hosting will cost bout 5000 $ - Even two kids just out of college should be able to manage that) you should do well with the vc folks.

Now, if you are saying that you need lots of moolah in the bank before you attempt a software startup, I can only say my perceptions differ.

Maybe you are right and I am wrong. Time will tell.

I am too tired to continue. Been coding the last 15 hours or so. Ciao

http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Contributors

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/india/article_1226891.php

http://linuxinindia.pitas.com/

Also: CDAC is doing some interesting work - http://www.cdac.in/

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Ok now to your list of people.

This is good work ! Thanks!

But ... Do you know what these people actually do or are you just pulling names off a google search?

I believe I explicitly asked for names and specific contributions . All those pages are light on the specifics . I gave some examples of specific cntribs earlier.

I asked explicitly for significant contributions with details.

On the linux India list, if you remove all the "internationalization" type of contributors there are a bare handful left. But Do you know if any of those people (good people no doubt) are major contributors to their projects?

As for CDAC, do you know people who work there? I do. They are severely hit be people leaving to -- guess where -- the United States. Many of their projects (not all) don't have much more than web pages. (Like wise for the DRDO - Defence Research and Development Organization for the non Indians reading this).

Again (just to stop arguing _ I will be glad to continue offlist ;-) ) I will concede the point.

The Linux Kernel, GCC and other open source efforts would be hamstrung if all the Indians suddenly disappeared ;-)

You are right. India is a powerhouse of open source contribution. ;-)

This thread has deteriorated too much. Apologies to all for my part in said deterioration.

This is my final post.

Take Care,