1.As far as fashion is concerned, they do ask for both funding and contacts to sell merchandize, you should check. It is not cheap to do a ramp show in Paris or New York, it is not always succusful.I am not suggesting sponsoring visas - I never did.

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 My contention is that in a virtual platform such as our trade offers us, thinking local is unnecessary and perhaps outdated baggage we carry.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 :)

"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. "

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

Are you suggesting the average coder earns over $80K+. I don't think so. If the average age for founders is 26, then they possibly have half your work ex, which translates to a significantly lower salary. Here we are talking about people in general not your case specifically.

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.

Read my post very carefully I never said "average coders gt 80 k" you are reacting to a strawman. "Average coders" probably shouldn't be attempting a world changing startup (strictly imo) Please react to what I actually said. I explicitly mentioned I am an outlier.

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

Friend, I say are you 'suggesting' not 'saying'. I said this because I don't know why else you stated your salary. Maybe I was mistaken. A good dev with 3 years of experience will have to spend money on absolutely nothin else if he spends $15000 in hosting annually. Surely you are not suggesting that ALL income can be put into hosting.

You said: "Enlighten Me" - then you edited it (I think) Anyway here is something about Indian Contributors to linux, The links below will prove my point.

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/

I did "edit the post" . As I said I am too woozy and making some mistakes. So when I see a typo , or just feel I am being too sarcastic, I use the edit button. I must be doing something wrong because my posts were cut off a few times.

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,

You must not have read some of the profiles which are hyperlinked in that page. Anyway, this discussion seems to have become to trivial. Cheers