KMStraub

The way I see it, Paul was willing to take a huge gamble on this company from the outset because of a strong gut feeling. Y Combinator didn't have to let them in and was being incredibly generous, going as far as setting aside their own rules for this one special case. They went above and beyond the call of duty. And then, to hear word that they'd have to yet again do things differently than they are accustomed to for this one company probably just didn't feel right anymore. I am happy for the writer and I bet he'll be very successful, but where he went wrong (if my facts are correct) is expecting YC to allow him to stay in the program because of "protocol." They made the first decision based on a gut reaction, and they reserved the right to make a second decision "on gut" as well. Also, to be clear, they didn't kick him out, they respectfully asked the founder to apply again next quarter. My purpose isn't to declare a winner. I have a lot of respect for the author and his perseverance. But I hope he sees just how much he was asking from YC, what an incredible achievement that was to convince Paul to take the first leap of faith, and why he probably should have just swallowed his pride and accepted YC's decision with genuine gratitude.

Sorry, I'm nerdy but I guess not nerdy enough to be in on the joke. Could someone explain it to me? I'm "the business guy" in my startup, though I'm actually a girl.

This is indeed great news, but I can't believe what CN has done to this company. Well, I actually can because I worked at CN for 4 years and saw extremely little investment in long-term digital strategy. There were a lot of tricks being thought of to try to get an edge, but they still have too many print dinosaurs who are terrified of losing their jobs calling the shots. And I'm not saying these print dinosaurs couldn't very easily evolve and learn what they need to learn and be what the publisher needs to stay afloat. I'm saying there's this cloud of fear looming over everyone's heads there that's suffocating any potential for innovation.

100% on board with this comment. A dose of humility is something lacking at the top of a lot of companies who wonder why they can't seem to hold onto their talent. Give your employees the feeling that you're counting on them, and your problem will soon be, "Man, I've got so many overachievers."

That's great to hear. A company that is so confident in what its doing and its hires, that it trusts and encourages them to expand their skill set and degree of influence.

I thought this article was going to be about the controversial theory of crowdsourcing in the wider sense--not just design. With these deceiving headlines, you attract a lot of people like me who rain on your parade and unfortunately, think your article is a snooze.

Are you talking about the fact that it's CHARGING people to VALIDATE your idea? I get what they're trying to do, and I was actually on board for the first three points. But then I got to #4, and it was like slamming into a wall. So you're going to celebrate your launch by grubbing money from the people who helped you get there? Surely, there must be a better way. I say, keep thinking...

This after the About.me buy. I'm excited to see how this reinvention pans out.

I'm creating a product that hopefully fills this void. A casual, non-committal way to show someone you'd like to get to know them better--without all the noise. I'm also a girl, so my main concern is building something that doesn't veer into creep-ville. I'll keep you posted.

"The current popularity of facebook is also inherently causing a lot of people to stop sharing their personal lives on facebook."

This is troubling to me. I feel like I'm looking at a bunch of ghosts when I view people's profiles now. Anyone else? Their photos and a bit of their bios are still up, but they've mostly moved on to other forms of tech to post anything dynamic because of the logical fear that they will no longer control what aspects of their personal lives will become public record. What, I wonder, is the company doing about this issue beyond just pr stuff like funding privacy-related nonprofits? If they don't address it in their core functionality, they've got a potential wasteland on their hands.

Thanks, and interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I suppose the fact that I didn't even know I could do that--and that it's actually quite easy, functionally, as you say--also suggests some marketing issues? I just felt it was weird that I've been hearing so much hullabaloo about the facebook quandary of business contacts learning too much about your personal life and vice versa due to blanket "friending," but yet, it took only 2 seconds for my friend to shut me up, saying, "I don't have that problem, here's why."

A friend and I just had a discussion about this last night. I can't say I've bothered to do it, but she says she just adjusts her privacy filter so that everyone in her company network can only see her picture and where she lives. I've been nervous to friend anyone I've met through work, but she doesn't seem to stress at all about this issue. Thoughts?

I know it's been 10 hours, but can I just say thank you? I left a random musing as a comment and signed off, and someone took the time and liberty to personally address it. One of the many reasons why I love this community.

I wish someone had introduced me to code at 10-years-old. I had computer lab, but we just practiced Mavis Teaches Typing and played Oregon Trail. The closest I ever got to this was a circuit board, and I can remember how proud I was at the end--I practically slept with it. I wish I'd built more things as a kid. You know, figured out how stuff works. I think sometime in high school I must have decided there'd always be someone else to solve my problems. And when I got to college, we talked more about the depth and various dimensions/degrees of problems than about fixing them. Now I'm stilted. I have bookmarks and bookshelves of HTML, CSS, and Java tutorials and I can't bring myself to even read the Table of Contents.

If you look at her bio, you'll see this author already has a new job at a startup called Pulse. Somehow that dampens this act of bravery for me. For all the upvotes she's gotten, the ending I was hoping for was her decision to become a founder.

One of the funnier things I've read in a long time. Thanks.

I didn't think the author was whining at all--quite the opposite. Whiners endlessly complain about what's wrong and never posit a solution. Mr. Dilbert has quite a few solutions here that are "bad" albeit, but productive thoughts nonetheless. That's progress if you ask me.

Disclaimer: I am poor.

My "bad" thought: The rich work hard because they're running out of time. The poor work less because they have too much time to waste.

Lots of gems in here. My favorite line: "They also know that any project can get by with 10% less money if there is no alternative."

The world would be a much better place if there was less quibbling overall.

I think it will only separate the men from the mice.

I nodded vigorously through every sentence of your comment. Well done, and good to see you're a computer scientist and didn't have to rely on jargon to make your point.

I know I get serious "presentation anxiety" when confronted with the challenge of with filling out my profile on a dating site. If women are more susceptible to this kind of malaise I wonder if that explains something about why there are 4x less women than men on those sites. Find out a way to make "selling yourself" less threatening and you answer the million dollar question that Match, eHarmony, and all the rest have been racking their brains about for years: Why won't women join?

No worries, I'm just happy to hear it registered with someone else. There's a much bigger goal here than Karma points :)

"I wanted to do x, but no one would hire me even though I was capable because I didn’t have sufficient experience in x on my resume."

I definitely identify with this line. I'm a 27-year-old woman and I left a cushy (read: boring) job writing for Vogue magazine so I could create a dating site that women will actually feel proud to join. Like so many, I was under the assumption you had to have ninja coding skills, an MBA, Google on your resume, or a genius gene to become a founder. I had none of those, and having worked as a print journalist, I missed the boat on the importance of developing your online brand. I had nothing to give me credibility--not even a Twitter page. And let's face it, my one laurel, ie that shiny "Vogue" on my resume, meant nothing to this audience.

I tried to get a job at a startup just to see what I was getting myself into, and no one would hire me. I had pretty much one friend in the biz--Meetup's cofounder Matt Meeker--and once he heard my idea, he said, "You've got to do this." I said, "But I don't have experience or any sort of reputation," and he said, "The best and most efficient way to get those things is to just do it."

So, I'm doing it. I probably wouldn't have if Matt hadn't offered those words of wisdom and created such an unthreatening environment in which to pitch him. The other thing that helped me plow forward when I wanted to give in to all the judgmental haters out there was the research I did on what sort of skills investors look for in the entrepreneurs they fund. If more women knew that it's about PERSPIRATION and PERSEVERANCE above all, I truly believe we'd have more female founders.

I've always had that fire in the belly that makes for a good entrepreneur. If it weren't for the misconceptions that you have to be some sort of savant to start something, I would have, like Jessica, maybe done this at 25. Though I've got a lot of catching up to do, I'm so thankful I realized I CAN do this, I SHOULD do this (to gain experience if nothing else), and I WANT to do this--because if I pull this off, I'll have accomplished something 100x more gratifying than anything I could have ever done working in corporate.

Does anyone else find themselves reading the first 1/3 of a landing page and then clicking on the miniscule "About" button at the very bottom most of the time? I think of it similarly to a deck I'd present to an investor: I'd give my problem-solution spiel and then move quickly into my bio slide. It is my personal opinion (and Mark Suster's) that the features, demo etc aren't absorbed/swallowed if that kind of detail is presented before the listener knows who's behind the product. As a consumer, I'm inherently skeptical, so I can't stomach a whole page of "the hard sell," even if it's above the fold. Do you think there's merit in placing a tiny bio block or a whole paragraph--something beyond four words at least--from a reputable press review after the pitch and call-to-action? I know it's not de rigeur but something worth thinking about nonetheless.