chendy

MBA's are great for 2 things:

1) If you are not a business undergrad, or have not picked up these skills on the job, then an MBA is a great way to get a solid business understanding that will prepare you for another type of work.

2) High ranking MBA programs attract serious talent, and then network that you acquire at a respectable university is also very valuable.

So really, if you want to change jobs, and want some credentials and training and/or want to fill up your linkedin profile with some future superstars, it's a worthy investment. Otherwise, it's probably not worth the time or money.

"tanorexic." nice.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that I said this: "The point of all this is that there are people with creative ideas in all walks of life."

and this "It’s simply a case of mental economics- we all have our strengths, and participants come out better by trading."

and didn't YOU quote ME on this part? "I’m not trying to claim that only business minded people can bring validated ideas to the table"

So really, I didn't really touch on anyone "needing" anyone else. The point was really for people just to keep an open mind. I apologize if my word hacks weren't elegant. That's not my primary function.

Thanks for jumping to "any other day" for that last bit as well. Was that through the gmail "custom time" interface? :)

This is an excellent point. As I said in the article, I'm a business guy myself. I was in the business school of my college in fact- and the undergrad program was basically the MBA program in twice as much time. So basically, I've done all of the work, in twice the time, with none of the networking of a true MBA program. haha.

However, the point was really to bring up the fact that experts in any field are going to be useful. EP's rant was primarily that he felt that a mediocre business guy has no place amongst elite hackers in a software startup, and I would mostly agree with that. I would also say that a mediocre code monkey has no place in a startup either.

But if you can identify some true talent- regardless of their specific discipline, you could have a great addition to the team. Would anyone NOT give the next Seth Godin something to do in your startup if you had the chance?

P.s. Another crack at business schools- at least at our undergraduate program, this is also what all of the kids on sports scholarships were enrolled...

Good times.

Is there any interest in creating a group of people who would be willing to help test one another's apps? My group might be ready in a few weeks, and I'd trust users from this board more than other random individuals to help flush out the site. We've got plenty of early adopters and interesting people here that could really be insightful. If there are other groups who would be interested, I'd gladly (p)return the favor of doing some testing or critiquing.

I'm not sure the process is that simple- Since there are presumably interviews and the Mountain View meetup, YC is probably only looking to send out emails of groups that are absolutely no longer being considered. Also, I'm sure that certain groups would appreciate some anonymity if they are moving on to the next round.

Is your business an online version of "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?"

Thanks for linking to that thread. i must have missed it before. There are definitely some interesting looking books in that list.

I'm trying to get some recommendations for books that might be helpful for a web startup. Personally, I have really found "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell and "Getting Real" by the 37signals folks to be really helpful. I've read lots of great articles via news.YC, and I'm hoping you can all recommend some good offline reading as well.

How many of you have a primarily advertising based model? Or the "freemium" model? Our model is actually transactional, but is supplemented with advertising.

How is this different from Blue Dot? http://bluedot.us/front

You may have seen this post before: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

But the reason I submitted this is because of item #6. As an entrepreneur, I'm technically savvy, but I'm by no means a hardcore programmer. I have other team members who do most of the coding. However, I am by far the biggest creative influence and visionary on the team.

With that said, how do all of you fit into your teams, and what skill sets do you have?

Alternatively, what skill sets are you possibly lacking in your team?

These types of stories are starting to be pretty common, but this post does interest me from a business standpoint. How often does "no business plan" work out in the long run?

Spotplex seems to be down currently, so I haven't been able to fully explore the site. However, based on the Techcrunch coverage, it seems like this will ultimately be just another content suggestion site. I like the innovative way of sourcing stories, but at the end of the day, it will just be another wall for news to echo off of. If a story makes it to the front page of Spotplex, there's a good chance we'll see it on Digg. And then Reddit. And so on.

However, Spotplex will ultimately garner a different type of reader base, so it should provide some variety from that standpoint. Not to mention, now we're getting one step closer to our news feeders becoming "self aware."