So, what's the next step? Let's network.
Get used to it. Let's hack the system.
Two of the main things that YC provides are connections and other smart people to bounce your ideas off of. Let's build that.
I've set up a few things to further that today:
- A Hacker News LinkedIn group. You can connect by going to my profile and connecting from there. I've not found a reliable way to send a link other than that. Add a line to your "Groups and Associations" with your news.YC nick. I'll add everyone in with over 20 karma -- just enough to establish active community members. (If you get rejected, it's because either because the info isn't there, or your profile isn't public. Just add it and re-request.)
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/8a8/6a3
- A mailing list for entrepreneurs. The contents will remain private (though I'd still use some caution when posting your secret sauce). This isn't for general news. You can bounce business ideas off of others, ask for help in establishing connections and look for partners, co-founders, etc. there. If you can, subscribe with an address from your startup. If not, I'll send you a follow-up mail to figure out what you're hacking on. This one is for people that are already working on a startup, not just passively interested. We'll be incorporating soon, and we'll consider swapping minor stakes (1% or so) with another startup or three where we see there could be a mutually reinforcing relationship and where we value your input. If others consider the same that might be a cool way to pull the community together a bit.
http://lists.directededge.com/listinfo.cgi/startups-directededge.com
- I'm in the process of setting up a small web-app where we can store extended Hacker-News profile information with stuff we know about (i.e. "connections to angel funding", "friends that are driver developers", "ajax") and stuff we're looking for other people that know about, and an index of those. This should allow for some info swapping and ideally will suck less than LinkedIn for such things. Paul, if you're reading and would consider that as a patch to the news.YC source, I'd be fine dusting off my lisp chops and doing it that way, otherwise it can live on our servers. Once it's up I'll post source code for anyone that wants to extend it and work with us. I'll mail the list and possibly repost here when it's ready.
Now, let's get back to kicking ass.
40 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 82.2 ms ] threadYou will see something like this:
-------------------------
Invite Members
To invite new members, send out an email invitation with the link to join your group.
Important: You should pre-approve people to join your group before you send out the email invitation.----------------------
Just copy and paste the link above to this thread. You DO NOT have to pre-approve people. Anybody who clicks on the link puts in a request to join and sit in a queue waiting for your approval. You can access the list by clicking on "Requests to Join"
Hope this helps!
Or the #startups channel on Freenode IRC
If you're currently waiting to be accepted that means your news.YC account name isn't visible anywhere. Please either add it to your profile, or mail me with it and I'll approve your request.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21359
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25246
Hmm, ok, what the hell, there is no try, only do. If you're in Berlin, dinner at my place Saturday the 19th. We'll do it at least monthly. Contact me. Just between our apartment and my next door neighbor we've got three startup junkies, and that's already enough for a good conversation and to put the hurt on a case of beer.
http://planetstartup.directededge.com/
I'll worry about making it pretty later. I just took the default template for now.
Pretty much the entrepreneur social network. It works pretty well, too.
Makes me wish we could vote for threads to become sticky. I'd like to see this one hang out for a while, or otherwise have some sort of permanence.
See you at Bootstrapper!
(asterisk) I am not in a position to try for YC myself, and live somewhere where I basically have zero contact with hackers/startup people, so I'm actually pretty enthusiastic about utilizing the internet in order to participate in that "scene".
I don't think there's anything wrong with translating some of the feelings that people have of rejection into momentum for something positive. Quite the contrary, this is exactly the time to bring up these ideas. They'd get nowhere near the participation were they brought up randomly and independently at other times of the year.
Edit: Oh, and for the record, you're like a one hour flight from us. :-)
Prologue wouldn't scale for the level of discussion that YC news handles, but it's good for small groups (perspective co-founders, perhaps?).
Maybe you could set up a tried & tested discussion forum via http://www.lefora.com/
http://planetstartup.directededge.com/
I remember hackertrackr doing something similar.
I'd reckon your physical location is pretty important in making connections.
There are already more than enough places for entrepreneurs to network, both online and in the real world. There are not, however, enough people developing exciting new ideas and products.
There's a lot of stuff I don't understand. I know how to build cool stuff; I learned that in a community that was good at building stuff (the open source world).
I don't know very well how to pitch it, who to pitch it to, or when I've got it right. But I'm trying to figure that out, as are a lot of folks here. Pooling experience tends to pay off.
I am convinced, however, that if I listened to a large crowd of well meaning people, things might not have turned out as well as they did. Being a good entrepreneur IMHO rests a LOT on your ability to take risks, do things in a radically different way (often out of ignorance) and to just get stuff done without talking about it.
Networking and engaging with a community works well when you're trying to learn something initially (programming language, other technologies, and, yes, even entrepreneurial skills), but isn't much use when it comes to actually breaking through.. indeed, it can be a hinderance if you actually adjust your plans or thinking on what other people are saying, as that could limit your success.
Good luck if you are trying to boost morale or just provide a place for entrepreneurs to share stories.. but I'm not so confident that setting up networks for people to actually bounce ideas around is a good idea at all. So many risky / weird startups might not have made it if people paid attention to the "suggestions" other entrepreneurs would have made to their ideas.
Of course, the above all applies to you, your idea, and my comments now. So.. you just need to do what you feel from the gut! :)
I think there's a lot to be said for running from the gut. We're running in 18 directions right now from the gut and determined to get our startup off of the ground. But when we first presented our stuff a couple weeks back we realized that some stuff that seems clear to us, because we're so close to the problem, wasn't coming through in the presentation. If we'd had a group to pre-pitch that through, we might have gotten a "Huh?" at a more appropriate moment.
A lot of people also seem to be looking for co-founders (we're not, but this seems to be a common problem). In a community they might be able to find that.
Another bit is that it seems pretty much all VCs / Angels prefer personal introductions. Well, that assumes you've got them. We're starting to pull them out of the woodwork, with a few good leads, but we may have a couple dozen pitches before we get a bite, which means we're going to need a lot of introductions. I'm super-well connected to hacker culture in the OSS world, but that doesn't translate over to seed funding.
All of that is why I'd like to see a group come together. It's not a fear of bulldozing our way through the startup world, or a desire to hold hands and reaffirm each other, just an acknowledgement that some people will have smart stuff to say, and hopefully we'll notice. Some people will have dumb stuff to say, and hopefully we'll ignore it.
I'm just applying some of the same techniques that I've seen work in OSS; time will tell if they work out in this context too.