HN Explorer

Voluntary List of YC W11 Submissions (spreadsheets.google.com)

78 points by danielsiders ↗ HN
to Enter your Info: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFZkT2QxZXFFRWlYUWoyUG4zRVBIZGc6MQ

View the Results: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ataf_IejHzNydFZkT2QxZXFFRWlYUWoyUG4zRVBIZGc&output=html

Thanks @kellyreid for the updated links

54 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] thread
kellyreid
here's hoping this isn't against some rule or guideline. good idea, though!
zachster
Rules? I don't understand.
danielsiders
YC might not love us making public a list of applicants. Less so promoting it on HN.
kellyreid
if anything it showcases the hacker/startup spirit. i'm sure if it's a problem we'll find out somehow
sbisker
The line seems blurry. On the one hand, I'm all for people who want to share their information being able to throw it up - the more feedback the better, right? And it builds a sense of community that can last long past this YC decision. On the other hand, there's no real way of "opting out" of an unmoderated list like this; someone could easily post your application without your permission, and once that information is public, there's no real way to keep someone from putting it back on the list once you delete it.

It almost feels like there should be a "make public" option on the application itself, where applications who opt in can push their application onto HN somewhere, and people are free to comment on it in a sanctioned way. I've seen that done with grant programs with some success. Just thinking aloud here.

zachster
It was kind of a rhetorical question. The process clearly encouraged rebellious behavior. Though I don't think this really qualifies as such. We're entrepreneurs. We network. We promote. This is what we do.
danielsiders
Not sure if this is kosher, but lots of people were curious. Please don't hurt us.
vladd
This reminds me of the other thread where pg wants to moderate more strongly RMS posts ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1861577 ).

Maybe have RMS implemented in a way similar to the Ask HN section: they get a penalty, but also a dedicated namespace where people can up-vote them inside the HN voting system.

This is as close you will get to using HN as an online interface in order to rank the entries in this spreadsheet.

bpierce
genius!
ABrandt
I upvoted you to get your attention, but comments like these are usually frowned upon here on HN. The general rule is that a comment should have some kind of substance to it, rather than simple agreement.

Check out the site guidelines(http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), good luck, and welcome!

danielsiders
We should totally have done a video of this. Like was said in the chatroom, it's like watching Hacker Ants at work.
JofArnold
I'm upvoting partly because it seems a cool idea, but partly because I'm scientifically interested in what'll happen to goog docs with multiple concurrent users; valuable for knowing how it responds re using in live environments for user feedback.
JofArnold
The answer is "badly"

Around 50 or so active concurrent users it really starts to fail. No doubt some of the others can better quantify/qualify my general remark.

danielsiders
We should rename this "Google Docs Scaling Performance Test" and watch the upvotes grow.
danielsiders
Google Docs feature request: Lock formatting, fonts, colors, sizes.
samratjp
Sweet, I am sure in the next cycle/batch, someone is now going to apply as the Justin.tv of spreadsheets :-p
jonnathanson
I watched in semi-real-time as it switched into simple-viewing mode due to high traffic; the threshold appeared to be roughly 120 to 125.
johnrob
The submissions are missing the most important part - founder bios.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
iloveyouocean
How about a column for Intro Videos? Was that purposefully left off?
nkassis
Purely to avoid the humiliation in my case ;p I'll probably add it soon.
dirktheman
Crap. For some reason my submission got on row 118. Really like the idea though!
charlief
YC applicants: In case there needs to be some explanation as to why to allow or discourage this, maybe we can give some explicit rationale here. Why did some of you guys share your submissions and how does it benefit you as a YC applicant? What problem is this solving? I could guess some of the reasons, satisfy curiosity, inspire, a sense of community, relieving some anxiety, exposing some common valuable information ( no one got a YC response yet), etc. danielsiders: what is the story in setting this up?
danielsiders
We were curious about the field at large, independent of being applicants. Tired of relying on pg/yc to share aggregate data. We're hackers, we like raw data.
kellyreid
we're curious, and it helps alleviate the stress and anxiety by having people to commiserate with
ig1
Why not disclose it ?

Assuming you're not in stealth, it seems a reasonable way to get additional feedback and publicity for your startup.

alexl
Exactly. Especially since the vast majority of investors I asked replied "No! No! No! I can't... la la-la-la-la-la-la laa-laa la-la-la"

Just like in Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill, if I may :)

benzheren
there are about 50 users on it now...seems to be working okay
kellyreid
Enter your Info: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFZkT2QxZXF...

View the Results: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ataf_IejHzNydFZkT2Q...

This is the harder-to-troll version, which i'll be posting on HN shortly.

nkassis
Yeah please use this version, I was wondering how long it would take trolls to destroy the page, less than 1 hour ;p
kellyreid
See, we non-technical co founders can make a difference. Just give us the right tools!
jdverni
Shopobot looks sweet
leftnode
Is another similar service - http://camelcamelcamel.com/
accounts
Camel was one of the first for Amazon shopobot just looks to be a copy of the same idea. Look at how much price history camel has. It goes back over 3 years for some stuff.
ig1
Agreed, but I'm not sure if they'll be able to keep at it

I looked at building something similar a while back but found most of the big retailers (Amazon, eBay) prohibited you from storing historical price data. Unless that's changed I'm not sure their approach is going to be feasible in the long term.

alexl
That should be easy - store just the graph, not the actual values :)
nostromo
Thanks! blush

We put a lot of time into the design. We've held off any sort of "rate my startup" to see if we make it to the next round.

nopaintjustpxls
I highly encourage sharing your ideas. The YC application deadline is well past us, and I'm curious about who and what was submitted. I really like the transparancy of this idea, and after the hours we all put into our applications, it's nice to see the outcome, wether you get accepted to YC11 or not.
galisevych
it seems that people have a lot of fun in that list. I'm thinking that idea is not bad, and writing down your startup there is open you up to people "in same boat", allow you to collaborate and gang up to make combined projects. Therefore it is not relevant to YC W11.
jdverni
Awaiting the collective wave of terror when a 'Yes' appears in column M.
jkalkbrenner
Sorry, seems there are too many destructive people. If you can find a way to control input, please let us know. We would be more than happy to provide input.
kellyreid
look at my comment above - the form version i put up should handle the destructive edit problem
alexl
Ooops. Sorry about making a reaaaaaally really tall table cell there. I actually used the same texts I used for the Ycombinator submission. If you could make the cells slightly wider, please, the text would fit better and not make the entry all over people's screens.
bigwally
All we need now is the ability to vote on submissions and see if we can make better picks than YC.
dstein
Well I know what I'm gonna apply with next year... Google spreadsheets absolutely suck for this type of collaboration.
benzheren
has anyone tried the zoho one? I know it is not free though
alexl
Has anybody received the rejection letter very soon after posting their submission in that table? I got it the next day. I don't even know if there were 24 hours between the two events :)