Practically all the current batch of YC startups are using S3.

Last cycle we invited about 30, but there is no fixed number. Nor is there any fixed number of startups we fund per cycle. We accept every group that seems good enough.

If they had left out Arc, it would have actually been a good idea.

That name will not help them.

Next year on April 1st they'll follow Reddit and rewrite in Python.

While I am unqualified to speak about Mark, and in fact, I didn't, I stand by what I said. nickb made an arguably general comment, and I made an arguably general response. I apologize for the ambiguity, but--

It's very easy to point a finger at a general response and say "that comment is aimed at this guy," because this guy is the tallest tree in the forest. But the comment applies to the whole forest.

I have no doubt that Mark is deserving of his success. Mark worked hard, Bill Gates worked hard, Warren Buffet worked hard. The kiko guys worked hard too. And if kiko took over the world, they would be invited to speak everywhere, and they will have things to say, and reporters will scribble down what they hear as if deities are speaking, when every person's interpretation of the path to success does not work for all others.

I believe the truth in what nickb said is right here. All instances of success are a mixture of factors, but somehow they are read as a result of one. And as such, as a general principle, I certainly believe that arrogance is always unneccessary, regardless of who you are and what you have achieved.

About 300+ teams have applied to TechStars so far. I am guessing for YC the number is at least 500. From this large pool, only about 13 teams will be selected by Y Combinator. So I am sure there will be some good startups even within the ones that are rejected by Y Combinator.

TechStars could also judge their applicants on a criteria different from Y Combinator and catch good startups where YC might not.

The word on the street is that most startups, however, wouldn't choose TechStars over Y Combinator. First, the initial investment is lower. Second, they aren't original nor do they have the reputation that Paul does. In the end, though, it all comes down to which program maximizes success for startups. For that, David had this to say in an e-mail "Our investors have funded several hundred companies over the years, far more than Y Combinator has done. Y Combinator has Reddit to point out. Our founders point at Newsgator, Technorati, Feedburner, Dogster, and tons more as examples of our past experience."

I don't think anyone hates TechStars, but startup's would have had more respect for them if they had at least taken Paul's permission for rewording and copy-pasting the questions :)

The seed business is national. Almost everyone who applies to Techstars will apply to YC as well. Since I honestly can't see any reason anyone would prefer them to us, that means their destiny is to fund people we reject. The best startups we reject are the ones that make it to the interview stage.

They tell a compelling story that's interesting & new and fits in with the zeitgeist. That's really all that PR is.

Right after I graduated high school, I worked for an all-teenage dot com. We were a dozen or so high schoolers, ages ranging from 15 through 19, building a "teen content" site with indirect venture funding (we were a wholly-owned subsidiary of a venture-funded startup). This was the summer of 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom. The NASDAQ had just peaked, but nobody knew it yet.

We got picked up first by the local community newspapers, then the Boston Herald, then the local TV news. Then we ran out of funding, but we continued getting press inquiries for several months after we were technically out of business.

We had a $20k PR budget (which we inflated to $50k whenever we talked to people), but we never spent any of it. Instead, our (18 year old) PR guy would just cold call newspaper editors with "Hi, this is Trip Guray, I'm at an all-teenage startup called inAsphere.com, and we have a story you might be interested in." If they weren't interested, fine, we'd say thanks for your time and try someone else. If they were, we'd send them a press release over e-mail or arrange for an interview.

Press coverage tends to snowball: if you get a story published in a community newspaper, you're much more likely to get picked up by a major metropolitan newspaper. If you get picked up by a major newspaper, other major newspapers will go after you. If a bunch of newspapers are interested, TV will soon be too.

I know that YouOS uses it.

We don't accept a fixed number of applicants. We'll fund anyone who seems good enough. If we suddenly got 30 great applications, we''d accept them all, and worry later about how to cram them all into our space.

Great find! I've been participating in Google's pre-beta program (where features are pre-beta tested for one week before escalating to official Google Beta status for three more years.)

It doesn't say on that page, but they have great integration with RemoteControlMail.com . GMail prints and sends my e-mail to them via snail mail, and RCM scans the mail back into electronic form and e-mails me once a day about it. It's a really great way to get all of your entire e-mail once a day (two business days later) without being bothered to check for it every 5 minutes.

Also, I have a filter set up on gmail that will parse the notification e-mails from RCM about new deliveries and forward them to my vlad-spam@gmail.com e-mail account. These are then also automatically printed, sent back to RCM, scanned, then e-mailed back to the original gmail address. This way, I am notified about the spam via gmail one day later than normal for each day of mail, thereby keeping the important mail in front.

I already know that yes, this just delays spam mail one day and you receive the previous spam mail the current day. I know. That is why I have applied for YCombinator funding to solve this problem alone. At least TechStars seemed interested in it.

Funny you say that. She's currently leading Yahoo!'s technology development group, and is behind their internal "startup" incubator, Brickhouse. Their first product was Pipes, which is actually quite cool.

So the "giant" seems to agree with you there.

Ages when they started what they're famous for:

Mark Zuckerberg: 20

Max Levchin: 22

Paul Graham: 31

Steve Wozniak: 26

Mitcha Kapor: 32

Donald Knuth: 24

I wouldn't have the balls to put "failure" in the name of my startup.