PG's Startup Checklist

Been friends

Worked together for awhile

Don't come together for only the startup

If close friends, stick with it even if things look bad because things eventually get better.

Don't want companies run by committee.

Need clear leadership, don't want unclear sense of who the primary decision maker is. Want to know who they should address a question to.

But not a megalomaniac, just want somebody who steps forward.

Founder power is increasing, investor power waning, probably good because those most knowledgeable getting more power.

Lot cheaper to start a startup these days.

More socially acceptable to start a startup these days.

Conway said a lot of his portfolio companies were in New York these days.

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I hate watching videos too as interesting as PG is to watch, I took the hit for the rest of ya.

(I read much faster than anyone can possibly speak.)

A couple of years ago Julian and his colleagues released information that swung the national election in Kenya. This must have gotten the attention of every government with something to hide (all of them). Since then, he claims to have released more confidential information than the rest of the worldwide media. Combined. The stakes are enormous. And the reality is that that puts a target on your back.

Go Julian, go.

That's what I meant to express precisely. I'm sorry you were dissatisfied but I was fighting leiningen and swank-clojure while transcribing.

You may have your refund of $0.00 for my services in two weeks.

Anyone else not want to watch a video to see a checklist? Anyone kind enough to paste notes?

I'll never forget this essay, because he first delivered it as a talk at Harvard that Steve and I trained up from Virginia to attend. After Steve had lent me Masters of Doom, I was already convinced we should start a startup together, but this talk sealed the deal. I know Chris Slowe (later our first 'hire' at reddit) was in the audience that evening and I'm sure a number of other future YCers were also there with no clue of where it would lead.

Thank you, Paul Graham, for making that comment about finding investment from rich people who'd done it before (but not him). If I recall, it was feeling guilty about hearing the dejection in the room that got him thinking about starting Y Combinator.

And what a difference that decision has made in so many of our lives.

If the code works and I haven't written the same exact thing myself, the most negative comment I am willing to make is "complicated." At my advanced age, it takes nothing short of a critical system requirement that a piece of code can't possibly meet to rewrite something that works.

The jwz-documented Netscape rewrite debacle is brought to mind by the original posting.

What would be rude about it? They bought you for the term of the non-compete, not the rest of your life. If they wanted to own you for life they should formally negotiate that, and pay you off accordingly. How much is the rest of your career in your field of expertise worth? That's what they should have to pay you.

You should talk to a lawyer and get the ground rules for competing with your former company; for example, you may have to take care to document that you aren't making use of IP that you sold to them. But, in general, why not? Ask Steve Jobs about the ethics of starting up NeXT after founding Apple. Ask the Intel folks about leaving Fairchild to found a direct competitor. Ask most founders, really.

Except for when it really does suck.

I was dealing with some CSS recently that was just odd. Everything (yes, every single block element) was a float resulting in a soup of fixes and workarounds because of the oddities they introduced earlier. In rewriting it, I managed to lose more than half of the CSS statements and make it be an almost pixel perfect match and be more browser compatible.

It was written by another contractor and I was contracting. Handling the politics delicately was the real problem.