>marking a comment up or down should use ajax

Without ajax I'm sometimes discouraged from voting at all, because it's difficult to find my location after a refresh, especially on long pages.

Out of curiosity are the passwords kept hashed?

Similar to the point of plagiarism in some respects (there are only three questions on their application form not copied from ours). But there are some differences:

1. They have an official connection to VCs. No one in seed funding can afford to do this, because it means you hose 90% of the companies you fund. If you don't give them their next round, no other VC will either, because you had inside info and you didn't.

2. They make no promise to keep doing this after this summer. YC and its network of other startups will be there to help you a year from now.

3. They give lower valuations: $12.5k for 5% in the average (2.5 founder) case, vs $17.5k for 6%.

4. At the end you demo to investors in the #6 startup market, whereas at YC you get to demo in both #1 and #2.

I think this advice is somewhat misguided. I'm currently on my seventh start up. I started two previously myself with my own money, but my current employer is VC and angel backed. (I am the chief scientist) Relying only on your own resources such as credit card debt or a second mortgage on your home can be a very risky proposition.

Not just because you might lose your investment, but because by using your own money you are creating a situation of immense pressure. The risk of losing your home might lead one to make some bad decisions regarding the business. You have o be very careful here.

My second self funded company eventually did take about $100,000 in angel money. But we started with only $50,000 of the two founders own money and we operated the business for four years with no other investment. We eventually sold it to a public software company for $2 million dollars. This might seem like a pretty decent investment, but at the time (mid 90s) it failed to attract the buzz that seems to feed VC investments.

It also depends on how much capital you really need. Typically entrepreneurs underestimate this, but of course it is also possible to fool yourself the other way. You have to be very realistic about this to make the right decisions. My current venture requires us to installhardware in our customers' facilities, so it is somewhat capital intensive. Only someone who was very wealthy could self fund such an enterprise.

In the end VC money spends the same as any other money, so deciding where you get your funds should be a business decision similar to deciding who to hire or what product to develop. You should interview your investors as they interview you. But few entrepreneurs do this. They act desperate, and this often becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

On another note, in my experience, entrepreneurs shouldn't expect most VCs to deliver anything more than money. Of course they all tell you about the benefits of their strategic connections and so on, but in my experience it is very rare that these bear fruit. One exception would be a venture fund targeting the specific industry you are developing your product for. These funds often do have real valuable connections to bring to bear and can help in ways that vanilla VCs can't.

Project Gutenberg version with illustrations:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm

Not at all; we're not VCs. We just do seed funding. That is a very different world.

This is one of my favorite books. I've read it several times.

Whenever there's a blog post about Y Combinator's summer funding, I always see TechStars and Lightspeed brought up or mentioned in the comments.

Comparisons will be made, naturally. There is a lot of discussion regarding the funding vs. share percentage ratio, some lamenting that there is such a high percentage being taken for a relatively small seed. If broken into pure numbers, I can see where one might draw that conclusion. But it seems many are then missing the point.

It's not the size of the check that's written, it's the support and backing, the advice from valley veterans, the valuable critique from those who understand this arena the most. It's the crucial foot-in-the-door process and the inherent buzz publicity you just can't buy.

And since it comes down to all that, I'd rather it be with Y's folks because these are names that I actually recognize along with a proven portfolio.

If a seed firm has an official relationship with a VC, that VC will know which of their startups are best. They can't invest in all of them, since the number of startups is so much larger at the seed phase. Any they don't invest in, other VCs will know are rejects. And this is the kiss of death, because the most important thing to most VCs is other VCs' opinion.

Both Techstars and the new Lightspeed thing have this problem. At Techstars one of the founders is a VC, and Lightspeed is itself a VC firm.

With their hard ties to VCs, if TechStars do not continue with you in their next round, you are auto-stigmatized. TechStars has then effectively marked you as undesirable in a sense and others might not give you a fair look.

I'd like to see profiles display the owners' url/blog. It would give a great insight into the mind of the poster.