I've always thought Scribd, the online document-posting startup, was set up mostly so its investors had an excuse to throw parties. They may not have that excuse much longer, if FuckedStartup's report that Scribd is running out of money is accurate. At a time when any number of startups are running out of money, why…
Click to viewWhy might this this summer's batch of incubator Y Combinator's startups bore you, as they did "one cranky attendee" who told Silicon Alley Insider so? Because you're not as talented at spotting early stage startups as Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham, says Paul Graham in a comment on the SAI post:
Y Combinator partners Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham only married in June, but they're ready to start popping them out. More $6,000 checks to fund startups, that is. Together with not-married-to-each-other partners Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris, the pair put out a 3,000-word list of 30 "Startup Ideas We'd…
If there's a legitimate use for Weebly, it has been seared from my brain by the one-two assault of Pierce89's escort site, which is also one of the webpage-building service's most-trafficked subdomains. It's not that running a girl-for-hire agency off of a free website generator backed by Paul Graham's Y Combinator…
We'd heard in April that Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, the pair behind startup factory Y Combinator, were partners in love as well as life. The two tied the knot over the weekend, Twittered Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, a graduate of Y Combinator: "Sorry ladies, PG said 'I do' - 'twas a great wedding."…
Kicking off a thread on Hacker News about how to sell a business, Emmett Shear, CTO of live-video startup Justin.tv, accidentally typed the name of his current employer instead of his previous company, Kiko Calendar, which was sold on eBay for $250,000. A sign the company is desperately looking for the exit? Who…
Commenters on Hacker News, a Web discussion board, got their panties in a bunch over the weekend over whether to ban stories from Valleywag from the site. The move netted the otherwise obscure site, mostly frequented by graduates of Paul Graham's Y Combinator startup incubator, some coverage from Michael Arrington…
A little more grist for the Yahoo/Microsoft rumor mill from Y Combinator:
In a long-overdue move, Chris Sacca, Google's "director head of special initiatives," has left the company. Cleverly, though, he's moving into a new career where he can continue to talk a lot and let others do the work: He's becoming an angel investor, working with Evan Williams's Obvious, the company which spun off…
Really, we're confounded. David Hornik's Lobby conference is ostensibly an invite-only affair. But some of the attendees had us scratching our head. Spotted, Yahoo's Bradley Horowitz, Brad Garlinghouse and Kiersten Hollars enjoying some sun instead of participating in Jerry Yang's 100-day turnaround of the company.…
Lifecasting site Justin.tv may be afraid of adult-only broadcasts. But some other startups also born from the Y Combinator startup factory are not so leery. Scribd, the self-ascribed "YouTube of documents," which allows any document to be stored and viewed on the Web, appears to be gaining traffic on the back of…
The Y Combinator guys may be acting starstruck, but maybe its MC Hammer who's playing the fanboy here. Y Combinator's coterie of entrpreneurs could easily return the favor by providing the rapper with real video services. Everyone, including MC Hammer, knows they can. Why would the startuppers reduce the Hammer to…
Email startup Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) has released a short film aimed at recruiting new engineers to join their team. Filmed with a clear nod towards Reservoir Dogs and Office Space, the clip includes an efficient German manager, gratuitous toilet humor (the bathroom stall is labeled "Outbox"), an…
We suspect Paul Graham will not be very popular in Sunnyvale today. The entrepreneur sold his e-commerce venture, Viaweb, to Yahoo for nearly $50 million in 1998 — a rich sum for the time. He's gone on to success coaching and funding other startups through his Y Combinator incubator. In a speech he gave to his…
Ever since Justin.tv moved in, Crystal Tower Apartments in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood has gotten the reputation as a dorm for 20something startuppers. A recent elevator breakdown, now fixed, left some residents to hoof it all the way up the 12-story building. Justin.tv has moved out, but current…
On the left, beatific investor Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. On the right, worshipful Xobni cofounder Adam Smith, genuflecting before the man who graced his startup with the tall dollars, and helped fund a night of excess last Friday.
We've dissected Time's list of the five worst websites. Now it's your turn to tweak their poll for the best ones to your satisfaction. (Time.com is still using the same weakly protected polling system as the heavily gamed People Who Matter Now poll from Business 2.0.) The kids from Y Combinator, entrepreneur Paul…
Whether you think Scribd, often billed as the YouTube of documents, is brilliant technology, overvalued hype, or in for copyright disputes, you have to question the wisdom displayed in their recent call for new employees:
