Y Combinator Startup School Interview with Mark Zuckerberg

“If I were starting now I would do things very differently. I didn’t know anything. In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it’s not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me. He explained that he had a conversation once with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos about this, and the average time someone stays in job at Seattle is twice as long than it is in Silicon Valley. There’s a culture out here where people don’t commit to doing things, I feel like a lot of companies built outside of Silicon Valley seem to be focused on a longer-term, he explains. You don’t have to move out here to do this. There’s this culture in the Valley of starting a company before they know what they want to do. You decided you want to start a company, but you don’t know what you are passionate about yet…you need to do stuff you are passionate about. The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.” – Mark Zuckerberg

An excellent 20 minute keynote by Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures on the “fragmentation of online marketing”. He shares his perspective on the latest trends in online marketing and highlights the importance of having the resources within your organization to participate in a constantly growing list of web services and advertising mediums.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17521806

Malcolm Gladwell’s first two bestsellers, The Tipping Point and Blink, earned him a place on Time’s 2005 “Most Influential People” list; and with Outliers, the “10,000 Hour” theory made its way into the zeitgeist.

Businessinsider.com paged through his titles and pulled out 12 of his most mind-blowing theories… (more…)

In an interview with WSJ’s Alan Murray, Betaworks CEO John Borthwick discusses the future of social media and how it is changing internet navigation. He claims that the business models of establishment internet companies like Google and Amazon are threatened by social media tools.

From the award-winning documentary, “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music“, comes the first of many “songs around the world” being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe.

Playing For Change | Song Around The World “Stand By Me” from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Technology Review (a magazine published by MIT) recently asked various thought leaders what the Web might be in ten years. Below is one of the most creative responses but all the interviews are quite intriguing.

Jonathan Abrams
Founder of Socializr and Friendster; San Francisco, CA

“In five to ten years, we will all have chips in our brains. When you look at someone’s face on the street, your Google Brain software will automatically call up every embarrassing photo of them from ancient websites such as Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace; list all mutual friends; and remind you of the person’s annotated bio. As a response to the perceived slowness and verbosity of antiquated services like Twitter, people will send everyone they know nanobursts of information about anything they might do or think before they actually do or think it. Every website, blog, and social-networking profile will include an aggregated feed from every other website, blog, and social-networking service, resulting in an exponential and infinite length of repeated content on every possible site, overloading our brain chips and causing frequent nosebleeds and occasional cerebral hemorrhage.”

Source: The Future of The Web, Technology Review 7/2008

Last week Andrew Tobias (current Treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and Author of “The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need”) shared some of his readers‘ experiences with Mint.com.

Mr. Tobias: a big thanks for the link to my write up on Mint/Covestor. Apparently, AT is friends w/ one of the Mint.com founder’s which allowed him to share:

• The monetization strategy of this relatively new online finance management service:
  • AT: Their game plan is ad revenue and “sponsored links.” My friend who’s one of the founders says: “Some of the offers we present are sponsored, meaning we earn a referral fee if you sign up for them. However, Mint will always show you an un-sponsored offer ahead of a sponsored one if it will save you more money. We sort offers in order of their value to users, regardless of sponsorship.”
• A response to the concerns about how your login credentials are used/stored:
  • AT: My friend responds: “Mint does not store your credentials, we use them once to create a linkage with your account(s). Consider the benefits of being able to see all your account activity in one place – makes it easy to spot any suspicious activity (remember 90% of fraud occurs off line). Mint offers alerts (via email, or text message) to bring unusual spending to your attention.”
• Click here for the full article…

Nicholas Negroponte’s goal is to setup every child in “emerging” countries around the world with a $200 laptop to promote self education. This program was setup in response to the lack of educational resources in many developing nations across the globe.

Mass production of these “XO” laptops is slated to begin this month to prepare for launch on November 12th. You can track the progress and major developments of Nicholas’ program by visiting: http://www.laptop.org/en/vision/progress/index.shtml.

1. Nicholas Negroponte is founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child non-profit association.
2. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology.
3. A graduate of MIT, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966.
4. Conceived in 1980, the Media Laboratory opened its doors in 1985. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, which has been translated into more than 40 languages.
5. In the private sector, Nicholas Negroponte serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment.
6. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Wired magazine.
   Source: Laptop.org

Click the thumbnail below to see a preview of this laptop that can be donated AND delivered for a mere $200…

Now that we’ve made it halfway through October… I suppose it’s time to start getting psyched for the upcoming winter…

YouTube  Terje's 7601 Descent Video

“Terje HÃ¥konsen (born October 11, 1974 in Vinje, Norway) is a Norwegian snowboarder. HÃ¥konsen is widely considered one of the most influential snowboarders of all time and was one of the sport’s early icons.

HÃ¥konsen dominated freestyle snowboarding in the 1990s winning the ISF World Championships in half-pipe three times in a row, in 1993, 1995 and 1997. He has also won 5 European championships in half-pipe (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1997), the U.S. Open in half-pipe 3 times (1992, 1993, 1995), and the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom 6 times (1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004). He also won the Innsbruck Air & Style Contest in 1995. HÃ¥konsen set the world record for highest ‘air’ during the finals of the Arctic Challenge in Oslo 2007 when he reached 9.8 meters out of the top of the quarterpipe with a backside 360.

He is the creator of an aerial snowboard maneuver named The Haakon Flip.

HÃ¥konsen is also credited to have developed the T6, the world’s first snowboard to be made out of a material named “Alumafly,” an aluminum honeycomb construction and as a co-creator of the Burton Fish (a powder-specific board) and the Burton Malolo, a cross-breed between a freestyle and powder board.” – Image: norskdesign.no Bio: Wikipedia

Paul Graham is currently part of the venture capital firm “Y Combinator“, who provides seed funding for web based startups. In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb, the first ASP, which in 1998 became Yahoo! Store. In 2002 he discovered a simple spam filtering algorithm that inspired the current generation of filters. He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.

About Y Combinator:

“Y Combinator does seed funding for startups. We fund startups in two batches a year, one in winter in Silicon Valley, and one in summer in Cambridge. We’re the right choice for a group of two or three young hackers who have an idea, and want some money and advice to get it launched.”
source: ycombinator.com

About Graham:

“…In 2005, after giving a talk at the Harvard Computer Society later published as How to Start a Startup, Graham along with Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris started Y Combinator to provide seed funding to startups, particularly those started by younger, more technically-oriented founders. Y Combinator has now invested in 38 startups, including reddit, Justin.tv and loopt.

Graham has an B.A. in philosophy from Cornell. He also earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Applied Sciences, (specializing in computer science) from Harvard in 1988 and 1990 respectively, and studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.”
(Source: wikipedia)

Related:
http://www.paulgraham.com (which got 9.7 million page views in 2006)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc-paul-graham-of-ycombinator/
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail188.html

Jerome Lemelson (1923-1997) was one of the most prolific American inventors of all time. He amassed more than 500 patents, including patents used in the VCR, camcorder, Walkman®, cordless phone, fax machine, data and word processing systems, and industrial robots. Lemelson made a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars through licensing deals.

Links:
Wikipedia Bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_H._Lemelson
Lemelson Foundation: http://www.lemelson.org

Nathan Sawaya came to national attention as a talented artist when he won a nationwide search for a professional LEGO® Master Model Builder. Since then, he has been garnering accolades, as well as fans, with his colorful and whimsical artwork made entirely of the popular children’s toy.

source: www.brickartist.com
more: CNN Interview w/ Sawaya

“Theo Jansen, artist, studied science at the University of Delft Holland. The first seven years being a artist he just made paintings. Then he starts a project with a big flying saucer, which could really fly. It flew over the town of Delft in 1980 and brought the people in the street and the police in commotion. Since about ten years he is occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.”
source: http://www.strandbeest.com