sxsw isn't going to be as yc-tastic as i hoped, but ars technica and roflcon are sure to please

After the second round of panel announcements, it looks pretty clear that my Y Combinator panel isn't going to happen. Making it a broader look at startup fundraising strategies would have probably helped. I really hoped I'd get to make that orange kool-aid, too.

Nonetheless, we're still heading to SXSW next year and I'd like to promote two panels that did make the cut.

Ken Fisher of Ars Technica is hosting a panel on building and maintaining strong online communities. I know he's got some strong panelists, too ;)

Tim Hwang of ROFLCon will also be discussing the state of the Internet Memescape. The panel title includes the years 2008-2010. One can only suspect that Tim has some sort of time-travel machine, which lets him see the Internet of 2010. Fascinating.

banner day for popcuts

Disclosure: This startup is in Y Combinator.

I'm consistently impressed with this company. The founders are diligent and earnest, but I could say that about most YC startups. They don't even have a mascot (wtf, guys?) but they do have a clever revenue model. And now they're getting some love in the AP.

In case you don't want to read the whole thing (but you should), here's a blurb:

Being a trendsetter can be pricey. As any fashionista or gadget hound knows, the latest frocks and tech toys don't pay for themselves. But a new Web site is trying to make it profitable for music lovers to stay ahead of the curve — by paying them when other people purchase MP3s they've bought.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that they also gave Breadpig the band an early entry into the PopCuts artist library. Sales haven't quite taken off yet, but we're giving the maximum amount possible to our early adopter fans. Get in on the ground floor.

two sxsw interactive panels that need your vote

I've been a proud ROFLCon cheerleader for a while now, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm endorsing Behind the ROFLs: Next-Gen Conference Organizing While Broke. But don't just vote on it, if you're in Austin next March, be sure to catch this panel. It'll be as insightful as it is ROFL-ful.

There's no way I'm missing that panel -- unless it's poorly timed to coincide with mine... (in which case I may still attempt some form of time travel)

You see, I'm moderating a panel called Inside Y Combinator - The YC Startups Speak. It doesn't have the same titular title as Behind the ROFLs, but it should be a good panel. If it's selected, I'll pull questions from InsideYC.reddit to ask the assortment of YC founders. This may appear to be an efficient way to solicit the questions the audience really wants answered, but it's really just so I have to do less preparation.

Along with your vote, I'd love some feedback either here or on Hacker News.

xobni gets a shoutout from big bill @ microsoft

It's inbox backwards, a company started by a couple pals of mine from Y Combinator. Adam and Matt are turning this into quite a big deal. Bill Gates is no Steve Jobs when it comes to presentations, but having the word "xobni" come out of his mouth is definitely some kind of an accomplishment. (See, even Bill pronounces it Zahb-nee, not Zohb-nee).

I've proudly had my Zahb-nee button (over on the right) ever since they rolled it out, which I'm certain has been crucial for all of their success. That's a nice "unique display area" you've built, pity I still use Gmail, but I know there's no shortage of Outlook users who'd love to make their email habits significantly less painful. Congrats, guys.

adpinion ftw

Curious about how online advertising would work for a mildly popular blog like mine, I signed up with AdBrite a little while back.

I'm not planning on retiring off of this blog, so gaining revenue wasn't really the goal (in true dot.com startup fashion). I wanted to see just how dismal the advertising would be.

I wasn't disappointed.Do people really send these things to their friends? Really?

I like Eeyore as much as the next person, but do readers of this blog really need some bling-bling for their MySpace pages? Maybe the folks at eComments.com know something I don't. True, most startup founders rave about their pimp juice animated .gifs -- that's what really goes on during those investor pitches.

Although I've been approving a variety of ads (and trying to weed out the really offensive seizure-inducing ones) the current leaderboard hasn't changed in something like two weeks. And as Rod Begbie pointed out in the comments a while back, it happens to be a reddit competitor -- repptide.Frankly, I just got tired of seeing this ad. Hopefully all of you have AdBlock on, anyway.

But if you don't, or your curious about whether or not it's possible to make online advertising not suck, I'm replacing all my ads with Adpinion. They're another YC company and I finally got my invite from them a month ago.

I think the secret was taking them all out for beer when they were in New York. Nothing quite like liquoring up a startup.

It's also a good litmus test -- if their alcohol tolerance is too high, they're not working hard enough. Maybe I should mention that to PG as a future metric for startups looking to get that first round of angel investment...

what reddit taught me about startups: making more money (really??)

WARNING: These are still just the memories of a nostalgic startup cofounder. None of these are to be taken as guides for how to run your own startup. Except for anything involving a mascot -- you really ought to have one.

That said, I bet you didn't even think there'd be any more of these, let alone a sequel to "making money." Well, no one expected a sequel to The Matrix and look how well those turned out...

I was happy my Joel Spolsky shout-out made it into the BusinessWeek article from a couple weeks back. With a simple suggestion, Joel started us down the path that would eventually lead to an acquisition (I knew I should have titled this entry "Joel Spolsky: The reason why reddit got acquired"). He had remarked during a YC dinner (I think) that he was tired of sorting through all the link recommendations he'd get emailed from his readers.

"Create a joel.reddit.com for me to send them to!" he suggested (probably not an exact quote).

Steve was likely in the middle of some big update or new feature, so it was a couple months before joel.reddit went online and the Joel alien was born.

Hmm, this is neat, we thought, someone actually can use "reddit technology" (I still feels silly typing that) for their own community. Maybe we could make money from this?

This must be very disheartening, reading that so much of our business grew and adapted along with us, but it's true. A few months later I'd be fielding requests from someone wanting to license reddit for traders -- how's that for random?

We made a few more 'subreddits' for our friends and for other interested startups, but didn't give it much more thought until I got an email from Kourosh of CondéNet (spoiler: he is now our boss).

Admittedly, I hadn't heard of Condé Nast, but my phone rang not long after replying and we talked for a bit. He had noticed our white-labeling efforts and wanted us to build him a celebrity gossip version of reddit (lipstick.com). What he wanted to build sounded pretty feasible and he must have liked what he heard, because the conversation ended with an invitation to fly out west and a visit to WIRED (not screaming -- it's kinda like how reddit is always in lowercase, silly style guides).

That licensing deal turned out to be very fruitful for a few reasons. First, it gave us enough capital to live for at least another year (hell, it made us "profitable" -- although that's not saying much when you're just a few guys in an apartment). Second, and more importantly, it opened the door to a relationship with CN that would eventually lead to an acquisition.

Fortunately, the job wasn't even all that difficult. The design was handled entirely by them and Steve single-handedly hacked lipstick together in a less time than it took me to draw a week's worth of logos.

OK, that's not entirely true. He used two hands. Only Mr. XKCD types with one hand.

And thus the courtship dance with Condé began...

fuzzwich is like ytmnd 2.0 with style (and now a politics section)

FULL DISCLOSURE, to avoid PAA (Pulling An Arrington): I was a member of Y Combinator, as are the founders of Fuzzwich. I am not in any way invested in their startup or their success. Granted, I'd like them to succeed, just as I'd like any YC startup to succeed.

Except for Justin.tv, I really hate those guys. They still owe me a beer for their gorilla.

UPDATE: The last time I was in SF, the Justin.tv crew did indeed buy me a beer (2, in fact) as well as dinner. Fatwa over.

The concept of Fuzzwich is simple: easily build a quick and professional(enough)-looking animation, share with friends and family, bathe in their praise, repeat. Admittedly, despite how much I like the pixel art look of the site, I didn't quite get the concept at first.

It all made sense to me once I compared it to the 5 iconic letters of my Internet upbringing: YTMND.

"You're The Man Now, Dog" (long story) has always been a staple for finding quick n' dirty viral .gif animations, be they geeky, catchy, inappropriate -- or all three. This site single-handedly spawns (and/or beats to death) all kinds of Internet memes.

If Fuzzwich can become that source for anyone -- not just those of us who care about esoteric geek culture and don't mind reading that heinous WordArt-looking text -- who wants to create something cool to share, they'll be in a great place. I'm convinced that by flattening the learning curve so that such "creativity tools" were painless enough, even Steve could create some pretty neat things. And Fuzzwich does it with style, too.

But why does my spellcheck keep telling me "Fuzzwich" isn't a word?

To demonstrate the site's potential (and show off their recently created politics section -- take that, JibJab) I've created a minivid scientifically-proven to provoke any reddit user. It took me no more than 7 minutes; I had to get the song just right.

Hint: there's a Ron Paul figure included. No Mike Gravel character yet; I hope they can animate the rock toss. Or better yet, maybe they should add the reddit alien...

We all can't invest the time and energy of Andy Samberg and the SNL Digital Shorts crew, but it doesn't take much to create a viral online vid. Besides, Fuzzwich is about sharing creative works, not walling them in. We'll see how long this clip of "Iran So Far" (a tribute to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) lasts on YouTube...

Oh, Mahmoud...

i've been meaning to disqus this

I don't get enough comments on this blog for me to think comments on blogs are worthless. But Joel (and Dave) emphasize an important point about the consequences of anonymous commenting.

Even the most innocent and thoughtful discussions can quickly get derailed, or never even get started (see YouTube commenting). Without accountability, it's easy for me to go around trolling or just hurling random obscenities and LOL!!1!s

Although I've heard this passes for discourse on some sites.

Plus, who's to stop me from flooding every Lisp blog as "spez" with obscenity-and-"LOL!!1!"-laden comments about the lack of widely used and tested Lisp libraries? He already has enough enemies on those blogs. And it'd be especially tragic considering the thoughtful and articulate explanation of Lisp's shortcomings (and strengths) that he already gave on our dev blog.

He doesn't need any more angry letters or death threats -- I'm the one who opens his mail.

It's with this in mind that I finally upgraded my Blogger template last night (oh boy, 2.0!) and installed Disqus for all future posts. It's a means for universal discussion across blogs and website in general.

Your identity (and reputation) follow you around and you've got a nice aggregation of all past conversations. If it gets the mass adoption they're aiming for, I suspect it would go a long way toward solving Joel's (and Dave's) problem.

Now let's get meta and discuss Disqus in the new Disqus comments.

y combinator demo day boston

Another geeky summer in Boston has come and gone. I've tried to stay pretty involved with the new founders, since I haven't got a startup of my own anymore and my blog needs traffic (and material).

I've been fortunate enough to have attended every demo day and I must confess, this was the best one. They had to cram 19 startups (is that right?) into a reasonable amount of time, which meant no Q&A (a wonderful thing) and only 7 minutes per presentation. We had something like 15 minutes to blab about how reddit was different from del.icio.us (yep, that's the kind of question we got asked back in August 05); the curtailed time allowance meant each presentation was crisp.

Oh, and the food was good too. I must have eaten ten figs and a pound of cheese & fine meats.

I'd better not comment on any of the particular startups; I'll likely be transforming a few of them into reddit logos anyway. With so many startups, it'd also mean a lot of typing. I'll just let Techcrunch handle that. I'm no Arrington, anyway -- I would fully disclose. Hehe.

But here's the ingenious part of Demo Day Boston: one week later (today), they're doing it again at the Mountain View office for the west coast investors. You could hear the clock ticking* during the bustle of all the post-demo schmoozing. Very shrewd.

Not surprisingly, PG had an apt analogy for it: like feeling pressured to ask out the charming smalltown girl before she leaves for Hollywood.

Well, they're all in Cali right now...



*It turns out Jessica had in fact placed a very loud clock in the room.

zenter bought by google, not bad for a winter

I think this has already sufficiently been blagged about, but now that we're free to talk about it, I wanted to congratulate the Zenter team. I couldn't help but smile when I saw this on my visit to zenter.com:


I'd missed their presentation at demo day by only a few minutes, but I heard great things. Then I saw Paul use it to give his talk at StartupSchool (the first time, I believe, that Paul Graham has used slides in a presentation). Next thing I know, there's a glowing Newsweek article about the then newest batch of startups.

(great pic)

And sure enough, here they are after a super industrious winter and change, joining the Goog.

Very impressive, guys.

OK, I think I've done my YC promotion for the week. Back to today's logo...

**Forgot these guys were in the 2007 Winter Founders Program. Silly me.

wufoo? it builds forms -- duhh

Building forms -- even unattractive and hard-to-use ones -- is an epic pain the ass. Even I know that (my first and only attempt at writing a Lisp web app was a very broken form). Just writing the HTML for one is mind-numbing. Enter Wufoo.

Making a slick form is absurdly easy. Plus, it's got stat tracking and an activity log baked right in. They've also just turned on some mobile-friendly tools so you can keep track of activity wherever you are (+3 points for showing the OCDs some love).

And did I mention they have a mascot? And it's from the past!

Yes, it's a website with a T-rex for a mascot: +10 points for mascot and an extra +7 for the anachronism-factor.

Wufoo also apparently picked up some awards at the recent Under the Radar Conference -- undoubtedly because of their mascot choice.

*an epic tip of the hat to Matt Knox

octopart - if you're not omniscient, it's the only way to search for electronic parts

Seriously, this is a fantastic site. And not just because it eliminates the need for all those titanic part catalogs. Anything that's still being done with phonebook-sized tomes -- especially in the tech world -- is long overdue for an technical solution. Granted, I've never actually used Octopart, since I don't ever need to buy electronic parts (due to ogrish hands and a morbid fear of soldering irons) but Chris (KeyserSosa) Slowe has -- and says Octopart is quite useful.

But maybe the praise of an experimental atomic physicist isn't good enough for you. Sure, he's a "scientist", but what would a bona fide electrical engineer think about the site? Well, Chris happened to pass the URL along to one (I think they must all have a secret network, for breeding purposes). The EE was quite impressed with the price comparisons and the extensive results on keying in an obscure mfg number -- all this only two days after the site had launched. +10 points for impressing an engineer and a scientist in the same day.

If you've been putting off building your own LED Mooninite, the wait is over.

And when you're giving your first press conference to discuss hair (after the court hearing), consider giving a shoutout to the gradstudents who started Octopart.

PS. +6 bonus points if you can tell what kind of schematic that is in the background of the logo.

buxfer reddit? the english language is doomed

Time for another week of blatant Y Combinator startup promotion in the logo doodles. The Winter Founders wrapped up a month or so ago and I extended them the same offer I made to the Summer Founders. Not that it's likely to bring them much traffic, but along with the logo, I'd promised to write an objective, thoughtful, and hard-hitting review of their site. Here goes.

The first thing one notices about Buxfer is their fantastic choice of name (i.e., "I've got no buxfer you, Steve, please spare my kneecaps"): +10 points.

The second thing one will notice is that it's actually a pretty handy way to track one's money (+5 points). All this despite not having a mascot (sorry, -5 points).

The third thing to note is how annoying it is -- despite how grammatically correct it may be -- to keep saying "one" when you really want to just say "you".

The visualizations are very sexy: the pie charts are tasty and the line graphs come with sliders and mini-histogram. But it's not style over substance, there is quite a bit of depth behind all of it -- data visualizations that even a history major can understand and use.

+15 Bonus points (because you need them) if you've got OCD and need to keep track of everything you spend. Or if you're an accountant. Either way, Buxfer is just the thing if you're jonesin' for an amateur CPA.

out of ideas? whip out the over-whipped web 2.0 whipping boy

This is overdue, I know, especially considering today is Earth Day.

Someone (I forget who) a long time ago (I forget when) suggested (I forget how sarcastically) that I explain the rationale behind the doodles in this blog, since I don't do much else with it.

It was another Monday and -- even after the second cup of Flavia -- the ideas weren't coming. Much easier than thinking, I decided instead to rely on a time-tested standard: picking on web 2.0 design trends.

Convenientally, it also proves that, yes, I am capable of creating a reflection in Illustrator.

Granted, the reflection is a nice start, but it needed some blue -- web 2.0 blue.

Now with starburst! The alien is clearly dismayed.

I don't know where the alien got that ray gun.

This wasn't how I'd planned on ending the week (I really ought to start thinking these things through) but Kurt Vonnegut's death on Thursday pushed me toward this Slaughterhouse 5 homage (although I feel sort of dirty calling it a "homage").

He has long been one of my favorite authors. Although in hindsight, I suspect he would have been at the very worst appalled and at the very best disappointed with being remembered in a website logo.

You will be missed, Mr. Vonnegut, but so it goes.

the justin.tv gorilla - my crowning achievement

A while back, when Justin was just a guy wearing a camera (the feed hadn't gone live yet) they were looking for a logo. The fundamental part of any logo -- any website -- is undoubtedly the mascot. In fact, I think Emmett and Justin attributed the end of kiko to the absence of a mascot (c'mon, that calendar with only 6 days in a week was hardly a mascot).

So when they asked me to try making a gorilla mascot for their guerrilla tv campaign, I was happy to help (because I love puns). Once the logo was done, the emoticons had to follow. Now stop reading this blog and go watch Justin.tv!

(I got 20% equity for the design work!)

predicting the future (because we can't all have time traveling aliens)

Sorry I had to get so "TIME Magazine" on you, but today's logo was timed with the redesign of inkling -- another poster child for the wisdom of crowds: -2 points to myself for the cliché foul.

Despite how buzzword-prone their startup idea is, prediction markets are sexy right now for a reason. When implemented correctly, they can be quite informative -- or at the very least entertaining -- whether it's about who will be the Democratic Presidential nominee in '08 or who will win the Super Bowl. After all, none of us is as smart as all of us (despite what you may have read, I came up with this).

I've still be hurting from the $48,805.55 (in inkles, a fake currency -- thankfully) that I lost during last year's academy awards (thanks, Crash). Building and managing your own prediction market is cake if you're one of their corporate clients or Jane Internet-user -- although I've never tried as a corporate client... or as "Jane" for that matter, but it worked fine for me.

They've also just opened up worthio, which is much like a reddit for stocks, but clearly built by some folks who actually know something about the market.

And what their mascot lacks in detail (I believe they were going for the abstract-enough-so-anyone-can-relate look) it makes up for in quantity: +1 for lots of pretty-colored people-shapes.

--

YC Week is done for now, since the week is over, but it'll resume once we get into '07 and I inevitably run out of ideas again.

rock beats scissors, snipshot beats bloated software

Back when my only image-editing software was PaintShopPro 5 (last summer), I would have loved a slick web app to do it from my browser. Even now that I have Photoshop -- with its hefty loading time -- I still find myself heading over to Snipshot for quick and dirty image edits. Perhaps giving us a glimpse into a future devoid of desktop apps, Snipshot cuts out much of the hassle: -1 point to myself for actually typing that.

They're also Canadian: +2 points for being Canadian. My biggest concern at the moment with this startup is that their mascot (the scissors, presumably named Snippy?) isn't quite as anthropomorphized as it could be: +1 for only having a pseudo-mascot. But I'm convinced they can overcome this, even if their mascot is guaranteed to lose in a game of rock, paper, scissors.

inbox backwards

OK, so I haven't actually used Xobni -- despite how much time I spend in email -- since I'm both allergic to Outlook and very addicted to my web-based Gmail. But I have seen enough demonstrations to know that Xobni can show you some things about your emailing habits (and the habits of those you email) that are sure to make you stroke your chin. Learn the optimal time to email that special someone, measure your own laziness with email replies, or even realize you're not spending enough time reading those emails from mom -- all with pretty graphs. Efficiency really is a beautiful thing.

They've also got a visibly excited mascot: +2 points.

If The Man has you running Outlook and you'd like to be spending less time in the office, it might be worth sending these fellas an email.

Alternatively, if you are The Man, and would like to hit those performance goals and nab that bonus, it might be worth sending these fellas an email.

which alien do you likebetter?

The premise? Select the pictures you likebetter and learn a little something about yourself (w00t for keyboard shortcuts and arrow keys).

I have no idea how the brain works, but it'll start guessing things about you based on your selections (it does this just like a real brain, by turning pink: +2 for pink-flashing brain).

However, brain aside, likebetter doesn't appear to have a mascot: -1 for no mascot.

Then again, there are games you can play with your friends to find out just how good of a friend they are. Consider this a good quarterly tool for reevaluating your relationships (and just in time for holiday gift giving!). I'm learning how well my girlfriend knows me right now...

There are also channels for specific things, like puppies, kittens, bands, and as you may have noticed, even reddit logos.

Bryan was so kind as to create the last one just for us, since I'd always been curious about what the most popular logo doodle was. Maybe we'll make some merch out of it or something, so please vote -- in general, too. Democracy is cool.

reddit alien glues jams, rocks out

So, this all started with an email to the YCombinator mailing list offering to doodle some YC-startup-themed logos. I also offered to throw in a brief write-up. To do this, I wouldn’t even try to use any of their competitors, or do any kind of objective review, but rather speak from the gut. Now, it’s going to be hard for me to match the hyperbole of Michael Arrington, but I’ll try.

Speaking of TechCrunch, it gave JamGlue some love last week, but I can assure you it was all well deserved. I had registered shortly after they first launched a limited release to the YC folks, but admittedly hadn’t gotten a chance to really play around with it. I would have had this thing written 45 minutes ago if I hadn’t been feverishly remixing my entry for the The Submarines Remix Contest. Seriously, as someone with virtually no musical talent whatsoever, I was surprised by how engrossed I was in tweaking Super Mario mixes, laying down NIN beats, and adding more cowbell. (Sorry, you should have known that was coming).

I’m also big fan of the mascot, the most accurate measure of a website’s usefulness: +3 for rocking-out mascot.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, JamGlue seems to have all the tools one would need to become a computer-chair DJ. The Flash mixing board is snappy and snazzy, all you need to do is come up with a DJ name (feature request: automatic DJ-name-generator). Plus, It’s all under the Creative Commons license (+1 for the musical utopia). Does the reddit alien think this is the future of remixing music and will revolutionize the web? Perhaps... since we can't all have the advantage of time travel, it's hard to say for sure, but the music industry sure could use a remix.

And now some dope jams I think would make a great addition to anyone’s "mood music" playlist:

Me and My Mario by wisefool

borat he like you he like sex by bert111

In case you were curious, yes, that is a Metallica shirt the alien is wearing. And no, you can’t find any Metallica mixes on Jamglue. *sigh* Lars, I’m so disappointed.