ajkates

Great idea guys. Love it, and look forward to using.

I understand what Mattermark is trying to do here, and applaud them for trying, but the way the data is presented doesn't withstand scrutiny. There are far too many interceding variables for this analysis to have any merit. Namely (1) total deals done/varying market conditions in a given year, (2) yearly cohort size, (3) the fact that most Series A deals happen within 3 years of accelerator graduation, (4) not accounting for large seed deals, later stage deals, and exits. I don't quite understand how number of Series A deals equates to success in the first place, and I'm having trouble finding what this analysis proves, if anything.

Congrats guys! Awesome team with an incredibly high-need and well-executed product. Looking forward to seeing you guys scale!

Thanks for another great post Garry. This is also perfectly relevant advice for talking about your business in general, not just for YC (investors, prospective hires, etc.).

Congratulations to Garry, Alexis, Alina, and team! Such an awesome group---and an immense pleasure to work with. You won't find a more beloved group of partners in the entire Valley. So excited to be sharing in this journey together!

Whether entrepreneurship can truly be taught or not is debatable. Still, there's no question that certain schools better nurture an entrepreneurial attitude.

I couldn't help but notice the statistics for these schools, though. I presently attend Cornell University, and have a hard time believing that these schools would be better suited for an entrepreneur. 30 entrepreneurship courses? Cornell has over 200, including more than 30 geared toward web entrepreneurship alone. No less than two of my friends' teams here were given YC interviews. My courses for next semester include "Internet Strategy," "Networks" (taught by the legendary Jon Kleinburg), "Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise," and "Psychology of Social Computing."

In any case, a college education is by no means necessary to be a successful entrepreneur. In many cases, an entrepreneur's time can be better spent working on a startup than attending school. I'm rather surprised though, with how instrumental my education has been to my startup, and how helpful the resources of a college campus have been. No amount of education can replace experience, but I know that what I've learned will serve me well when I begin to work on my startup full time.

You absolutely NEED the RSS feeds for each of these sites, otherwise it's just a bunch of uncustomizable links; totally worthless.

I'll stick with my iGoogle at the moment.

Again, it's a trust thing. Communities are based entirely upon trust, and no one wants to trust an old geezer.

Plus, it probably helped him pick up the ladies.

One of my co-founders worked for Google this past summer. He didn't have one negative word to say about it.