I first read about Y Combinator while browsing Paul Graham’s website. I am a huge fan of his and have tried many times to bring him to Brazil for FISL (unsuccessfully so far). By that time I was updating a lecture of mine where I quote something from his Hackers and Painters essay and sudenly I noted an “YC” link on the left, and decided to click to learn what was that.
Y Combinator is a venture capital firm to help start-ups. It was built on the concept that not much money is needed for “first-stage” start-ups (“from idea to company”, as they call it). Quite a concept! I lost track of it until yesterday, when I read this blog post summarizing one of its events for start-ups. I found it amazing how far it came in such little time. They’ve already funded about 100 start-ups, some of them really interesting.
Of those presented in that post, Posterous is one I found most interesting. They create instant blogs just by sending emails to some address. There’s no sign-up procedure… Just send the email with any attachments and voilà. There you have: a new blog.
Many others are really interesting (PollEveryWhere, IDidWork, Frogmetrics, just to name a few), so I really suggest reading that post.
I think Y Combinator is another great idea from Paul Graham, and I will be following it more closely, as a way to keep myself updated… Who knows… maybe I can get them to come to FISL to present that! ;-)
