Entrepreneurs are not people who come up with ideas; they are people who successfully execute ideas through further iteration and development.
There is an element of discovery in success; continually questioning the status quo (TechCrunch comments seem hung-up on this point).
I'm sure those who are chosen by YCombinator will be those who seem most capable of iteration and further creativity regardless of the origin of the idea.
Past that, the idea comes from one individual normally. It then takes a team to execute it and they share a passion for that idea. This is just like having PG on your team.
Oh, wow. Not that I'm a fan of TechCrunch either, but somehow I didn't know about this.
The journalism RFS resonated with me -- a lot. A close friend and I are in the middle of very quietly developing a project related to this. He's a successful iPhone developer for AT&T (internal applications). We've gone through the business model extensively, and we can monetize the hell out of it.
I've discussed going to YC with him, but we really wanted a working demo first. This might prompt us to bump schedule a bit.
I think the difference is that we didn't set out to do a journalism app or a publishing site; we set out to solve "the problem" of journalism and publishing, and in the process put an industry on its ear.
Yikes, I dunno. We started talking seriously about it a few months ago, following up on a conversation from over a year before. Development has just barely begun on two aspects of it. If we apply for Winter 2010, we're gonna have to push hard.
I'm currently writing some documents to finalize the business model and development roadmap.
Launch to alpha would be not less than 6 months if we busted our asses.
Well, they're certainly cut from the same cloth, a year apart, so it's likely there's going to be a lot of cross-over. It seems a lot more direct and focused, and less of a nudge than an out-and-out statement that they want to fund ideas along these lines this year.
Entrepreneurs are not people who come up with ideas; they are people who successfully execute ideas through further iteration and development.
There is an element of discovery in success; continually questioning the status quo (TechCrunch comments seem hung-up on this point).
I'm sure those who are chosen by YCombinator will be those who seem most capable of iteration and further creativity regardless of the origin of the idea.
Past that, the idea comes from one individual normally. It then takes a team to execute it and they share a passion for that idea. This is just like having PG on your team.