Disqus - Latest Comments for allantyoung

Re: Your Credentials Are Worthless Here

Allan — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 00:34:52 -0000

Not everyone can be a great artist but a great artist can come from anywhere.

Re: Eight years today

Allan — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:17:47 -0000

This is the most valuable mentoring you've done for me. Thanks.

Re: Startups Are Hard : jazzychad's blog

Allan — Tue, 03 May 2011 04:10:37 -0000

Chad, you are one of my heroes from YC W2010 - seriously. I thought you were brave for going it alone as a solo founder. You shipped code fast. You were one of the good guys.

Before you get back in the grind, I hope you spend some quality time with your wife. We're lucky to have remarkable women who support our dreams.

Re: Raising money in the 21st century, or: Why Zencoder raised $2M

Allan — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:41:40 -0000

Congrats to the Zencoders team! I love what you guys are doing and believe this is a huuuuuge opportunity.

Re: Look Out Quora, InboxQ Takes Q&A Off-Site And On To Twitter

Allan — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 03:03:44 -0000

Joe and the Answerly team are some hard working and smart dudes. We looked up to them at YC. This is a nice pivot. Congrats to Joe and his team.

Re: http://foodloves.me/post/2067766496

Allan — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 01:59:15 -0000

give me that uni - you've had enough!

Re: NYC Startups: Beware Mike “scam” Segal

Allan — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 13:31:30 -0000

I've run into this goon Mike Segal before. He tries to come off as being a big shot investment banker type who can get you "exposure" to many investors. He lurks around other startup events and picks off the weak contenders. The ones that don't get a lot of attention sometimes feel desperate enough to pay him to participate in his events.

Jason, I gotta tell you I'm just a little conflicted here. What if only dumb entrepreneurs can get sold by Mike? So he performs a valuable signal to the market to stay away from those entrepreneurs?

Re: Gmail creator Paul Buchheit leaves Facebook for Y Combinator

Allan — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:27:50 -0000

Harj is a winner too. He always asked tough and thoughtful questions of our YC startup. He's someone everyone who gets funded by YC can relate too; he's been in our shoes. He's built a product and sold his company, one of the ways we all seek to win. Harj treats everyone with respect and that earns him the respect necessary to be an important part of the YC team.

Re: http://foodloves.me/post/594786218

Allan — Sat, 15 May 2010 06:36:38 -0000

wow! this is all one meal? you know how to enjoy life!

Re: Get Custom Notifications on Your iPhone with Notifo

Allan — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:05:50 -0000

Nice post about Notifo. Chad the founder is a terrific technologist. Glad to see him continue to build layers of value into Notifo.

Re: food loves.me

Allan — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:30:33 -0000

Come visit San Francisco and we'll take you to get some Double Doubles! But then again, you do have the Shake Shack.

Re: The Case for the Fat Start-Up

Allan — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:50:51 -0000

Anyone who can quote Kanye, Shaw and The Game in a tech startup context earns instant credibility with me!

Drop gems like i dropped out of PE
They used to feel invisible
Now they know they invincible
Champion - Kanye West

Thanks for coming by Y Combinator and sharing some war stories earlier in the year, Ben. Helps to be a little 'gangsta' when the time calls for it.

Re: Nowmov: a StumbleUpon for real-time Video

Allan — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:06:41 -0000

These guys are rockstars! This is the sort of thing I'd use on my mobile smartphone. Riding the bus or waiting in line at the supermarket, I'd just whip out the phone, jump on Nowmov, and check out the current hottest videos across the net. Win!

Re: Greplin shines a spotlight through the cloud

Allan — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:56:18 -0000

Daniel is a smart guy. Watch out for whatever he does because he's going to do something amazing. He's probably the most audacious founder in the current YC batch and I've enjoyed getting to know him.

Re: Making Tech Predictions Is Like Riding A Bike With No Seat

Allan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:57:51 -0000

Finally caught up to this post. It's right on. Predictions can be fun if that's the original spirit and intent. They're much less interesting when used to show how smart you are. Even more tasteless when you go back and show how right you were while ignoring the many times you were wrong.

I hope all is going well Thom!

Re: Build to flip? (Scripting News)

Allan — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:42:22 -0000

I've been in both places and love both. Of course they're different but it's silly to suggest that San Francisco or the West Coast doesn't have culture or art or advertising. If the West Coast doesn't have these things, then no place has these things in the United States except for New York. New York's tech scene is vibrant and worth celebrating.

Re: Google Rolls Out Social Search-Will You Use It?

Allan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:11:51 -0000

Very interesting. This is definitely where SEO and social media converge. Google will have to keep developing those algorithms to adjust to the gaming that will inevitable happen from this.

Re: VC Seed Funding is Dead, Long Live VC Seed Funding!

Allan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:24:15 -0000

Nice post - really looking forward to that next post on referencing VCs. Thanks for curating a useful blog.

Re: Google Wave’s unproductive email metaphors

Allan — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:29:39 -0000

Ha! Sounds like Utopia. Let's hope this does come about.

Re: Google Wave: Real-time productivity on the Web

Allan — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:54:16 -0000

My friend, a Googler is promising to get me an invite! I need one like yesterday. It looks juicy!

Re: Smipple - Ian Lewis

Allan — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:26:23 -0000

Beta or not - sounds like a great idea. Congrats for launching Smipple. Hope that a ton of us American techies will use it.

Re: How to Attract Greater Success in Your Life?

Allan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:54:22 -0000

Great post! Zig is a smart guy.

Thanks for mentioning our SAMBA Blog on Twitter. What did you think about our latest post, How to Survive a Social Media Guru Explosion?

Re: How to Survive a Social Media Guru Explosion

Allan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:02:26 -0000

Jeremy - thanks for coming by and sharing your feedback! Of course I think you're right - there is an abundance of opportunity. There always will be for people willing to take the risk, move quickly, and have a long term view.

The problem is customers in the marketplace will become more confused than ever before. Think how you feel when you walk into a supermarket stocked with over 40,000 SKUs - where do you start? A flooded market filled with social media gurus makes the job a bit harder for the client to decide who to hire.

You obviously know what you're doing and appear to be totally committed to your craft. I think any client smart enough to hire you will see a good payoff. But finding you is the challenge. Once the prospective client finds you, figuring out that you're not a flash in the pan is another challenge. Those of us in the space can sort of know what to look for. Many clients wont.

So when the "Sameness of Promises Problem" becomes a big disorienting factor, what are you going to do to distinguish yourself from the crowd. In other words, how will you help the prospective client QUICKLY decide that you've got the chops to help him/her? Curate your client list! Fire clients and keep working your way up to bigger and better clients. It is only one method of standing out, there are many others. It just happens to be a very effective method.

Of course, you can thrive with a strategy to help the small moms and pops if that is the strategic niche that you've carved.

Thanks for the discussion!

Re: Google ads another weapon in the fight for change

Allan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:53:24 -0000

Thanks for this very helpful post. With all the news about Twitter lately, this had slipped past my radar. Google continues to give away power and knowledge - I hope this will result in more amazing innovations.

What a wonderful blog and website! I love the way you describe yourself Johan! Blown away by your Inspiration page - lots of great talent to emulate and synthesize. Bravo!

Re: Threatened at BlogHer

Allan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:02:49 -0000

Even if you got her name and blog, you'd probably have been nice and left that out. The nature of the story was notable enough without names. Thanks for sharing this experience.

I've known a couple of "bloggers" that thought their own little platform gave the license to abuse businesses. One "blogger" or "social geek" who is active on Twitter actually thought that his local Chick-fil-A should honor a non-existent coupon he mistakenly believed was valid because he has a huge following and could cause them bad publicity. That they should make an exception for him because he has a semi-popular blog. Behavior like this makes it harder for businesses to trust bloggers.