Trending On Hacker News?

I had no idea. I just now saw this. And this blog post is from a while ago.

Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Chris Dixon Kind Of Person

Image by Zach Klein via FlickrThere Are Two Kinds Of People In The World

This blog post by Chris Dixon has been making the rounds of the blogosphere. It has generated many comments at the blog itself. I happened to see the post soon after it came out, and I was the first or second person to leave a comment. I returned a few hours later, and there were already close to 100 comments. Obviously the post had sparked something.

Future Of The Internet: Easy, Says Dixon

One of my favorite Chris Dixon posts is equally short, it is one where Chris is relaying as to how the Internet stands to transform anything and everything.

48 Hours

It was two days before Demo Day at Y Combinator and Daniel Gross had moved from product to product like I had changed majors at college. The guy had nothing for Demo Day. The textbook thing to do for Paul Graham was to say, you know what, you had your 12 weeks, tough, you are out. But Paul Graham took the road not taken, and that made all the difference.

Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Greplin happened during the final 48 hours.

Jessica Mah: The Most Promising 19 Year Old Tech Entrepreneur In America

Or maybe she is 20 now. But still. Daniel Gross and Jessica Mah you have you to watch out for. Jessica's InDinero, the Mint.com for businesses, is headed for a hundred million plus kind of exit in a few years. Daniel will be swimming in the billion dollar range, if only because his product, Greplin, is just more fundamental. But Jessica has started by monetizing from day one. Three years from now they will not be by the roadside, a has been. They will be bigger than anything we can imagine right now.

Google Is Messing Up Google With Social

Image via CrunchBaseI don't want to get into the details. But I liked it much better that Google dealt with the content farms than I am liking Google's clumsy efforts to add social to search. Those two don't go together. The best information, by definition, will be with people I don't know.

Facebook has not grown at Google's expense. Facebook's rise has been to fill the social void. Most people most of the time just want to talk soap. They don't want to be educating themselves all day. And that's Facebook.

Instagram Wave

Image by exoskeletoncabaret via Flickr

TechCrunch: Instagram Now Adding 130,000 Users Per Week: An Analysis: Since launching just six months ago, Instagram has quickly become one of the web’s top photo sharing services. The company recently passed the two million user mark and announced the launch of their API....... Instagram is currently adding 130,000 registered users per week ..... Instagram’s 2.2 million users upload 3.6 million new photos per week (or 6 photos per second) ..... 37.5 percent of registered users have never uploaded a photo ..... 5 percent of users have uploaded over 50 photos ..... 65 percent follow nobody, and only 12 percent of users follow more than 10 people .....For users who upload at least one photo, there is a 45 percent chance they will upload a photo the following week ..... Those same users have a 25 percent chance they will upload a photo 12 weeks later, representing a significantly stronger retention rate than Twitter...... If it maintains its current pace, Instagram will continue to add a million new registered users every two months. ..... 37% of Instagram’s users have never uploaded a single photo and 65% have uploaded fewer than three photos. ..... This glut of inactive users is common in free online services, as we saw in our studies of Twitter Data and Foursquare Data last year. This isn’t necessarily a lack of total engagement, as users can use the app to simply follow their friends’ photo streams. ...... over half of Instagram’s users are following exactly one other user, with another 13% not following anyone ..... the vast majority of users who follow only one other user are following the “Instagram Team” account ..... 65% of users effectively follow no one. ...... Only 12% of users are following more than 10 people. ...... 76% of those users who upload their first photo go on to upload a second, 85% of those users go on to upload a third, and so on. ...... average time between any two uploads made by a single user is 43 hours ..... With each new photo uploaded by a user, the expected time until they upload their next photo decreases. ...... 45% of users are still uploading photos in Week 2, but that number drops down to around 25% by Week 12...... users who continue to upload are uploading photos at a faster rate as time goes on. ...... users acquired during such press flashes are, on average, more likely to churn than new users who came in through other channels. We’ve seen this trend in countless other businesses.

Greplin is a sibling company to Google. Greplin is a search engine. (Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited) The Huffington Post is a content company. It is pre Google.

It has been my contention that Instagram has been a sibling company to FourSquare and Gowalla. It is a check in company. Only you are not checking into a physical space, a business establishment, but rather a moment. It has hit some kind of a sweet spot.

Chris Dixon Is In The Big Leagues Now

Chris Dixon Just Impressed Me Like Never Before
Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

EatUps Don't Seem To Have A Monthly Rhythm

Image via CrunchBaseToday has been my day for New York City, for Microfinance, for Greplin.

Chris Dixon Just Impressed Me Like Never Before
Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited
Very Much Would Like To Go Into Bihar
Some Serious Biking
TED Talks: Wael Ghonim, Bill Gates
Passion For Microfinance, Passion For Social Media
Walking/Running: Putting One Foot After The Other
Love Is A Symbol
Going High Tech: Selfish Reasons
Microfinance Alone Can't Cure Poverty
Focus, Focus, Focus
I Love This City

But last night I was at the First FoodSpotting First Friday. I was surprised by how many people showed up. At one point I counted 31 people.

Chris Dixon Just Impressed Me Like Never Before

Image by Zach Klein via FlickrFor Chris Dixon to have been an early investor in Greplin, I mean I am mighty impressed. You have to have been party of some kind of an inner circle, you have to have earned your way to being part of that inner circle. Being part of that inner circle was not enough. I mean, the Y Combinator companies present in front of lots and lots of angels and investors. To be able to spot Greplin for the winner that it is, early on, I mean, I am impressed.

Take this for a compliment Dixon. You are even more impressive than I already thought you were. You just earned your Super Angel title in my world. Super Angels pay super attention to the really, really early stage companies. They go straight to the source. They put their ears to the ground. And then listen. For the horse hooves.

Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook

My number one gripe with both Twitter and Facebook - services I love - has been that - fuck it - I can't even search through all of my own tweets, I can't even search through my own Facebook wall.

Looks like they both needed an outside party to come along and take care of the problem. Daniel Gross, you are a billionaire for doing this.

Greplin



Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Image via CrunchBaseDon't get me wrong. I am and have been huge on Paul Graham and Y Combinator. Recently I read the name of a friend - 19 years old - in a magazine article. She apparently had graduated from Y Combinator and had just raised a million dollars in funding. I emailed her. Hey, is that you? Yes, it is me, she said. You should also raise money, right now is a great time to do so.

Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Me, BBC

But I have said at this blog a few times that I don't see any iconic company emerging out of Y Combinator. Y Combinator has had a propensity to produce middling companies. A $200 million exist is not impressive.

Greplin

And let me make it very clear I have not been reading up on Y Combinator companies. There must be gems being spewed out every few months. But I only read about companies that show up in the news.