Paul Buchheit

"Hsieh didn’t have to conform to Western standards of comportment because he adopted early on the Western value of risk-taking. Growing up, he would play recordings of himself in the morning practicing the violin, in lieu of actually practicing. He credits the experience he had running a pizza business at Harvard as more important than anything he learned in class. He had an instinctive sense of what the real world would require of him, and he knew that nothing his parents were teaching him would get him there." - Paul Buchheit

"It is a part of the bitter undercurrent of Asian-American life that meritocracy comes to an abrupt end after graduation." - A Mitchell

Or more specifically, the "merit" of test-taking is not so highly valued outside of school. - Paul Buchheit

The article’s characterization of Asian-Americans sounds vaguely similar to some job descriptions we might see for entry-level software engineers. In Asia. More quotes from the article: “The traits that got you to where you are won’t necessarily take you to the next level,” says the diversity consultant Jane Hyun, who wrote a book called Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling. To become a leader requires taking personal initiative and thinking about how an organization can work differently. It also requires networking, self-promotion, and self-assertion. - A Mitchell

"“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”  - Rainer Maria Rilke" - Paul Buchheit

@Clare, I like that quote !! - Peter Dawson

Paul, please let me know if you've received my message. - prinzdezibel

so what is unconditional approval? - всех сферических тёлочек

"The idea behind Grubwithus is an awesome yet simple one. You browse for a restaurant you’d like to go to in a certain city and buy a ticket for your meal at a set price. But the key is that others do this as well, all with the intention of meeting new people over dinner. And when you’re buying your ticket, you can see who your dinner buddies will be. Yes, it’s sort of like Groupon meets Meetup. And yes, it’s brilliant. So it should be no surprise that a long list of prominent early-stage investors have decided they’d love to back Grubwithus. The service, which launched out of Y Combinator last year, has just raised a $1.6 million round. Who’s at the funding table? Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, NEA, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Vivi Nevo, Yuri Milner, Maynard Webb, Matt Cutts, Elad Gil, Paul Buchheit, Alexis Ohanian, Start Fund, and Y Combinator." - Paul Buchheit

why not make it - pay my dinner if you want to talk to me? - ПокаОдминНеРазлучитНас

"What’s really great about this story is that WuFoo is another Y Combinator win. The startup launched way back in 2006 with only $118,000 in angel money (Paul Bucheit, who is now a partner at Y Combinator, was one of the investors). The company never needed to raise money again. It added payment processing options a couple years later, and now more than $100 million in transactions have been processed through its forms." - Paul Buchheit

whew thats a good Exit for CAPEX of $118K = $35M exit.. ratios are sky rocket high ! - Peter Dawson

Happy Birthday! - OCoG of FF, Jimminy

Shorter, curated list: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Bruce Lewis

It's hard to believe that talk happened six years ago. Passages from it so clearly memorable, i recognized it from the first six words. - John Lam

"The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud. As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive. A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access." - Paul Buchheit

Hyper local... like... 5 feet either side of me? - Johnny

Also, it's somehow related to GroupOn. - Paul Buchheit

That's all about the idea. What does the application tell you about the team? - Bruce Lewis

That's a lot of the advice I give to a lot of people. - Gabe

Hi Paul. I'm sorry to bother you but i have serious issue related with friendfeed. Someone is impersonating me at this profile; http://friendfeed.com/alikeri... and he/she is using my real life information, phone number and my own pictures to insult me. Unfortunately, this fake profile already listed in Google search under my name and i'm having a hard time in these days. I already reported this issue with using ff contact form but it's not resolved. Could you help me? - Monad Teodise

'Average' has tighter bounds than 'normal' in common usage. Everyone who is 'average looking' is 'normal looking' but not everyone who looks normal is average. You can be a normal person without being an average person. Being above or below average doesn't make you abnormal. You'd have to be further along the curve than that. - Kevin Fox

Glen Campbell is there. Jason Womack. Who else? Speak up, people, lest you make this guy think FriendFeed is dead! - Bruce Lewis

I'm in Houston all week. And the next week and the one after that. I am on an eternal panel titled "How to survive in suburbia with a family on one income". ;) Enjoy Austin. And don't mess with Texas! - Josh Haley

How about these three people: http://friendfeed.com/louisgr... - Stephen Mack

I didn't realize autism had an auto-immune component. - Paul Buchheit

I think this was on Futurama. - dmitrievmenov

So its all your fault, then? - DGentry

Either that or he can't get his business going because it depends on state or local services. - Ruchira S. Datta

"Connecticut State Sen. Martin Looney (D-New Haven) has introduced a short bill (PDF) that not only acknowledges the right of citizens to record on-duty police officers, it also provides for a civil action against police officers who violate that right. That second part is important. A right doesn’t mean much if there are no consequences for government officials who ignore it. Witness this case in Florida, where an officer erroneously tries to say federal law prohibits citizen recordings of cops. Even in states where courts have thrown out criminal charges, a cop who doesn’t want to be recorded can still harass, threaten, and even arrest you. You may not be charged. But he won’t be punished, either. This is the first proposed state law I’ve seen on this issue that includes an appropriate enforcement mechanism. It would be great to see Congress take up a similar bill, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments." - Paul Buchheit

Joe: Your ignorance truly shines through ... recording cops in public can land you hard prison time in Illinois, an overwhelmingly traditional Dem state. - LANjackal

"Khosla Ventures likes social advertising startup MyLikes. The VC firm is leading the startup’s $5.6 million Series A financing. Lightspeed Partners also invested and Metamorphic Ventures, which participated in the all-Googler $600,000 seed round, ponied up again. Additionally, seed investor Paul Buchheit is joining MyLike’s board of directors. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail and founder of FriendFeed, recently left Facebook to become a partner at Y Combinator (although MyLikes is one of his private investments). Alex Kinnier, a partner at Khosla Ventres and formerly a Google advertising product executive, is also taking a board seat." - Paul Buchheit

This is made doubley rad by you holding a shot gun in your avatar, sir :) - Johnny

Wow. Congrats you two - Deepak Singh

"The new health care reform legislation is not perfect. Nothing that complex could be. But I have no doubt that the system is broken and reform is absolutely essential. If we are not going to have universal coverage but are going to rely on employer plans, then we must offer individuals, self-employed people and small businesses a place to purchase insurance at a reasonable price. If members of Congress feel so strongly about undoing this important legislation, perhaps we should stop providing them with health insurance. Let’s credit their pay for the amount that has been paid by the taxpayers, and let them try to buy health insurance in the individual market. My bet is that they all would be denied. Health insurance reform might suddenly not seem to them like such a bad idea." - Paul Buchheit

Re: "uninsured patients are billed more than the rates that insurers negotiate with doctors and hospitals, and we wanted to pay those lower rates" -- the real data, as it pertained to Violet's birth, is quite stunning. http://friendfeed.com/tudor... - Tudor Bosman

Yeehaw! - imabonehead

Where was this rodeo? - Robert Felty

Tuscon. - Louis Gray

"Y Combinator alum Crocodoc is launching an HTML5-based version of its online document viewing service today. The software reads in any kind of document and renders it in HTML5 in real time on web sites. Web developers just have to drop an HTML tag for each document uploaded to Crocodoc’s servers into their site’s code to add Crocodoc’s widget to their site. Users can then scroll through the documents as soon as they are rendered. A lot of other companies have tried to kill off the practice of sending around attached documents. It can be a pretty big hassle and everyone has to have the same software to access the document — like Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word. So there’s something to be said about not having to install that expensive software on a lot of devices if users just use it to read documents. The quality is pretty good — it’s hard to tell much of a difference between the original document and a reconstructed version on the site. Crocodoc’s HTML5-based version of one document can be seen on the left in the image above, with the original document on the right. Web browsers can interact with the Crocodoc documents like they would any other document — meaning they can pull o" - Paul Buchheit

Wondering how is it different from their earlier venture, WebNotes? - Shakeel Mahate

"1000Memories, a web service that helps digitally honor the memory of a loved one, has announced that it has closed a $2.5 million series A round of funding from Greylock Partners. 1000Memories gives friends and family an online destination to memorialize the recently departed. Its founders started the company after experiencing the impact of a death on Facebook and realizing that it wasn’t a sufficient or effective way to remember loved ones. The company, originally funded by Y Combinator, has attracted a great deal of attention since its graduation from the startup accelerator’s program. Not long after its debut in August 2010, the company raised a $500k angel round from an all-star list of investors including Caterina Fake (Flickr), Paul Buchheit (Gmail, FriendFeed), Ben Ling (Google), Keith Rabois (Square, Slide), Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Chris Sacca and others. Its $2.5 million series A was not long after, a deal that closed in late 2010." - Paul Buchheit

Will be great for genealogical work. - Josh Haley

I built something similar at Caring.com. Based on my experiences, I can see a clear pathway to success for 1000Memories. - AJ Kohn

"Greplin, the service that indexes and lets you search all of your online social stuff (Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), has just opened its doors to everyone. Earlier this week we reported on their new financing round from Sequoia Capital, and over the last couple of days they’ve let in everyone on the waitlist. And as of right now, you can use Greplin, too. Why would you want to use Greplin? Because it lets you search across all of your emails, Facebook data and Twitter stuff with one query. And they haven’t stopped there. You can also authorize Google Apps, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Evernote, Yammer, Salesforce, Box.net, Basecamp, Google Voice, Google Reader, Google Contacts and more. And then find stuff in those apps with a single query." - Paul Buchheit

Any idea when Friendfeed will show up as a Greplin source? Have badly needed that three times in the last month. Kudos! - Christopher Galtenberg

Sorta like friendfeed minus the conversation. I hope they would add friendfeed.com as one of the services that it indexes - Shakeel Mahate

Anyone here a Bill O'Reilly fan? - Paul Buchheit

I haven't seen much of O'Reilly. I used to see a lot of Colbert; looks like he's still really good. - Bruce Lewis

"The intrinsic path to success is to focus on being the person that you are, and to put all of your energy and drive into being the best possible version of yourself." <--This. - Derrick

This sounds like an exchange I'll never forget between a reporter and an Olympic athlete. The reporter asked where she got the discipline to train long and hard every day. The athlete's response was that what many people mistake for discipline is actually passion. It's because she really wanted to be her best. - Bruce Lewis

Off-topic, can you install tweetmeme on your blog, I would like to re-post it without too many steps ;-) - joergkurtwegner

I am finishing my last sandwich right now! - Sebastian Wain

"If something is immune to the laws of supply and demand, it's usually because someone deliberately set it up to circumvent those rules. Supply and demand should have caused these lower tier schools to lower their costs to entice students away from the better but more expensive schools.  But they don't need to, because all law schools are free.  Read it again.  All law schools are free. Not after you graduate, of course, but right now.  Law schools can charge anything they want because everyone has enough money to pay for it- today.  As long as there are guaranteed government loans available for this, there is no economic incentive to lower the costs.  And as long as the price is zero, demand will always be infinity. If it was true supply and demand, #1 ranked Harvard and #100 ranked Hofstra wouldn't have the same tuition.  But they do, the same as stupid Washington University, which is so stupid it's in Missouri.  "It's underrated."  Bite me.  Are we saying that Hofstra's worth the same money as Harvard?  That people would pay anything to go to Hofstra?  No, they don't have to pay anything to go to Hofstra.  That's the point.  You cannot, on the one hand, say you want to lower the number of students while on the other hand incentivizing them to go.  But you're not incentivizing the students, are you?  It's a wealth transfer to universities.  That's why you want to directly limit the number of schools  while keeping the payments to the rest of them intact.  More for you.  And if you have to throw Mr. Wallerstein under the bus to hide this truth, well, sacrifices have to be made." - Paul Buchheit

Maybe not as many as there used to be? All I know is what my sister tells me. - Victor Ganata

ROFL - Scoble, Alex Scoble

"Ahoy, if Zach and Burger launches the road show t' in'estors, he can not de'elop the products attenti'ely. ” Left cloth o' Paul, old soldier o' Silicon 'alley that Facebook was engaged in 'enture capital and cut the sea specially(Paul Buchheit) just now recently Say, ” I think 'ery urgent now, so if transfer gobbets o'fine gold t' other thin's not important from the products, will become a serious mistake. ” Diamond claims, if Facebook is listed on open markets such as Nasdaq,etc., Zach and Burger must submit t' the rapscallions o' directors formed by half external personage. In order t' safeguard the stock price o' Facebook, need t' carry on other compromise too. Ye'll ne'er get me buried booty!..." - WoH: Professor MOTHRA

"It’s the most entrepreneur friendly investment that I can think of, short of just handing people money as a gift. Each startup can choose to take the investment or not. If all 40 of the startups accept the loan then a total of $6 million will have been invested. And Milner/SV Angel say they intend to offer this for each Y Combinator startup in the future, too. That means Y Combinator entrepreneurs will not only get the $15k – $20k from Y Combinator during the first few months of their project, but they can look forward to another $150,000 a few months later. That’s usually enough to complete development and launch a product." - Paul Buchheit

+150. Y Comb money alone was only enough to support the ramen crowd. Now those of us that have run a social network or two, and have good amt of experience in the field (and family, and mortgage) can take a run as well. (Assuming this portends similar future investments) - Christopher Galtenberg

Yuri is crazy in a good way :). - Private Sanjeev

This looks like a very sane investment strategy, having pg and paul vet seed-stage startups. I wonder if paul's recent blog post detailing his investment track record was part of the decision-making process. - Bruce Lewis

Something tells me Google are going to put AdWords in your car and kill the Billboard - Johnny

Who wants a car that drives itself? I want a car that drives me! - Gabe

And self-searching souls? - Josh Haley

I want a car that drives itself from it's parking place to the front door to pick me up! ;) - Rachel Lea Fox

I hope the exit was joyful and that he never has to return to that. - Clare Dibble

Such sorrow. I wish there'd been an alternative.There wasn't. He was so brave. He tried, for many years. Clare's comment is very well-said. - Ellie K