Gentrification in the Bay Area is a popular topic lately.  San Francisco rents are up more than 3 times the national average, reports SFGate.  The cost of living has simply gotten too expensive except for those with well-paying jobs at established companies.  That’s a serious long-term problem for everybody because the high cost of living destroys […]

Do Airbnb hosts in New York have an expectation of privacy when violating state law out in the open on the Internet?  That’s a central issue in Airbnb’s legal struggle against the New York Attorney General.  The Internet Association, a lobby group funded by Airbnb, filed a brief today supporting Airbnb.  Having read through all its […]

Soylent is a dry powder shake mix designed as a meal-replacement drink.  The mix contains “an assortment of… vitamins deemed medically necessary for a person to live.”  Soylent, a product of Rosa Labs, started as a Crowdhoster campaign that resulted in over $1.5 million pre-orders.  The meal-replacement drink also just raised a $1.5 million seed round.  Rather […]

New York property managers don’t want their buildings in online listings of cheap nightly rentals.  Building supervisors have begun formally warning residents against listing their apartment on short-term rental services like Airbnb.  Property managers are also asking tenants to report neighbors they suspect are using such services.  Airbnb’s Fight Against New York And Protecting The […]

Notwithstanding investor rants about foreigners lacking brains and being unqualified to run a business, Airbnb continues its mission of being a global travel marketplace.  The share economy company that enables people to stay in unique spaces in 33,000 cities across 192 countries recently won a legal battle in New York City.  However, the war continues […]

Scribd is the self-described “world’s largest digital library, where readers can discover books and written works of all kinds.”  Scribd Subscriptions is the company’s new $8.99/month service that offers unlimited book reading.  The YC S06 company is great for sharing documents, like school notes and research, court filings, and recipes.  Scribd co-founder and CEO Trip Adler also recently […]

Corporations in the high-tech industry spend millions of dollars every year in Washington, D.C.  That money is spent on influencing politicians to change the laws that affect those companies’ agendas.  Big corporations need not be only ones to profit from public policy, though.  Businesses of all sizes can hack potential growth simply by paying attention […]

Paul Graham recently interviewed with TechCrunch’s Ryan Lawler at the PreMoney Conference.  The discussion focused on the current inefficiency in Series A fundraising, including a possible solution.  Mr. Graham also mentioned the current state of Y Combinator and provided updated amounts regarding its portfolio.

Y Combinator has added four new part-time partners, one new full-time partner, and a full-time partner is reducing his role to part-time.  That’s all according to a post on the official Y Combinator blog at Posthaven.  Three of these new advisors have previously founded YC-funded startups.  One of the new advisors is the first YC […]

Y Combinator’s universe is more vast than you might initially think.  There’s Y Combinator itself, consisting of at least 14 partners and advisors.  Paul Graham inherently means YC’s universe includes the Lisp programming language and Arc dialect.  The other partners are also all interesting characters, like Robert T. Morris and the Gmail creator, Paul “Don’t Be Evil” […]