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We've got a couple brand new editors to throw to the podcast wolves: Emily Price and Chris Velazco, both of whom have certainly seen their share of the wireless industry over the past few years. We'll be doing a live Hangout on Google+ and YouTube, ...



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To Counter Investor Signaling, YC Partners Can No Longer Be The First Money Into The Incubator’s Startups

Y Combinator has long allowed its partners to invest their own personal money in the’s incubator startups–often times partners put money into these startups before institutional investors and angels have a look. Unfortunately, whether a partners (or partners) put money into a YC company started to become a signal to outside investors of the good bets in the incubator. It makes sense–these partners are often integrally involved in helping build these companies inside of Y Combinator. So they would know which startups have the legs to be successful, and potentially have insider knowledge into which startups have the potential for going the distance. To mitigate this signaling effect, Y Combinator is implementing a new policy whereby YC Partners can’t be the first money into a startup from the incubator.

Specifically, YC partners can’t be in the first $500,000 a company raises, unless it’s 3 weeks past Demo Day.

As YC co-founder Paul Graham explains to us, the danger of letting the partners at an incubator invest in the startups is that makes it harder for the ones the partners don’t invest in to raise money. In the early years of YC, this wasn’t as much of an issue because Graham was the only one investing, and he wasn’t systematic about it. But in the last few batches, investors started treating the companies that had investments by YC partners as an indication of what YC thought of the startups.

Currently YC has about a dozen partners involved including Paul Buchheit, Garry Tan, and Geoff Ralston. What’s also of interest is that any funds that YC partners operate will also fall into this rule as well well. So the new fund started by Tan, now part-time partner Harj Taggar, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, will not be able to be the first money into a startup.

This is clearly a founder-friendly move, and evens the playing field in some ways for startups to raise money from outside investors. It’s no secret that Y Combinator’s class sizes have steadily risen, and in the effort to save time and optimize their money, investors look for signals on which startups to invest in. Of course, YC partners investing in a startup is just one of many signals investors are looking at when evaluating a startup at the seed stage.

YC also recently debuted a new, easier convertible equity model for founders.

Photo Credit/Flickr

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Canada's Wind Mobile offers unlimited US roaming for $15 extra per month

Canadians frequently have to pay through the nose to use their phones in the US; at best, they'll get a paltry 50MB of data per day. They won't have that problem for long, though, since Wind Mobile is launching an unlimited US roaming plan on ...



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An Interactive Map of What America's Spies Are Worried About

This Is A $450K Lamborghini Dangling Over An NYC Rooftop

VC Lip Reading Video Is The Best VC Video You’ll See Today

If you’re familiar with the ‘Bad Lip Reading of The NFL’ videos on YouTube, you might get a charge out of this hilarious mashup created by startup MeetBall. It puts the same spin on a collection of clips of VCs and founders and was created on a challenge from ex-Googler and Homebrew investor Hunter Walk. If you’re interested in seeing some of the most well-known investors, founders and VCs in the industry say things like ‘I want to smell your gum’ then this is for you.

I think this wins the internet today. Thanks MeetBall.

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Purr Pebble Smartwatch App Vibrates Your Life Away In 5 Minute Chunks

Yesterday, a new faceless “watch” called Durr that simply vibrates every five minutes got a big feature over at Verge. It’s an interesting concept, and in his article Aaron Souppouris compared the experience to that of wearing a Pebble. That inspired a Pebble developer to try to accomplish the same thing, albeit without the need for a brand new device, and the result is Purr, an app for the upcoming Pebble OS 2.0.

The Purr app mimics the Durr’s functionality exactly, vibrating the Pebble on your wrist every five minutes, and presenting nothing on the display at all. It simply deactivates the Pebble’s screen, rather than presenting any kind of watch face or any other information. The idea behind both the Purr app and the Durr watch are the same: To remind you every few minutes that time is passing, and possibly to inspire you to enjoy time more by noting that fact.

There are some key differences between both approaches, however: The Durr lacks any screen whatsoever, meaning you won’t be tempted to check your other apps or watchfaces. Plus, notifications from your phone still make it through when you’re using Purr on the Pebble, which is either an advantage or a downside depending on how committed you are to the philosophy behind the design of the Durr. Also, as Purr is in beta and running on pre-release Pebble OS 2.0 software, it currently exhibits some odd behavior; specifically, vibrations repeat a number when each five-minute period is up, and the pattern or sequence doesn’t seem to follow any rhyme or reason. These are issues that Purr developer James Brooks says he’s working on resolving, however.

A watch that’s literally constantly reminding you of time slipping through your grip, and by extension your own mortality, is a little bit of an outlier need from a gadget. But it’s a perfect early example of how Pebble’s new SDK 2.0 can unlock a lot of potential for developers. We’ve only just begun to see the value of a smartwatch as a platform, but the overall flexibility is beginning to show.

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