Wanted: iPad developers
This is for all the students I know at the University of Maryland. One of the smartest guys on the planet, Paul Graham (yes, the one whose book I make you all read) heads up a VC firm called Y Combinator. It has been ranked very highly recently, meaning that they know what they’re doing. But you’ve already read Hackers & Painters, haven’t you, so you already know that.
Anyway, Y Combinator’s most recent Request for Startups is called “iPad Applications” and targets the iPad platform. They are actively soliciting applications (from you) for funding (from them). Clearly, YC get that the iPad represents a (potential) sea change in the way people use computers. But a sea change requires new killer apps, and new approaches to thinking about apps, what they do, how they relate to the user, how they are developed, etc. YC is obviously very interested in new thinking on this topic, and, as I have mentioned to all of my students, I think you guys are often the right place to go for out-of-the-box approaches, because you have not been (too) tainted yet with orthodoxy and conservative design approaches.
So: get rolling on this. Like, now.
By the way, thanks to John Gruber at Daring Fireball for finding and posting the YC link (DF is one of my favorite news sources).
