Glad to be in the current YC class with Sam.

<plug>if you're interested in the intersection of econ and e-commerce we're hiring. http://freshplum.com/jobs </plug>

EDIT: Though I value transparency over most anything else, I'm removing the majority of this at Nick's (freshplum founder) request. To make a long story short: there was a configuration error on the server which allowed for discovery of features freshplum hadn't meant to launch yet. Nothing to be ashamed of, especially for a startup.

But I heard there was a company working to fix this sort of thing. ;)

Is the Olive Garden reference a metaphor or other abstract thing like Fresh Plum? I thought it was a restaurant chain in the US.

I imagine it just means that Nick is a recent graduate whose last job was at a restaurant. I worked at O'Charley's in college before I got my first dev job.

I think I had Nick as a server at the Olive Garden, once. I'm pretty sure he's a better engineer than a waiter. I did get a free Sprite off of him though.

Nice obfuscation of your email address.

c'mon dude

edit: i missed that you are the same company. plug away

Hey Michael - Thanks for your feedback. I'm not sure it's out of line to plug that we're hiring...especially in a post about my departure to join Freshplum.

You are right - there are more effective options. However we're at the stage where we'll take whatever chance we'll get to spread the word. As a small startup with limited resources you have to stay hungry.

First of all, congratulations, Sam. You're an inspiration to us all, and I wish you (and Freshplum) the best of luck.

It's definitely not out of line to plug that you're hiring-- my point was that you would be better to avail yourself of the special "hiring for YC company" posts built into the system, and I see that you've done exactly that.

In this thread, people can ask him question, something that can't be done on job postings.

Coincidentally I ran into this today:

http://blacklocus.com/

I wonder how much FreshPlum will differ.

Congrats to Sam and Nick. Sound exciting!

This has to be a bit disappointing from Facebook's perspective. When they bought Divvyshot it was described as a talent acquisition ... turns out that at least for Sam, it was just a short-term talent rental.

"Alexander, meanwhile, had helped manage OdioWorks, in addition to founding a previous Y Combinator company (a failed coupon site)"

What was the previous "failed coupon site" nick007 founded?

Petsales/Tinycoupon (W09). Cofounder was @breck, who has also launched a new startup in a later batch.

The email address script was cute :)

Fun, too! I just spent a nice few minutes in the Chrome debug console brute forcing it.

I suck at stats but isn't the expected value of Math.random E=0.5? Which makes the result Ex11x2 = 11?

EDIT: I do suck. The expected value of Math.random*11 is 5.5, which floors to 5. Thus the total is 10.

or just send an email to 0@,1@,2@,3@,4@...22@ :)

Assuming they won't notice that is probably not the right way to go.

Also, 22@ might be a little high. Just sayin'

Heh ... I wonder why they didn't multiply by 7 (rather than 11)? The frequency counts would have been the same as rolling two dice. Too obvious perhaps? Or maybe that would have attracted the wrong sort of developers :-p

Ardent monopoly fans? heh. I not particularly skilled in javascript but surely multiplying by 7 would return a number between 0 and 6 inclusive? Which is much more like rolling two 7 sided dice numbered from 0 which yields a different value in the pattern.

Catan fans and craps shooters ;)

Oops ... off by 1 again ... story of my life :p

Congrats to Sam and Nick. I have no doubt that these two will kick ass.

Congrats man!