[sharkweek]

We were making software to generate web sites for commercial art galleries (who didn't want web sites).

Do you think this is where your affinity for people who might be pitching a bad idea but seem smart / have good work ethic comes from?

[pg]

Yes, actually. I feel like one of our advantages is to understand how lame founders can seem initially and yet ultimately succeed, from having been there ourselves. Or more precisely, which dimensions it's ok to be lame on, and which it isn't.

[sriramk]

If you had to fill out a YC application for ViaWeb back then when you initially had an idea and a working demo, how do you think you'd have fared?

For example, while it was very obvious that your team had high skill (given your academic credentials), you didn't have domain expertise in online commerce.

Would you have picked you? :)

[pg]

That's a question we ask regularly.

We did have domain expertise of a sort: we were experts in generating web sites, which back then was a comparatively rare type of knowledge.

I'm pretty sure we would have invested in us, because we had a very clear thesis about what needed to be made, and ecommerce would have seemed a promising market.

[technotony]

Could you fill that out a bit more? What dimensions do you think are critical to have right, and which can you fix later (ie be lame at initially)?

[pg]

You can be clueless about business and uncertain whether you want to start a company. You can't be lazy or stupid.