RFS: Request for Startups
I’m generally intrigued with Y Combinator, an incubator for startups, but this new angle is especially interesting. Yesterday Paul Graham announced Request for Startups, which describes a specific idea they’d like to see startup teams address and apply to build. As he explained, “There are a lot of startup ideas we’ve been waiting for people to apply with, sometimes for years. Recently we tried hinting at some of them, and that has yielded results. So now we’re going to try being more direct: we’re going to issue numbered RFSes with more details about the idea, and suggestions about the sort of group that would be a good match for it. Groups applying to YC will be able to specify on the application form if they’re responding to a particular RFS.”
The first RFS is The Future of Journalism and asks, ” What would a content site look like if you started from how to make money–as print media once did–instead of taking a particular form of journalism as a given and treating how to make money from it as an afterthought?”