The 500 Startups blog covers startup funding, metrics, PR, and company-building advice from the accelerator and its network.
HN commenters link it for its cohort metrics posts, PR videos for startups, the Twilio fund announcement, and a guide to starting a startup in Japan.
Bit more background info here (I co-founded the company that the person blogging here is working for, s'pose he'd better answer about the pay :)) http://blog.500startups.com/2011/01/24/how-to-create-a-successful-startup-in-japan-in-10-easy-steps/
Visa: If you have a college degree and/or significant experience it helps a lot but we know people who've managed to self-sponsor with just the experience.
But working for a traditional Japanese company is normally a soul-crushing experience for foreigners. There are not a lot of startups here :)
After reading quite a bit about cohort analysis[1][2] (including Fred Wilson's[3]), this line made me understand why it is so important.
[1] http://blog.500startups.com/2011/07/13/cohort-metrics-for-startups-revealed-part-i-plain-english/
[2] http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/09/one-line-split-test-or-how-to-ab-all.html
[3] http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/10/the-cohort-analysis.html
Twilio wants him to do this. They created a fund that invests in startups like patio11's [1]. One of the Twilio people even wrote a comment on HN encouraging patio11 to apply [2].
[1] http://blog.500startups.com/2010/09/23/twilio-fund-for-500-startups/
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1721822
I also highly recommend watching this 2 videos from 500startups: PR secrets for startups. http://blog.500startups.com/2010/09/24/startup2startup-pr-secrets-for-startups-video/
A lot of useful advices on how to get the press to cover your product.
There was a similar post on the 500 Startups blog last week: http://blog.500startups.com/2010/11/03/livin-la-vida-startup-in-beantown/