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Logging in anonymously, because it lets me be slightly more direct. As someone who does work on a startup in London, but didn't go last night, it's because I'v
by LHNanon 16y ago
Logging in anonymously, because it lets me be slightly more direct.
As someone who does work on a startup in London, but didn't go last night, it's because I've found the HN London meetups to be chock-full of people who don't work on startups, but simply talk all evening about recycled opinions they've garnered from reading HN posts.
Not an interesting way to spend an evening.
- intranation 16y agoHN is probably quite an aspirational thing for those still stuck in the perceived drudgery of enterprise and large scale software development for established companies. It's their dose of inspiration, I feel. I agree it doesn't add a lot of value to the community, though. Speaking for myself, as someone who works at a startup, I was actually busy working last night. Like most nights.
- Rygu 16y agoYeah, instead of talking about starting, how to and when to start... Just use your time well! Voted +1
- dmitri1981 16y agoI think you are being a bit harsh. The meetup was never intended to be an event purely for the early stage startup entrepreneur. The primary goal was to allow the users of Hacker News to meet in the real world, talk about their interests and share experiences. I've met many fascinating people there, who between them have been through all stages of the startup life cycle and made many new friends. I am sorry that you got stuck talking to a bore. In my experience people like that have been very much the exception rather than the rule. Anyway, I value all feedback and want the meetup to be as useful and interesting as possible so if you have suggestions or ideas on how to improve it I would love to hear from you.
- ximeng 16y agoAs a not-working-at-a-startup person, when I went to the first HN meetup I was impressed by the fact that pretty much everybody I met was working at a startup. That's part of the reason I haven't been since actually, because I didn't think I had too much to add to all those startup people. So my experience was pretty much the opposite of yours. How many have you been to?
- lhnz 16y agoHaha, I am sure you would have thought of me as 'that guy'. I'm not in a startup, I'm quite young, very interested in technology and from time to time work on web development 'side-projects'. But I want to work on a startup in the future and I want to meet intelligent people interested in creating startups. Surely that's the point? I understand that you want to meet people that are more successful than you. You want to meet people that you can learn from. Or at least to meet people that are on the same level to you that you might share the experience with or work with. But that's exactly the same reason that people with less experience go. So I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being hypocritical because this would be missing the point: you judge the evening on its value to you (as opposed to the value you're given others by effectively mentoring them). That is just what I do. However, at the very least I expect you could find good developers, future employees, interesting stories and people to bounce off ideas and help test your software. edit; As others have stated: if you are really interested in startups you should probably be at home working. ;)
- koenbok 16y agoAmsterdam is suffering from the same problem, and likely other EU cities might as well. And by that I mean it's full of consultants/social media people, not do-ers. That's why we started STIKK (stikk.nl). (Near-future) founders only.
- tim_iles 16y agoShame - I've been to two of these HN meetups, and last night I met a lot of people working on interesting ideas. Most of these ideas were actually projects that are too early to call a startup but could possibly have potential. Maybe I got lucky and chatted to the right guys.