11 ms·

Thoughts on Startup School

318 points by cperciva 12y ago

lnanek2 12y ago
Google does this constantly too. I've been to several Google Glass events where the wall outlets were all hidden or taped down. Sometimes there is only one in the entire room an event is going on in like the GDK Sneak Preview and I'll take turns with someone using it to keep Glass alive or just give up and go downstairs and use an outlet in the lobby, giving up on the event. For that particular event a journalist passed on the way out and we had an amusing conversation making fun of how poor the battery life is and how Google doesn't provide any power to keep them alive at events. Good events for hackers/developers have power wired to every seat. Bad events, well you can see the write up here.
- cperciva 12y ago
  Good events for hackers/developers have power wired to every seat. ... and when circumstances are such that it's not possible to find a venue with power wired to each seat (as is the case for many conferences), good organizers bring bins full of power bars. You can get a lot of laptops plugged into daisy-chained power bars connected to a 10A circuit.
  - yzzxy 12y ago
    Please don't do this. Daisy chaining power bars is dangerous, especially at high loads such those generated by a pile of laptop power bricks.
    - cperciva 12y ago
      A typical power bar can easily handle a 10A load. A typical laptop draws around 1A when charging, or far less if the battery is charged and it's just powering the laptop itself. Obviously you don't want to go crazy, but you can still get a significant socket expansion ratio.
      - HorizonXP 12y ago
        I think he means don't plug a power bar into another power bar.
        cperciva 12y ago
        Yes, that's exactly what he meant. And what I mean is that you can plug a power bar into another power bar, as long as you're reasonable about the total load you put on the circuit.
        yzzxy 12y ago
        OK... but when you are dealing with a lot of laptops, enough to necessitate more plugs than a single 5-8 port power bar, it's probably going to run up against that limit. I think the danger outside of load would be rare, but IIRC US specs for power cords specifically don't require compliance with daisy chaining (similar to C undefined behaviors?) and I bet most commodity power bars are cost-optimized to all hell. Disclaimer: I am not an electrical engineer.
        nknighthb 12y ago
        Either the wires can handle the load or they can't. "Daisy chaining" is forbidden primarily because people are ignorant and the NFPA and OSHA are very conservative. Even the $4 things I picked up out of a Fry's bin one day are 14AWG -- in other words, 10a@120v for 75+ feet, even through aluminium(!) wire, is still under 5% voltage drop. I've bought nothing but the highest-end model of Apple laptop for years. I've never measured more than about 100 watts even under load with charging, the power adapters aren't even rated for more than about 1.5 amps on the input side. You're not going to have 10 people in a row gaming on 15" MBPs at one of these events. The best reason not to do it has nothing to do with safety. It's that if there's an inspection and/or anyone reports it, you risk an abrupt drop in your bank balance. (Also, I just tried, I can't even make a charged late 2013 MBP with a bunch of crap plugged in go over ~0.7amps off a 122v supply, the CPU actually throttled below rated speed to prevent it!)
      - 12y ago
- nostrademons 12y ago
  What's wrong with giving the speakers - and the folks you converse with - your full undivided attention? I showed up to startup school with no electronic devices other than my phone. I figured that I was there to go, listen, maybe talk a little bit, and then go home. If I want to sit on a laptop I can do that much more comfortably in bed.
  - cperciva 12y ago
    What's wrong with giving the speakers - and the folks you converse with - your full undivided attention? Not all speakers are saying interesting things all the time. Also, having my laptop out at BSD conferences allows me to engage in the IRC backchannel, which is often just as informative as the talks themselves.
deleted 12y ago
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- cperciva 12y ago
  a dismissive, elitist engineer Guilty as charged. "We launched with one server in a colo facility. Oops!” I had forgotten about that, but it was certainly one of the better moments. Perhaps it's just my elitist engineer bias, but I find stories of technical screwups to be far more enlightening (don't do this, kids!) than stories about dealing with investors.
  - hkmurakami 12y ago
    (since parent was deleted, replying to child post) There was a huge spectrum of people in attendance, from age, business/technical leaning, optimism/ownership of their careers, and immediately perceptible aptitude within their area. The only area I can think of without such a spectrum was gender -- I'd reckon that 95% of attendees were male. Personally, I don't really care about the business/engineering divide since I straddle both. Many people I met were the same way. Is a guy who does Ember.js and also does door to door sales a business guy or technical guy? My personal, completely biased checkbox was whether the person had interesting things to say or not, irrespective of business/technical. I found duds and gems all over the spectum (duds for me, but not necessarily for others). Others will have gone in with different filters for meeting. Such is the nature of the beast when you have attendees representing a whole slew of verticals. Colin and I bumped into each other and talked about world politics and ISIS before going our separate ways. Tarsnap was only brought up when the group got larger and we inevitably entered "so what do you do" mode. "What you do" is an integral part of who we are, but it doesn't necessarily have to define us -- neither at conferences or in life in general.
  - ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
    I like those more too. I remember stumbling upon 'Coders at Work' at a random Barnes and Nobles in Houston, couldn't put it down.
loganfrederick 12y ago
I attended two previous Startup Schools and mostly feel the same way as Colin expresses in this post. The incremental value of attending these events is not sufficiently great if you've already read PG's essays and a watched the talks online. However I would say that it can be motivating to attend and meet people with an energy and interest in building the "new new thing" if you live somewhere where that vibe is lacking. It's worth the flight to attend once, as a reminder that there are other people in the world with the same mindset as you, and they are more than just their HN username.
nicholasreed 12y ago
Everybody knows the speakers are for inspiration, but the mingling and conversations with like-minded founders is where you get all the real work/enjoyment.
- anjit6 12y ago
  Yes, I totally agree with you. I think to get into conversation with those like-minded founders is an art. It takes good amount of time to learn and get good takeaways.
randall 12y ago
I always appreciate a good critique, but I think maybe you nailed it when you said: "Perhaps my expectations were misaligned" The comment about the power outlets, leading the piece, seems like the clearest example of misalignment. I'm not able to speak for YC, but I think the point of startup school is to help people (hackers) who might not have read every PG essay but have some interest in startups learn how to start startups. Power outlets and other stuff you'd find at "cons" aren't really the point. I didn't attend this year's startup school, but have attended a few prior, and I can say that the talks, while not completely filled with new information, helped me understand what it's like to be a startup founder. Now, as a current startup founder, I feel like as I've watched the videos this year and talked to one of our employees who attended, I feel empathy with the talks. They don't add to a huge trove of new, previously unearthed knowledge for me, but I don't really think that's the point. To some extent, I'd liken them to the YC dinners themselves. The point of the YC dinners, in my view, is not so much to give the inside baseball of what it's like to be a silicon valley startup founder... instead sometimes you hear anecdotes that so tightly align with what you're currently going through that you think, "Wow, I'm dealing with that exact thing. And these guys are actually successful now!" It's some sort of helpful external validation which is so often lacking in early stage startups. It helps you keep going, for sure. Startup School talks are like the open source / public version of a YC dinner. The office hours are like the open source / public version of YC office hours. But back to Startup School itself, I don't think you missed out... I don't even think your critique is invalid, I'd just caution the blanket statement at the end: >> I would hesitate to recommend it to any other startup founder. If you're considering launching a startup and you need some "inspiration" to push you into going ahead, then by all means attend. For that matter, if you're looking for an audience to practice your "elevator pitch" on, you could certainly do worse. But if you're already working on a startup? Your time is probably better spent staying home and writing code. Sure, I didn't go this year because I had just gotten back from a week in NYC that was particularly unfun for me, not to mention we're in a totally different place than when I've gone in years past (employees and stuff). However. If you feel like you're struggling, and you want to do something that actually could result in an impactful company, there's a whole lot of things worse than going to startup school. For me, it was extremely instructional especially before I had launched my startup. After I had launched, it provided some catharsis / empathy that I really appreciated. It's definitely not a wasted day. That's for sure. A great example: Jessica's "Startup Monsters" talk is one I go back and re-read at least every 6 months. http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong... Hearing talks like that, and, when you live in a place like Utah, being able to socialize with other people who you could work with forever (we hired someone we met at Startup School) is an extremely great reason to attend. Maybe it wasn't for you, Colin, but I think it could help a lot of people... especially anyone considering launching a startup. And for people who've already launched a startup, if you feel like you're having a hard time, it'll help, I think. It compresses a lot of the essay reading / knowledge gathering into an 8 hour block, combined with meeting extremely great people. For already launched startups, it's a refresher course, with a dollop of community building. And it's on a saturday... so it's not eating away at your precious work week. Maybe you don't need it, but I think a lot of people will benefit. (BTW Colin, I've always loved your contributions to HN, and I hope you take this as additional perspective from someone it helped.)
dfabulich 12y ago
I attended Startup School 2011; I regret wasting the day there. I thought that "Startup School" would be more like the "How to Start a Startup" lecture series that YC is running at Stanford. Instead, it was just a bunch of celebrities talking about their startup experiences; a concentrated shot of survival bias. There's nothing practical to learn from the Startup School talks. As for inspiration, I guess some people might be inspired by celebrity speeches like those, and I don't want to begrudge anyone that if that's what they got out of it, but I'm much more inspired by new products. (Especially imperfect products that make it seem easy to improve them.) The Office Hours are the best part. Throw away the talks, let PG give a keynote, and turn the whole thing into Office Hours.
- cperciva 12y ago
  Throw away the talks, let PG give a keynote, and turn the whole thing into Office Hours. Now that would be an event I could imagine attending.
  - albakes 12y ago
    Yes, please.
  - selmnoo 12y ago
    But that's the YC business. Startups wouldn't apply to YC if they could get the Office Hours for free (instead of in exchange for significant equity). Not knocking on YC, just pointing out that that's not happening, doesn't make financial sense for YC.
    - benihana 12y ago
      Surely there's more value to being a YC backed startup than just the office hours?
    - cwp 12y ago
      Sure they would. It's not like YC puts on startup school every week.
- 12y ago
brianchu 12y ago
It is a matter of expectations. I've been the Startup School for three times now. I don't go for the talks - I go for the people. The talks certainly have an inspirational bent to them, and most of the info can be gleaned from HN, PG's essays, and a whole bunch of blog posts. Every Startup School there are a few good talks (Andrew Mason's and Reid Hoffman's were two I liked), plus office hours, which are engaging - but again, these are all uploaded online. I'm not sure how office hours participants are selected, but doing that would be an obvious reason to attend. The real reason to attend Startup School is to meet a fairly interesting, relatively accomplished, friendly crowd of folks. There's a business bent to the demographic - everyone is interested in startups, but most people I meet are technical. If you really want to, there's the chance to talk to some of the YC partners. Some of the speakers will stick around to answer questions. Last year one of the Airbnb cofounders stayed to answer questions for a while. To get the most out of it you definitely need to introduce yourself to random people. You certainly shouldn't pull out a laptop. I never sit down with friends because sitting down next to a stranger is a great opportunity to introduce yourself. Over the past three events I've met a few people I've kept in touch with; that alone makes it worthwhile. It also makes a lot more sense if you're local to the Bay Area - it's a great excuse to meet up with friends in the area.
scobar 12y ago
Startup School was well worth the value of traveling to the Bay Area for myself. I'd read PG's essays and a lot of other startup literature so I didn't learn anything profoundly new, but I was inspired. Interacting with other attendees was also an amazing experience that is not available to me where I live. While I disagree with you, your post is important, and I'm glad you wrote it. Those who are undecided about attending SuS in the future whose expectations match yours can decide against it if they read your post. Then, one more space will be available for someone who may have gained a lot, but wasn't accepted.
- cperciva 12y ago
  While I disagree with you, I think your post is important, and I'm glad you wrote it. Thank you for saying that. I hesitated for a long time before writing this -- hence the posting almost a week after the event -- because it felt like I was being rude to criticize an event which, after all, we were all invited into for free. Those who are undecided about attending SuS in the future whose expectations match yours can decide against it if they read your post. Then, one more space will be available for someone who may have gained a lot, but wasn't accepted. That would certainly be one positive outcome. For me, an even better outcome would be to have Startup School cut down to 100 developers and gaining a technical focus... mind you, maybe that just means I want "hacker school" more than "startup school".
  - dang 12y ago
    > For me, an even better outcome would be to have Startup School cut down to 100 developers and gaining a technical focus Interesting you should say that. We've tossed around the idea of HN sponsoring a hackery summit a la Startup School but with a purely technical focus. It might complement Startup School well. The YC/HN world has always had both technical and entrepreneurial hemispheres, if you can call them that, and some people identify more with one than the other. Cross-pollination between the two is beneficial (which is one reason why we've always resisted the idea of splitting HN into sub-communities) but yeah, it can be frustrating when you find yourself in a local optimum for the side you don't find interesting. We hear similar complaints about HN pretty regularly even though we try to keep both sides well-stocked.
yurylifshits 12y ago
Reconnecting is another big benefit (for some attendees). Over the years there are a lot of cool people with whom we interacted but then have lost the connection. Startup School is a great place to meet them again, and learn all new things they are doing.
malanj 12y ago
It feels worth pointing out that this is a free event. So expecting lots of infrastructure (like an abundance of power sockets) does seem a bit unrealistic? It was pretty cool to see some startup "legends" in real life. There where definitely interesting "geeks" in the crowd, if you went to the trouble of sniffing about. I think you're right in assuming that one of the most important (perhaps the most important) aims of the event is recruitment for YC. Given that YC are organising this event, giving out free food and generally going to a lot of trouble that seems pretty obvious going in though. They're not a charity, they seem like a nice bunch of guys running a business.
Yadi 12y ago
I love Startup School! I have watched so many, like literally more than 100s of founders and CEOs give talks and lectures, because I work and went to Draper University, but the content from Startup School is just incredible! I love what YC did! Lots of on point lesson to learn Lots of tips&tricks if that is what everyone else wants to call it! Just awesome overall for me as I'm doing my 4th startup, I still learned new things and gained wisdom!
tlb 12y ago
Colin: I'm sorry we didn't deliver what you needed. YC's goal in selecting Startup School participants is to get a mix of deeply technical people and popularizers. The combination of those two skill sets makes a great startup. When I saw you at Startup School I was like, "Hey, it's cperciva! Maybe he'll find a co-founder who can sell and together they can make Tarsnap take over the backup business!" That would be a good thing for the universe. Tarsnap is a great example of a better technology that should be backing up most of the world's data. It would, if you teamed up with the right popularizer to get the word out and close deals. It hurts me to see Tarsnap backing up only a tiny fraction of the world's data, while companies with great salespeople back up most of it badly. Still, I think we delivered for some people who were inspired to bring their better technology out into the wide world. Also: I hear you about power outlets. My current MBP runs Emacs for 8 hours so I've lost touch with that need, but I'll bring extension cords and power strips to future events.
- cperciva 12y ago
  Trevor: Thank you for replying. I hope you (and Jessica, and everybody else involved with Startup School) don't take what I've written personally -- I nearly didn't post it for exactly that reason, but decided in the end that you're all grown-ups who won't be offended by honest criticism. ;-) And thank you for your comments when we met -- talking to you was the highlight of the weekend for me (I didn't mention it in the blog post simply because I don't like "outing" people, in case they didn't want their presence at an event to be widely known), both because "Hey, it's tlb!" and because of the confidence you showed in Tarsnap's potential. Thirty seconds of talking to you was more inspiring than the rest of the weekend. As for finding a co-founder... you're not the first person to say that, but after 8 years of writing code I really don't think I could bring in a co-founder at this point.
  - tosh 12y ago
    Why not (re 8 years)?
    - cperciva 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
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flinkblinkhink 12y ago
The BSD beard is an entirely different type of beard to the hipster beard.
anjit6 12y ago
I found something really cool stuff - summarising Startup School in simple and elegant form. Loved it. You may check it here: http://startupnotes.org http://startupnotes.org
yarou 12y ago
Hmm, it's interesting how diverse and varied the responses to Startup School are. I had never attended Startup School before, and found it to be a worthwhile experience. I met a great group of people (including you Colin!) and got to hear about some interesting projects people were working on. While the talks weren't terribly interesting or teach me anything I didn't know already, I felt the people aspect more than made up for it. Maybe Startup School should have a hackathon type project for 1-2 hours, that's completely optional for people to participate in.
davidw 12y ago
If you want actual practical advice, MicroConf is a great conference, and there's one coming up in Europe in a few days: http://www.microconf.com/europe/ http://www.microconf.com/europe/ I won't be attending this year, unfortunately, but I went last year and thought it was a great time.
andrewchambers 12y ago
The power points and standing are more likely health and safety regulation.
- gus_massa 12y ago
  I agree. [Begin Anecdotal interleave We recently moved to a new office in the university. The office plan was designed by the old school professors. It has three big tables in the middle of the room and a few computers and a printer in a side room. It's very comfortable for meeting and discussing or working in groups, but the outlets are in the walls. The problem if that I and a few new school professors have notebooks. I'd like to have my LaTeX editor configured in the correct way. A few compilers just in case. Leave my gmail account open. ... So when the battery is low the only solution is to sit in the extreme of the table that is nearby the wall in pass the electric cord though the four foots aisle. Perhaps put a chair so no one runs into the cord. Emit a public warning. Watch for incoming problems.. ... It's very difficult to add the electric plugs under the table, so I'd like to add some retractile plugs in the lamps, so the electric cord can go to the roof to get the electricity. End Anecdotal interleave] In a room with a few hundreds people, a cord across the aisle is dangerous. It's not possible to allow it to make the event hacker friendly. The only solution is to find a venue that has a plug in each seat, so everyone can connect the notebook without disturbing the transit and emergency exits.
resca79 12y ago
My background is technical also and I figured out what you mean and your sentiment. I'm one of the attendees that was impressed by Jan Koum has chose Erlang for an intuition or by the Kevin Systrom estimation for rails. Maybe you wrong your approach to a startupschool as many tecnical people like us. Basically the startup success formula does not exist I think that startup school has an implicit and very powerfull message: Startup successful founders are common people and not divinity
graycat 12y ago
Some questions: I watched some of a Startup School video, maybe the most recent one. Ron Conway was interviewed, and there were other speakers. And I just read Jessica Livingston's talk What Goes Wrong, 10/25/2012 at http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong... and from the post by Randell in this thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8474689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8474689 I will start with Livingston's "Making Something People Want is Hard" Here's a suggestion of another way: Step (1) Problem. Pick a problem where there is no doubt that the first good or a much better solution will result in enough eager users/customers to make a financially successful business. That is, we want a problem where plenty of people want and will like the solution very much. Here we want no doubt. Maybe the ideal such problem would be a safe, effective, cheap, one pill cure for any cancer. Step (2) Solution. For the solution, to exploit Moore's law, etc., stay in information technology and there do some original research. Step (3) Implementation. Write the software to do the data manipulations specified by the research. So, the result should be a solution to Livingston's "Making Something People Want is Hard" Livingston also warns about co-founder disputes. She has "Not making something people want is the biggest cause of failure we see early on. (The second biggest is founder disputes.)" So, here's a solution to the second biggest "cause of failure" -- be a solo founder. But Livingston also has "single founder and it's hard to do a startup as a single founder." Here she loses me: There are a lot of successful businesses, small to giant, that had solo founders. So, I'm lost on why it is such a bad idea for a solo founder to try to get a company going. Sure, once the company is growing rapidly, then take on, say, an office manager, a guy to run the server farm, a programmer, a marketing guy, etc. as needed.
timedoctor 12y ago
I checked out the http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/ website and it looks like very interesting technology but extremely unfriendly to the "ordinary" user. Perhaps not designed for ordinary users, but seems like there is a lot of potential for improvement to the marketing (which is exactly the type of content that you can teach in a startup school). They prefaced the entire content by saying that mostly you can't learn startups from a lecture, because the most important information you need to know is what the customer wants and it's specific to each market. You can learn something more general about marketing and user acquisition. Personally I've been watching the videos online. I think the information is incredibly valuable because it's from people who have some of the most experience in the world at advising and working with startups. Even more useful if you have no experience and no prior education on what it is like to start a new venture.
cpg 12y ago
Kind of agree, however, there is an element of contagious/infectious energy that is hard to get in many other events. Of course, there are the giggly and hyper, but one has to learn to tune their over enthusiastic oozing a bit.
yongers 12y ago
I was present for the Startup School Europe in London this year, and I have to admit I agree with Colin. Perhaps Startup School SF is a little different, but Startup School in London seemed more like a sales pitch for Y-combinator (not in itself a bad thing). The speakers were interesting for sure, but did little to add value for budding, first time entrepreneurs. I hasten to add however, that the networking was great and my personal disappointment was perhaps more due to "misaligned expectations".
novaleaf 12y ago
IMO Colin is spot on. I attended startup school 2 years ago, and had the exact same experience (well, sans tarsnap conversations) It seems worth going to once, if you don't already know/follow "startup ethos" but otherwise, It doesn't seem very useful from a practical standpoint.
clairity 12y ago
yup, the talks for the most part were of the inspirational sort by those who had won the startup lottery and had tidbits (but not 8 hours' worth) of useful advice to share. as others have noted, they was less about the content (since that could be had online) and more about absorbing the energy of the group, getting a sense of the character and approach of the speakers, and feeling kinship with everyone there. i'd also traveled for startup school and would say it was just worth it for me. if i'd been local, it certainly would have been worth it, just for meeting people like the guy who created tarsnap with whom i shared a power outlet until the ushers scolded us. =) (to be fair to the ushers, the cords were in the aisles, which could be a hazard) one of the lytro engineers taught me a bit more about light field photography, and an arduino hacker and i chatted about locomotive robotics. on the other end of the spectrum, there were discussions about ad tech business models. so to me, it seemed to be a good mix of people with all kinds of technical skills.
fidotron 12y ago
With all due respect, while a lot of the criticism there seems valid it does seem that there is a desire for startup school to simply act to validate the preconceptions of attendees. A fundamental error tech people make (I say this having learned the hard way from experience) is to not notice the value of what non-techies are saying, and to be honest I get that vibe here. An example of this reinforcing itself is the idea of having a laptop for IRC channel usage, however, if no one else in the audience is on IRC what's the point? Even if there were sockets there the only people that would be on IRC are the like minded, when the whole point of the exercise is to get out of whatever bubble you're in. The successful superficially tech founders are actually really good at both games, but bridging those two worlds is a far rarer skill than it looks, and contributes to the scarcity of successful startups, but also the rarity of good technical management in large organisations.
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andyidsinga 12y ago
i went to "hardware summer camp" summer of 2013. a weekend event hosted at the oreilly alphatech office in sf. it was a fantastic event with nuts and bolts business and hacker types talking about how they actually got companies/products off the ground and then operated them. point is ..need more of those! @nickpinkston on twitter was one of the organizers > that team brought in all the right presenters.
joeblau 12y ago
From this post, it sounds like you would have been more interested in the YC Hacks Hackathon back in August. Plenty of outlets, plenty of food/drinks, lots of developers, everyone was building stuff, and over 80 products were demoed. Startup School was not targeted to be like the Hackahton, and rightfully so. If I was to breakdown the two events based on my personal experience I would say. 1. YC Hacks Hackahton Goal: Idea (0 People) - Founding Team (2-3 People) People who wanted to build products. It was all designers and engineers with ideas working together for two days to build a product. The end goal was light pitches of products to prominent people in the startup community. Lots of design, building, and engineering. 2. Startup School Goal: Founding Team (2-3 People) - Small Team (6-10 People) People who want to run startups. After you've got your product, startup school answered questions like: Where do you go from there idea? What keeps you going? what pitfalls are you going to encounter? What types of people are you looking to work with? etc... From your post, it seems like you were expecting YC Hacks. I would suggest going to that next year.
JasonCEC 12y ago
I actually wrote a complaint to the Startup School contract after a being disappointed by the event in NYC last year... The event was ok... but really lacked anything you couldn't find elsewhere. I was particularly annoyed that they didn't even try to sort the companies or founders or attendees into discussion groups, make connections, or even foster conversation after the event. In fact, it was almost like they were working against that, by whisking away all of the speakers and interviewers imediatly following the event and during the one intermission.... ------------------------------------------------- [1] My complaint letter: Hi Kathrina, I really enjoyed ~87.3% of startup school, but wanted to pass along a few thoughts on how future events could be better. 1) Introduce the interviewer - not just the interviewee. I had no idea who Aaron Harris was until 2/3'ds of the way through the interview. 2) Don't choose startups at random. Everyone had to apply to be at Startup School - you should use those applications to chose which startups get to present at office hours. 2A) Don't chose 3 startups at the same level of growth. I run a b2b saas startup in its early growth stage. the three startups chosen for office hours we're all in the early development stage. 2B) Don't choose 3 b2c startups. I'm sure I wasn't the only enterprise b2b company in the audience. Office hours was the section that fell flat with me. None of the companies interviewed we're in my companies stage of development (all earlier), and none we're business to business. Furthermore; 3) I guess its OK to leave the attendees to fend for themselves... but it could work a lot better if you used the intermission to have groups cycle through quick talks with the speakers, or with YC partners. That would also add more value to attending the conference. 3A) The speakers should be more public during the break, and during the social following the event. I'm Looking forward to future startup schools, and I hope this advice is helpful! All the Best, Jason
rahilsondhi 12y ago
Finding useful connections is hard at these big events. You're basically shooting darts in the dark. There was a "speed networking" section at the intermission that was pretty efficient. Wouldn't it be cool if there was an event where people have 60 seconds to pitch what they're looking for, and if you're looking for the same thing, go talk to them after all the pitches?
lazyant 12y ago
Last time I looked YC had a 2% admission rate, plus is a very successful program (arguably the best one), not sure why it needs promotion.
neltnerb 12y ago
Thanks for this story, I've been really confused about things like startup school myself. I guess I went to a seminar or two about how to think about a startup way back when I first realized I was definitely doing it wrong, but the idea of being around a thousand other wanna be entrepreneurs has always been intimidating and anxiety inducing to me. I feel like it just makes me feel even less qualified to do what I'm doing, since I'm not a socialite. Sure, I can be friendly and engaged and talkative for short stretches, but the idea of being around a thousand excited people trying to network is just really depressing. And I think after just reading/skimming the lean startup and steps to the epiphany, there's really not much to learn from lectures... small groups and an expert discussing specifics sure, but such large groups have to trend towards generalities which I just find exhausting. Really, I'm at my happiest when I'm in the lab building and testing things, and at my least happy when I'm feeling like I need to be constantly "on" selling my ideas. I assume lots of other technical founders feel similarly... I can deal with sales, and I can deal with negotiations, but even when I really do enjoy hearing other people's stories it gets emotionally and intellectually taxing fast!
oz 12y ago
> in fact I had decided against attending many previous such events due to the cost (in both time and money) of travelling down to the San Francisco bay area It may not be my place to say, but...Is anyone else here....irked that a singular genius like Colin, with as impressive a product as Tarsnap still has to worry about money? Especially considering that said worry could easily be ameliorated by yielding to even one of patio11's entreaties?
- cperciva 12y ago
  I'm not worried about money. Doesn't mean I like wasting it though...

318 points by cperciva 12y ago

Google does this constantly too. I've been to several Google Glass events where the wall outlets were all hidden or taped down. Sometimes there is only one in the entire room an event is going on in like the GDK Sneak Preview and I'll take turns with someone using it to keep Glass alive or just give up and go downstairs and use an outlet in the lobby, giving up on the event. For that particular event a journalist passed on the way out and we had an amusing conversation making fun of how poor the battery life is and how Google doesn't provide any power to keep them alive at events. Good events for hackers/developers have power wired to every seat. Bad events, well you can see the write up here.

cperciva 12y ago
Good events for hackers/developers have power wired to every seat. ... and when circumstances are such that it's not possible to find a venue with power wired to each seat (as is the case for many conferences), good organizers bring bins full of power bars. You can get a lot of laptops plugged into daisy-chained power bars connected to a 10A circuit.
- yzzxy 12y ago
  Please don't do this. Daisy chaining power bars is dangerous, especially at high loads such those generated by a pile of laptop power bricks.
  - cperciva 12y ago
    A typical power bar can easily handle a 10A load. A typical laptop draws around 1A when charging, or far less if the battery is charged and it's just powering the laptop itself. Obviously you don't want to go crazy, but you can still get a significant socket expansion ratio.
    - HorizonXP 12y ago
      I think he means don't plug a power bar into another power bar.
      - cperciva 12y ago
        Yes, that's exactly what he meant. And what I mean is that you can plug a power bar into another power bar, as long as you're reasonable about the total load you put on the circuit.
        yzzxy 12y ago
        OK... but when you are dealing with a lot of laptops, enough to necessitate more plugs than a single 5-8 port power bar, it's probably going to run up against that limit. I think the danger outside of load would be rare, but IIRC US specs for power cords specifically don't require compliance with daisy chaining (similar to C undefined behaviors?) and I bet most commodity power bars are cost-optimized to all hell. Disclaimer: I am not an electrical engineer.
        nknighthb 12y ago
        Either the wires can handle the load or they can't. "Daisy chaining" is forbidden primarily because people are ignorant and the NFPA and OSHA are very conservative. Even the $4 things I picked up out of a Fry's bin one day are 14AWG -- in other words, 10a@120v for 75+ feet, even through aluminium(!) wire, is still under 5% voltage drop. I've bought nothing but the highest-end model of Apple laptop for years. I've never measured more than about 100 watts even under load with charging, the power adapters aren't even rated for more than about 1.5 amps on the input side. You're not going to have 10 people in a row gaming on 15" MBPs at one of these events. The best reason not to do it has nothing to do with safety. It's that if there's an inspection and/or anyone reports it, you risk an abrupt drop in your bank balance. (Also, I just tried, I can't even make a charged late 2013 MBP with a bunch of crap plugged in go over ~0.7amps off a 122v supply, the CPU actually throttled below rated speed to prevent it!)
    - 12y ago
nostrademons 12y ago
What's wrong with giving the speakers - and the folks you converse with - your full undivided attention? I showed up to startup school with no electronic devices other than my phone. I figured that I was there to go, listen, maybe talk a little bit, and then go home. If I want to sit on a laptop I can do that much more comfortably in bed.
- cperciva 12y ago
  What's wrong with giving the speakers - and the folks you converse with - your full undivided attention? Not all speakers are saying interesting things all the time. Also, having my laptop out at BSD conferences allows me to engage in the IRC backchannel, which is often just as informative as the talks themselves.

deleted 12y ago

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cperciva 12y ago
a dismissive, elitist engineer Guilty as charged. "We launched with one server in a colo facility. Oops!” I had forgotten about that, but it was certainly one of the better moments. Perhaps it's just my elitist engineer bias, but I find stories of technical screwups to be far more enlightening (don't do this, kids!) than stories about dealing with investors.
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  (since parent was deleted, replying to child post) There was a huge spectrum of people in attendance, from age, business/technical leaning, optimism/ownership of their careers, and immediately perceptible aptitude within their area. The only area I can think of without such a spectrum was gender -- I'd reckon that 95% of attendees were male. Personally, I don't really care about the business/engineering divide since I straddle both. Many people I met were the same way. Is a guy who does Ember.js and also does door to door sales a business guy or technical guy? My personal, completely biased checkbox was whether the person had interesting things to say or not, irrespective of business/technical. I found duds and gems all over the spectum (duds for me, but not necessarily for others). Others will have gone in with different filters for meeting. Such is the nature of the beast when you have attendees representing a whole slew of verticals. Colin and I bumped into each other and talked about world politics and ISIS before going our separate ways. Tarsnap was only brought up when the group got larger and we inevitably entered "so what do you do" mode. "What you do" is an integral part of who we are, but it doesn't necessarily have to define us -- neither at conferences or in life in general.
- ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
  I like those more too. I remember stumbling upon 'Coders at Work' at a random Barnes and Nobles in Houston, couldn't put it down.

loganfrederick 12y ago

I attended two previous Startup Schools and mostly feel the same way as Colin expresses in this post. The incremental value of attending these events is not sufficiently great if you've already read PG's essays and a watched the talks online. However I would say that it can be motivating to attend and meet people with an energy and interest in building the "new new thing" if you live somewhere where that vibe is lacking. It's worth the flight to attend once, as a reminder that there are other people in the world with the same mindset as you, and they are more than just their HN username.

nicholasreed 12y ago

Everybody knows the speakers are for inspiration, but the mingling and conversations with like-minded founders is where you get all the real work/enjoyment.

anjit6 12y ago
Yes, I totally agree with you. I think to get into conversation with those like-minded founders is an art. It takes good amount of time to learn and get good takeaways.

randall 12y ago

I always appreciate a good critique, but I think maybe you nailed it when you said: "Perhaps my expectations were misaligned" The comment about the power outlets, leading the piece, seems like the clearest example of misalignment. I'm not able to speak for YC, but I think the point of startup school is to help people (hackers) who might not have read every PG essay but have some interest in startups learn how to start startups. Power outlets and other stuff you'd find at "cons" aren't really the point. I didn't attend this year's startup school, but have attended a few prior, and I can say that the talks, while not completely filled with new information, helped me understand what it's like to be a startup founder. Now, as a current startup founder, I feel like as I've watched the videos this year and talked to one of our employees who attended, I feel empathy with the talks. They don't add to a huge trove of new, previously unearthed knowledge for me, but I don't really think that's the point. To some extent, I'd liken them to the YC dinners themselves. The point of the YC dinners, in my view, is not so much to give the inside baseball of what it's like to be a silicon valley startup founder... instead sometimes you hear anecdotes that so tightly align with what you're currently going through that you think, "Wow, I'm dealing with that exact thing. And these guys are actually successful now!" It's some sort of helpful external validation which is so often lacking in early stage startups. It helps you keep going, for sure. Startup School talks are like the open source / public version of a YC dinner. The office hours are like the open source / public version of YC office hours. But back to Startup School itself, I don't think you missed out... I don't even think your critique is invalid, I'd just caution the blanket statement at the end: >> I would hesitate to recommend it to any other startup founder. If you're considering launching a startup and you need some "inspiration" to push you into going ahead, then by all means attend. For that matter, if you're looking for an audience to practice your "elevator pitch" on, you could certainly do worse. But if you're already working on a startup? Your time is probably better spent staying home and writing code. Sure, I didn't go this year because I had just gotten back from a week in NYC that was particularly unfun for me, not to mention we're in a totally different place than when I've gone in years past (employees and stuff). However. If you feel like you're struggling, and you want to do something that actually could result in an impactful company, there's a whole lot of things worse than going to startup school. For me, it was extremely instructional especially before I had launched my startup. After I had launched, it provided some catharsis / empathy that I really appreciated. It's definitely not a wasted day. That's for sure. A great example: Jessica's "Startup Monsters" talk is one I go back and re-read at least every 6 months. http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong... Hearing talks like that, and, when you live in a place like Utah, being able to socialize with other people who you could work with forever (we hired someone we met at Startup School) is an extremely great reason to attend. Maybe it wasn't for you, Colin, but I think it could help a lot of people... especially anyone considering launching a startup. And for people who've already launched a startup, if you feel like you're having a hard time, it'll help, I think. It compresses a lot of the essay reading / knowledge gathering into an 8 hour block, combined with meeting extremely great people. For already launched startups, it's a refresher course, with a dollop of community building. And it's on a saturday... so it's not eating away at your precious work week. Maybe you don't need it, but I think a lot of people will benefit. (BTW Colin, I've always loved your contributions to HN, and I hope you take this as additional perspective from someone it helped.)

dfabulich 12y ago

I attended Startup School 2011; I regret wasting the day there. I thought that "Startup School" would be more like the "How to Start a Startup" lecture series that YC is running at Stanford. Instead, it was just a bunch of celebrities talking about their startup experiences; a concentrated shot of survival bias. There's nothing practical to learn from the Startup School talks. As for inspiration, I guess some people might be inspired by celebrity speeches like those, and I don't want to begrudge anyone that if that's what they got out of it, but I'm much more inspired by new products. (Especially imperfect products that make it seem easy to improve them.) The Office Hours are the best part. Throw away the talks, let PG give a keynote, and turn the whole thing into Office Hours.

cperciva 12y ago
Throw away the talks, let PG give a keynote, and turn the whole thing into Office Hours. Now that would be an event I could imagine attending.
- albakes 12y ago
  Yes, please.
- selmnoo 12y ago
  But that's the YC business. Startups wouldn't apply to YC if they could get the Office Hours for free (instead of in exchange for significant equity). Not knocking on YC, just pointing out that that's not happening, doesn't make financial sense for YC.
  - benihana 12y ago
    Surely there's more value to being a YC backed startup than just the office hours?
  - cwp 12y ago
    Sure they would. It's not like YC puts on startup school every week.
12y ago

brianchu 12y ago

It is a matter of expectations. I've been the Startup School for three times now. I don't go for the talks - I go for the people. The talks certainly have an inspirational bent to them, and most of the info can be gleaned from HN, PG's essays, and a whole bunch of blog posts. Every Startup School there are a few good talks (Andrew Mason's and Reid Hoffman's were two I liked), plus office hours, which are engaging - but again, these are all uploaded online. I'm not sure how office hours participants are selected, but doing that would be an obvious reason to attend. The real reason to attend Startup School is to meet a fairly interesting, relatively accomplished, friendly crowd of folks. There's a business bent to the demographic - everyone is interested in startups, but most people I meet are technical. If you really want to, there's the chance to talk to some of the YC partners. Some of the speakers will stick around to answer questions. Last year one of the Airbnb cofounders stayed to answer questions for a while. To get the most out of it you definitely need to introduce yourself to random people. You certainly shouldn't pull out a laptop. I never sit down with friends because sitting down next to a stranger is a great opportunity to introduce yourself. Over the past three events I've met a few people I've kept in touch with; that alone makes it worthwhile. It also makes a lot more sense if you're local to the Bay Area - it's a great excuse to meet up with friends in the area.

scobar 12y ago

Startup School was well worth the value of traveling to the Bay Area for myself. I'd read PG's essays and a lot of other startup literature so I didn't learn anything profoundly new, but I was inspired. Interacting with other attendees was also an amazing experience that is not available to me where I live. While I disagree with you, your post is important, and I'm glad you wrote it. Those who are undecided about attending SuS in the future whose expectations match yours can decide against it if they read your post. Then, one more space will be available for someone who may have gained a lot, but wasn't accepted.

cperciva 12y ago
While I disagree with you, I think your post is important, and I'm glad you wrote it. Thank you for saying that. I hesitated for a long time before writing this -- hence the posting almost a week after the event -- because it felt like I was being rude to criticize an event which, after all, we were all invited into for free. Those who are undecided about attending SuS in the future whose expectations match yours can decide against it if they read your post. Then, one more space will be available for someone who may have gained a lot, but wasn't accepted. That would certainly be one positive outcome. For me, an even better outcome would be to have Startup School cut down to 100 developers and gaining a technical focus... mind you, maybe that just means I want "hacker school" more than "startup school".
- dang 12y ago
  > For me, an even better outcome would be to have Startup School cut down to 100 developers and gaining a technical focus Interesting you should say that. We've tossed around the idea of HN sponsoring a hackery summit a la Startup School but with a purely technical focus. It might complement Startup School well. The YC/HN world has always had both technical and entrepreneurial hemispheres, if you can call them that, and some people identify more with one than the other. Cross-pollination between the two is beneficial (which is one reason why we've always resisted the idea of splitting HN into sub-communities) but yeah, it can be frustrating when you find yourself in a local optimum for the side you don't find interesting. We hear similar complaints about HN pretty regularly even though we try to keep both sides well-stocked.

yurylifshits 12y ago

Reconnecting is another big benefit (for some attendees). Over the years there are a lot of cool people with whom we interacted but then have lost the connection. Startup School is a great place to meet them again, and learn all new things they are doing.

malanj 12y ago

It feels worth pointing out that this is a free event. So expecting lots of infrastructure (like an abundance of power sockets) does seem a bit unrealistic? It was pretty cool to see some startup "legends" in real life. There where definitely interesting "geeks" in the crowd, if you went to the trouble of sniffing about. I think you're right in assuming that one of the most important (perhaps the most important) aims of the event is recruitment for YC. Given that YC are organising this event, giving out free food and generally going to a lot of trouble that seems pretty obvious going in though. They're not a charity, they seem like a nice bunch of guys running a business.

Yadi 12y ago

I love Startup School! I have watched so many, like literally more than 100s of founders and CEOs give talks and lectures, because I work and went to Draper University, but the content from Startup School is just incredible! I love what YC did! Lots of on point lesson to learn Lots of tips&tricks if that is what everyone else wants to call it! Just awesome overall for me as I'm doing my 4th startup, I still learned new things and gained wisdom!

tlb 12y ago

Colin: I'm sorry we didn't deliver what you needed. YC's goal in selecting Startup School participants is to get a mix of deeply technical people and popularizers. The combination of those two skill sets makes a great startup. When I saw you at Startup School I was like, "Hey, it's cperciva! Maybe he'll find a co-founder who can sell and together they can make Tarsnap take over the backup business!" That would be a good thing for the universe. Tarsnap is a great example of a better technology that should be backing up most of the world's data. It would, if you teamed up with the right popularizer to get the word out and close deals. It hurts me to see Tarsnap backing up only a tiny fraction of the world's data, while companies with great salespeople back up most of it badly. Still, I think we delivered for some people who were inspired to bring their better technology out into the wide world. Also: I hear you about power outlets. My current MBP runs Emacs for 8 hours so I've lost touch with that need, but I'll bring extension cords and power strips to future events.

cperciva 12y ago
Trevor: Thank you for replying. I hope you (and Jessica, and everybody else involved with Startup School) don't take what I've written personally -- I nearly didn't post it for exactly that reason, but decided in the end that you're all grown-ups who won't be offended by honest criticism. ;-) And thank you for your comments when we met -- talking to you was the highlight of the weekend for me (I didn't mention it in the blog post simply because I don't like "outing" people, in case they didn't want their presence at an event to be widely known), both because "Hey, it's tlb!" and because of the confidence you showed in Tarsnap's potential. Thirty seconds of talking to you was more inspiring than the rest of the weekend. As for finding a co-founder... you're not the first person to say that, but after 8 years of writing code I really don't think I could bring in a co-founder at this point.
- tosh 12y ago
  Why not (re 8 years)?
  - cperciva 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

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flinkblinkhink 12y ago

The BSD beard is an entirely different type of beard to the hipster beard.

anjit6 12y ago

I found something really cool stuff - summarising Startup School in simple and elegant form. Loved it. You may check it here: http://startupnotes.org http://startupnotes.org

yarou 12y ago

Hmm, it's interesting how diverse and varied the responses to Startup School are. I had never attended Startup School before, and found it to be a worthwhile experience. I met a great group of people (including you Colin!) and got to hear about some interesting projects people were working on. While the talks weren't terribly interesting or teach me anything I didn't know already, I felt the people aspect more than made up for it. Maybe Startup School should have a hackathon type project for 1-2 hours, that's completely optional for people to participate in.

davidw 12y ago

If you want actual practical advice, MicroConf is a great conference, and there's one coming up in Europe in a few days: http://www.microconf.com/europe/ http://www.microconf.com/europe/ I won't be attending this year, unfortunately, but I went last year and thought it was a great time.

andrewchambers 12y ago

The power points and standing are more likely health and safety regulation.

gus_massa 12y ago
I agree. [Begin Anecdotal interleave We recently moved to a new office in the university. The office plan was designed by the old school professors. It has three big tables in the middle of the room and a few computers and a printer in a side room. It's very comfortable for meeting and discussing or working in groups, but the outlets are in the walls. The problem if that I and a few new school professors have notebooks. I'd like to have my LaTeX editor configured in the correct way. A few compilers just in case. Leave my gmail account open. ... So when the battery is low the only solution is to sit in the extreme of the table that is nearby the wall in pass the electric cord though the four foots aisle. Perhaps put a chair so no one runs into the cord. Emit a public warning. Watch for incoming problems.. ... It's very difficult to add the electric plugs under the table, so I'd like to add some retractile plugs in the lamps, so the electric cord can go to the roof to get the electricity. End Anecdotal interleave] In a room with a few hundreds people, a cord across the aisle is dangerous. It's not possible to allow it to make the event hacker friendly. The only solution is to find a venue that has a plug in each seat, so everyone can connect the notebook without disturbing the transit and emergency exits.

resca79 12y ago

My background is technical also and I figured out what you mean and your sentiment. I'm one of the attendees that was impressed by Jan Koum has chose Erlang for an intuition or by the Kevin Systrom estimation for rails. Maybe you wrong your approach to a startupschool as many tecnical people like us. Basically the startup success formula does not exist I think that startup school has an implicit and very powerfull message: Startup successful founders are common people and not divinity

graycat 12y ago

Some questions: I watched some of a Startup School video, maybe the most recent one. Ron Conway was interviewed, and there were other speakers. And I just read Jessica Livingston's talk What Goes Wrong, 10/25/2012 at http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong... and from the post by Randell in this thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8474689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8474689 I will start with Livingston's "Making Something People Want is Hard" Here's a suggestion of another way: Step (1) Problem. Pick a problem where there is no doubt that the first good or a much better solution will result in enough eager users/customers to make a financially successful business. That is, we want a problem where plenty of people want and will like the solution very much. Here we want no doubt. Maybe the ideal such problem would be a safe, effective, cheap, one pill cure for any cancer. Step (2) Solution. For the solution, to exploit Moore's law, etc., stay in information technology and there do some original research. Step (3) Implementation. Write the software to do the data manipulations specified by the research. So, the result should be a solution to Livingston's "Making Something People Want is Hard" Livingston also warns about co-founder disputes. She has "Not making something people want is the biggest cause of failure we see early on. (The second biggest is founder disputes.)" So, here's a solution to the second biggest "cause of failure" -- be a solo founder. But Livingston also has "single founder and it's hard to do a startup as a single founder." Here she loses me: There are a lot of successful businesses, small to giant, that had solo founders. So, I'm lost on why it is such a bad idea for a solo founder to try to get a company going. Sure, once the company is growing rapidly, then take on, say, an office manager, a guy to run the server farm, a programmer, a marketing guy, etc. as needed.

timedoctor 12y ago

I checked out the http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/ website and it looks like very interesting technology but extremely unfriendly to the "ordinary" user. Perhaps not designed for ordinary users, but seems like there is a lot of potential for improvement to the marketing (which is exactly the type of content that you can teach in a startup school). They prefaced the entire content by saying that mostly you can't learn startups from a lecture, because the most important information you need to know is what the customer wants and it's specific to each market. You can learn something more general about marketing and user acquisition. Personally I've been watching the videos online. I think the information is incredibly valuable because it's from people who have some of the most experience in the world at advising and working with startups. Even more useful if you have no experience and no prior education on what it is like to start a new venture.

cpg 12y ago

Kind of agree, however, there is an element of contagious/infectious energy that is hard to get in many other events. Of course, there are the giggly and hyper, but one has to learn to tune their over enthusiastic oozing a bit.

yongers 12y ago

I was present for the Startup School Europe in London this year, and I have to admit I agree with Colin. Perhaps Startup School SF is a little different, but Startup School in London seemed more like a sales pitch for Y-combinator (not in itself a bad thing). The speakers were interesting for sure, but did little to add value for budding, first time entrepreneurs. I hasten to add however, that the networking was great and my personal disappointment was perhaps more due to "misaligned expectations".

novaleaf 12y ago

IMO Colin is spot on. I attended startup school 2 years ago, and had the exact same experience (well, sans tarsnap conversations) It seems worth going to once, if you don't already know/follow "startup ethos" but otherwise, It doesn't seem very useful from a practical standpoint.

clairity 12y ago

yup, the talks for the most part were of the inspirational sort by those who had won the startup lottery and had tidbits (but not 8 hours' worth) of useful advice to share. as others have noted, they was less about the content (since that could be had online) and more about absorbing the energy of the group, getting a sense of the character and approach of the speakers, and feeling kinship with everyone there. i'd also traveled for startup school and would say it was just worth it for me. if i'd been local, it certainly would have been worth it, just for meeting people like the guy who created tarsnap with whom i shared a power outlet until the ushers scolded us. =) (to be fair to the ushers, the cords were in the aisles, which could be a hazard) one of the lytro engineers taught me a bit more about light field photography, and an arduino hacker and i chatted about locomotive robotics. on the other end of the spectrum, there were discussions about ad tech business models. so to me, it seemed to be a good mix of people with all kinds of technical skills.

fidotron 12y ago

With all due respect, while a lot of the criticism there seems valid it does seem that there is a desire for startup school to simply act to validate the preconceptions of attendees. A fundamental error tech people make (I say this having learned the hard way from experience) is to not notice the value of what non-techies are saying, and to be honest I get that vibe here. An example of this reinforcing itself is the idea of having a laptop for IRC channel usage, however, if no one else in the audience is on IRC what's the point? Even if there were sockets there the only people that would be on IRC are the like minded, when the whole point of the exercise is to get out of whatever bubble you're in. The successful superficially tech founders are actually really good at both games, but bridging those two worlds is a far rarer skill than it looks, and contributes to the scarcity of successful startups, but also the rarity of good technical management in large organisations.

deleted 12y ago

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andyidsinga 12y ago

i went to "hardware summer camp" summer of 2013. a weekend event hosted at the oreilly alphatech office in sf. it was a fantastic event with nuts and bolts business and hacker types talking about how they actually got companies/products off the ground and then operated them. point is ..need more of those! @nickpinkston on twitter was one of the organizers > that team brought in all the right presenters.

joeblau 12y ago

From this post, it sounds like you would have been more interested in the YC Hacks Hackathon back in August. Plenty of outlets, plenty of food/drinks, lots of developers, everyone was building stuff, and over 80 products were demoed. Startup School was not targeted to be like the Hackahton, and rightfully so. If I was to breakdown the two events based on my personal experience I would say. 1. YC Hacks Hackahton Goal: Idea (0 People) - Founding Team (2-3 People) People who wanted to build products. It was all designers and engineers with ideas working together for two days to build a product. The end goal was light pitches of products to prominent people in the startup community. Lots of design, building, and engineering. 2. Startup School Goal: Founding Team (2-3 People) - Small Team (6-10 People) People who want to run startups. After you've got your product, startup school answered questions like: Where do you go from there idea? What keeps you going? what pitfalls are you going to encounter? What types of people are you looking to work with? etc... From your post, it seems like you were expecting YC Hacks. I would suggest going to that next year.

JasonCEC 12y ago

I actually wrote a complaint to the Startup School contract after a being disappointed by the event in NYC last year... The event was ok... but really lacked anything you couldn't find elsewhere. I was particularly annoyed that they didn't even try to sort the companies or founders or attendees into discussion groups, make connections, or even foster conversation after the event. In fact, it was almost like they were working against that, by whisking away all of the speakers and interviewers imediatly following the event and during the one intermission.... ------------------------------------------------- [1] My complaint letter: Hi Kathrina, I really enjoyed ~87.3% of startup school, but wanted to pass along a few thoughts on how future events could be better. 1) Introduce the interviewer - not just the interviewee. I had no idea who Aaron Harris was until 2/3'ds of the way through the interview. 2) Don't choose startups at random. Everyone had to apply to be at Startup School - you should use those applications to chose which startups get to present at office hours. 2A) Don't chose 3 startups at the same level of growth. I run a b2b saas startup in its early growth stage. the three startups chosen for office hours we're all in the early development stage. 2B) Don't choose 3 b2c startups. I'm sure I wasn't the only enterprise b2b company in the audience. Office hours was the section that fell flat with me. None of the companies interviewed we're in my companies stage of development (all earlier), and none we're business to business. Furthermore; 3) I guess its OK to leave the attendees to fend for themselves... but it could work a lot better if you used the intermission to have groups cycle through quick talks with the speakers, or with YC partners. That would also add more value to attending the conference. 3A) The speakers should be more public during the break, and during the social following the event. I'm Looking forward to future startup schools, and I hope this advice is helpful! All the Best, Jason

rahilsondhi 12y ago

Finding useful connections is hard at these big events. You're basically shooting darts in the dark. There was a "speed networking" section at the intermission that was pretty efficient. Wouldn't it be cool if there was an event where people have 60 seconds to pitch what they're looking for, and if you're looking for the same thing, go talk to them after all the pitches?

lazyant 12y ago

Last time I looked YC had a 2% admission rate, plus is a very successful program (arguably the best one), not sure why it needs promotion.

neltnerb 12y ago

Thanks for this story, I've been really confused about things like startup school myself. I guess I went to a seminar or two about how to think about a startup way back when I first realized I was definitely doing it wrong, but the idea of being around a thousand other wanna be entrepreneurs has always been intimidating and anxiety inducing to me. I feel like it just makes me feel even less qualified to do what I'm doing, since I'm not a socialite. Sure, I can be friendly and engaged and talkative for short stretches, but the idea of being around a thousand excited people trying to network is just really depressing. And I think after just reading/skimming the lean startup and steps to the epiphany, there's really not much to learn from lectures... small groups and an expert discussing specifics sure, but such large groups have to trend towards generalities which I just find exhausting. Really, I'm at my happiest when I'm in the lab building and testing things, and at my least happy when I'm feeling like I need to be constantly "on" selling my ideas. I assume lots of other technical founders feel similarly... I can deal with sales, and I can deal with negotiations, but even when I really do enjoy hearing other people's stories it gets emotionally and intellectually taxing fast!

oz 12y ago

> in fact I had decided against attending many previous such events due to the cost (in both time and money) of travelling down to the San Francisco bay area It may not be my place to say, but...Is anyone else here....irked that a singular genius like Colin, with as impressive a product as Tarsnap still has to worry about money? Especially considering that said worry could easily be ameliorated by yielding to even one of patio11's entreaties?

cperciva 12y ago
I'm not worried about money. Doesn't mean I like wasting it though...