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

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.