Quick question for PG. Would you be interested in running a similar event in London? We've been organising an HN meetup for over a year and currently have a community of over 1100 people that would love to attend an event like this. There are also several YC companies including Songkick that have been involved in the meetup that I am certain would be interested in helping out.
If you could find the time to appear at that event, it may be more productive it coincide with the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event held in November, or FOWA London on 3-5th Oct, both of which you have presented at in the past.
As one of the founders of http://www.44con.com/ I'd be happy to chat about making this happen. We have everything we need geared up for this and could do it as a free or paid for conference.
What about Paris? I'm hearing from neutral sources (not me, I'm biased) that Paris is ahead of London in terms of startups. I actually was surprised to hear that.
I understand that the language barrier can be stressful for Americans. London is therefore the default choice.
I think it would be great to have a YC-style event in London, although I'd suggest that, instead of waiting for YC to do it for us, why don't we do it ourselves? I'd be willing put some money up to make a London equivalent happen. If anyone's interested in discussing further, drop me a line on jack at gavigan dot co dot uk
I'd love for this to happen, i'm really interested in going through YC and this would be amazing. Also Re: Paris. From what i've heard it's harder to start in France due to how investment law works there. Although i've seen interesting startups across Europe, my bias opinion is that YC should come to London.
another vote for London! there are a lot of people in the world with the desire and energy to build great things that cannot get visas and up and move to San Francisco, in my opinion London is the second best place to be to create a startup.
I wanted to read about and see the date of a talk pg gave at Harvard before Y Combinator's first batch (not Startup School 2005; I went to that so I know a little about it).
I believe you are referring to "How to start a startup"
http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
derived from a talk to the Harvard Computer Society in March 2005
I'd like to go to this but can't (live outside of NYC but I'll be in IL at the time). From the description of the event I'd guess it won't really be suited for this, but is any part of it going to be recorded and/or streamed?
Sounds really interesting. I'm curious: how useful is the event likely to be if I already work at a (larger) startup? Is it mainly targeted at those who want to found new startups?
Are you considering going back to the 2 city model where you have a YC batch on both coasts? It would seem to make sense in NYC, as the city has made great strides as an internet startup hub and probably significantly ahead of where Boston was when YC moved entirely to California.
edit: PG's reasons for moving to California permanently (2.5 years ago) are described here: http://ycombinator.com/ycca.html - but as YC has grown, I'd imagine things are a bit different as there are many more people involved now.
We have no current plan to. Going to Silicon Valley for YC doesn't
mean moving there permanently. (There are about a dozen YC funded
startups in NYC.) And if ambitious people are willing to go to
another city for several years for college or grad school, it doesn't
seem like a big stretch for them to go to Silicon Valley for 3 months for YC.
There's a long tradition of ambitious people travelling to the big center of whatever they're interested in. And while NYC is more of a startup hub than it used to be, the Valley is still the center. Founders who come here find it an eye-opening experience. So we wouldn't necessarily be doing NYC-based founders a favor by establishing a branch there.
My cofounder and I moved from NYC to the Valley to be part of the S2010 YC batch. The time we spent there was incredibly valuable and definitely worth it, even though we knew from the start our company would ultimately be based in NYC.
Doing YC in no way means you have to leave New York for good.
Could you elaborate a bit on what you learned or realized? Was it simply a different vibe or were there more tangible differences that the rest of the world could learn from?
Two things immediately come to mind, one specific and one a bit vague.
Specific: YC gave us an unbelievable network of founders, hackers and investors in the Valley, and that stayed with us even after we moved back to New York. There's absolutely no way we'd have as strong a west coast (or even east coast) network if we hadn't done YC.
Vague: Valley culture. YC is in many ways at the center of the Valley and embodies the best it has to offer. I don't know how to explain it, but there's definitely a different culture at YC and in the Valley in general than in New York or anywhere else I've been.
It's hard to quantify or describe concisely, because it's really the sum total of people's attitudes, and the conversations you overhear on the street, and the density of people who have built or are building startups, and a thousand other things.
The only analogy I can think of is traveling to another country. For instance, when I traveled to Europe, it felt extraordinarily different from the US, and the differences weren't always easy to pintpoint.
We didn't hesitate even a little before moving out to the Valley for YCW11. We knew, from the start, that we'd probably move back to NY because of the dynamics of our market.
Moving out there was an incredible experience, and being able to bring what we learned there, and the network we built, back to the east coast is a huge asset for tutorspree. If you're willing to do anything to make your company succeed, then moving to the west coast for a few months weighed against everything it gives you is kindof an easy decision.
I beg to differ on the amount NYC has to offer compared to Wash DC. I personally believe there are more start up ready folks in and around the district compared to NYC...
Unfortunately, DC based on VC funding to local companies (including Maryland, VA and DC) doesn't hold a candle to NYC or Mass on the east coast.
It's funding numbers have been buoyed in recent quarters by large LivingSocial rounds but otherwise, there is not a lot of institutional investment flowing to startup in the DC area.
I'd be interested in what data there is to back this up? I'm admittedly biased (as a NYC resident), but I just don't see DC carrying the same kind of weight as NYC.
An admirable list for sure - but that doesn't really tell us why DC has more startup mojo than NY. Particularly when it can be quickly countered with the "Made in NY" list of companies, all self-reported and all with over 10,000 users.
http://nytm.org/made/
DC is seeing an explosion and it's great! I know of 3 co-working spaces that popped up recently. Also if you're in DC come to the meetups advertised via Startup Digest DC. There was also a group for DC Hacker News readers altho there hasn't been much movement in that there are lots of cool things going. One thing I'd love to see is an incubator program in DC proper. I know there is one that is run as a partnership with UMC CP but I've looked (and looked) and cannot find anything in DC. If anybody knows of one I'd love to check it out.
