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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.




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".


> 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.


We've tossed around the idea of HN sponsoring a hackery summit a la Startup School but with a purely technical focus.

I wouldn't want to attend a "hackery summit" which simply consists of people writing code; I can do that better at home, since having people around is distracting.

On the other hand, a "hackery summit" with technical talks from people who have built cool things would be very interesting.


> technical talks from people who have built cool things would be very interesting

Yes, that's the idea. À la Startup School but with a technical focus.


One of the advices I've heard at the 'Istanbul Startup 2014' event was the following:

    *Design of the app comes first! (don’t lose too much time on engineering on early stage).*
Some people took the advice to the extreme[1].

On the bright side though, the Winner of the Challenge was a startup called 'Connected2Me' (IM mobile app) which was run by 2 guys: A Python developer (seemed to be the hardcore kind) and a DevOps guy who recently jumped up probably to handle the load and sys-admin. The startup had more than 2M users in Turkey alone. They both seemed (dress, talk, etc.) more like pure geeks more than business people.

[1] About a month ago I've seen a bio-informatics startup on HN (can't recall if it was about fighting a disease e.g. HIV or about genetic modification). The team was made by 7 members, 6 business oriented people (CEO, CTO, this and that manager) and ONE biologist with IT background. Seemed extremely ridiculous!


> 100 developers and gaining a technical focus

You're a far more accomplished developer than I am, but even I feel like I can mostly do what I need to, technically, given the time. I'm weaker in the other departments - finance, marketing, UX - all that stuff. So truth be told, I'm actually more interested in exposing myself to ideas from those fields. One thing I thought was interesting from MicroConf Europe last year is that I had very, very few conversations about actual technology, even though some of the people were certainly capable of it.


>cut down to 100 developers and gaining a technical focus... mind you, maybe that just means I want "hacker school" more than "startup school"

I think you're absolutely right about you wanting a "hacker" school. I'm involved in a startup from the business, marketing, and front-end side and while I have a very deep and sincere respect for the time and mastery it takes to become a great engineer/developer, in my opinion there is much more to building a great product/company/startup (whichever word you prefer) than amazing tech.

pmarca expressed it well in a talk to Stanford's MBA class in that he thinks the post-dot-com pendulum swung too far to the side of purely technical founders. He believes that when engineers and technical founders realize their efforts can be greatly complimented by inspired and business driven leaders, we will see the greatest innovations. I strongly agree with that sentiment.


I just want to say thank you for being a considerate human being on the internet and for posting this. I think critical discussion is extremely important to all of our continued growth, but I also think far too often we forget that we're criticizing actual humans and not just avatars on the internet. I enjoyed your thoughtful approach and I just find it refreshing that you mentioned the things you considered. That's all; thanks!




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