
YC NYC, September 26 - pg
http://ycnyc.com/
======
dmitri1981
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.

~~~
pg
Possibly. If we had an event in Europe, it would probably be in London.

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alain94040
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.

~~~
ig1
They're mistaken. Roughly 40% of European VC money is invested in London,
nowhere else comes even close.

If you just want to do a headcount you can search Crunchbase by city.

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benatkin
Huh. Surprised how tiny the Wikipedia article about Y Combinator is.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator>

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).

Anyone have details? Curious.

~~~
paul
The edit history is interesting to review. They actively remove useful
information from the article, e.g.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Y_Combinator&d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Y_Combinator&diff=435299680&oldid=435290762)

I'd love to see someone create a non-broken wikipedia that keeps the citation
rules but eliminates of the rest of the deletionist culture.

~~~
benatkin
Yeah, me too. A Wikipedia for articles about things that happened after the
Web was invented. Imagine that!

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grinich
If you're in Boston on September 24th, <http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/>

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alecbenzer
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?

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DavidPP
Anyone else from Montreal planning to go ?

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danest
Curious on how many spots are going to be available and are any spots reserved
for students?

~~~
pg
We planned for 500 but we may have to increase that. None are reserved for any
specific group, but we like students.

~~~
benhoyt
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?

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alexro
What's the timeline of the event? It's Monday, so must be full day + evening?

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mtalantikite
The frontpage says 5:30-10pm, so looks like an after work event

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alexro
Oh year, I was looking in the text but didn't notice the header. So, just
evening then.

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thomasilk
+1 London

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pitdesi
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.

~~~
pg
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.

~~~
nicholasjbs
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.

~~~
kristiandupont
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?

~~~
nicholasjbs
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.

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klbarry
Just applied, I hope I can attend. I got an error message when submitting the
resume text, though.

Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): The server closed the connection without
sending any data.

~~~
pg
Sorry. The server is a bit overloaded today. Try
<http://news.ycombinator.com/resume?id=klbarry>

~~~
klbarry
Thank you for the second link - I will have to try again later though, the
error unfortunately persisted.

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bendoernberg
I had the same problem

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bigohms
Same.

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pg
The load problem seems to be fixed, so try again now.

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spoiledtechie
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...

I say you look into DC.

~~~
pg
<http://www.hipmunk.com/#!dc_NYC,Sep25>

~~~
maukdaddy
Also look at the Acela. Great high speed service between DC and NYC. Faster
and sometimes cheaper than flying.

