
Thoughts on Startup School - cperciva
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2014-10-18-thoughts-on-startup-school.html
======
tlb
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
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.

~~~
yellow_and_gray
I feel there's something inconsistent to be reconciled here.

On one hand single-founder startups don't get as big, which is a bad thing. On
the other, writing code for 8 years as a single founder is right about the
definition of doing things that don't scale, which is a good thing. So you
can't say Colin running Tarsnap as a single founder for 8 years was bad for
Tarsnap.

But it also sounds like unexplored terrain. The more specialized a skill you
need for some types of work, the more likely this scenario is to happen.
What's missing here is a way forward. If the goal of Tarsnap is to grow, the
north star is Tarsnap's growth rate.

Colin, could you share more about what you are looking for?

~~~
cperciva
_If the goal of Tarsnap is to grow, the north star is Tarsnap 's growth rate._

Well, Tarsnap's goal _isn 't_ to grow. I mean, growth is nice, but I'd be
perfectly happy if it stayed at its current size; my priority is to have a
good product.

~~~
rokhayakebe
I am curious; how do you come to the conclusion that staying small is better
than growing the product/business and taking over as some suggest?

~~~
cperciva
I said that Tarsnap's goal wasn't to grow, not that Tarsnap's goal was to not
grow. What it comes down to is that Tarsnap is large enough now to be easily
self-sustaining (it pays me more than I would expect to earn anywhere else),
and my goal from the start was "build the service I want to use", not "become
rich".

~~~
giulianob
That's how I run my game project as well. Except that I haven't gotten to a
point where it can sustain working on it full time. Have you written about the
history of Tarsnap like how you started it, how long before you were able to
use it as a living, etc...?

~~~
cperciva
I haven't written any sort of history like that, although you can get a few
bits of history from looking back at my older blog posts. Tarsnap has always
been my full-time job, though; when it was still very small I supplemented it
by doing some consulting, but mostly I lived off my savings.

------
dfabulich
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
_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.

~~~
selmnoo
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.

~~~
cwp
Sure they would. It's not like YC puts on startup school every week.

------
loganfrederick
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.

------
scobar
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
_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
> 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.

~~~
cperciva
_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.

~~~
dang
> 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.

------
brianchu
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.

------
JasonCEC
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

------
fidotron
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.

------
lnanek2
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.

~~~
nostrademons
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
_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.

------
joeblau
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.

------
randall
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...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html)

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.)

~~~
hkmurakami
Imo the socializing can be demoralizing or exciting, driven by sheer luck
since there are so many different people in attendance. As a commenter on the
article says, "it's difficult to find like-minded people" there.

I just decided to roll the dice a LOT of times, and came out with a few
serendipitous contacts that will probably be sustained for years to come. But
I do think that you need to go in with the mindset of having to converse with
many people with whom you don't have anything in common with, before bumping
into someone who you find interesting.

~~~
drumdance
Furthermore, I've found that networking is a very long game. If you go in
thinking "what can I get out of this today?" you are only seeing a small part
of the benefit. My biggest financial success came from a person I met 7
_years_ before we ever worked together. We only loosely kept in touch over the
years, but when the right opportunity came along for both of us we were glad
to have met all those years before.

I have dozens of people like that in my orbit. Smart, ambitious, connected
etc. We just haven't found the right opportunity yet.

------
neltnerb
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!

------
Yadi
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!

------
nicholasreed
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
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.

------
timedoctor
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.

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

~~~
gus_massa
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.

------
malanj
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_.

------
anjit6
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
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.

------
graycat
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...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2012/10/what-goes-wrong.html)

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.

------
yongers
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".

------
resca79
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

------
oz
> 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
I'm not worried about money. Doesn't mean I like wasting it though...

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rahilsondhi
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?

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clairity
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.

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davidw
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.

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novaleaf
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.

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yurylifshits
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.

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cpg
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.

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andyidsinga
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.

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lazyant
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.

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

