
Ask HN: What to Expect at YC Startup School? - alexander-g
Our company was accepted by YC&#x27;s Startup School. What to expect from the program?
======
samknight
I've been organising a group of founders in London. Right now there are 28 of
us signed up to do Startup School together, looking to do the course as a
group and recreate as much of the YC experience as possible. We have weekly
dinners lined up with some brilliant speakers and a London business school is
kindly offering its space for us to work together during the ten weeks. We're
also looking at plans for a London demo day at the culmination of the course.

I got to speak with Sam Altman on Monday whilst he was in London, explained
what we're building for founders and what it is they want more than anything:
to meet and learn from YC alumni. He was generous with his time and
supportive, advising us to go out there, find them and persuade them to take
part. So here I am on HN following Sam's advice! We'd love to have YC alumni
come along to some dinners and share valuable insight with our collection of
founders. Even if you can only spare 30mins, any alumni assistantance would be
amazing. We're a friendly bunch who are passionate about building things.

If you're a YC alumni near London who wants to get in contact, please post a
message here or email me at:

sam.comhouse@gmail.com

If you're a London founder who'd like to take part, please get in contact too!

~~~
santiagonavarro
Hi, this is Santiago co-founder of Nightly.travel and we're London based. I'd
love to get involved. Let me know how. I can be reached at
santiago@nightly.travel or @SantiagoBiz on Twitter. Looking forward to meeting
you all asap.

~~~
samknight
Hey Santiago, thanks for getting in contact and wanting to take part, I'll
drop you an email.

------
osullivj
Congrats! I'm still waiting for our email. I'm prepping by watching all the
Stanford startup videos on YouTube and making notes. The PG, Thiel and Schultz
lectures have been thought provoking. I'm a natural contrarian, so I loved the
Thiel talk, especially the monopoly vs perfect competition theme. If we're
lucky enough to get on the program I've got high hopes for the mentorship by
YC alumni element. Would be great to get some guidance from a B2B SaaS that's
been there and done it. But I'm a solo founder and I'm a lot older than the
usual YC profile, so I'm expecting to get rejected.

~~~
wj
I definitely recommend watching the videos. If you are interested I did take
notes and you can download them here:

[https://leanpub.com/how_to_start_a_startup](https://leanpub.com/how_to_start_a_startup)

------
sreyaNotfilc
Startup School is very fun and inspiring. I went to the 2014 in NYC. Alexis
Ohanian was the host. Man, he's a great guy and a great MC.

I didn't get a chance to meet him, but I'm sure he would've stayed around for
anyone who wanted to talk.

My take-away was that its a very inspiring event. So inspiring that I wanted
to leave ASAP so I can work on my ideas. Basically, you're in an auditorium
learning about how a few of these companies (e.g.
[https://www.codecademy.com/](https://www.codecademy.com/)) got started.
Afterward, you may stick around to socialize.

I will say that I didn't necessary learn anything new. But, I don't think that
was the point. It was more about getting people excited to dream big and
create things that may become businesses.

Here are some videos to watch that will help you get the most out of it - 1\.
Alexis Ohanian :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKYkmYuk5l8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKYkmYuk5l8)
2\. Sam Altman's Course :
[http://startupclass.samaltman.com/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/) 3\.
Apoorva Mehta (Instacart) at Startup School NY 2014 :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmR7TYUt_c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmR7TYUt_c)

Good luck!

~~~
bambax
Not the same Startup School. This is a MOOC that lasts 10 weeks, it's
different from the conf. that was only 1 day.

~~~
sandslash
Though very similar in idea and goal!

------
ploggingdev
They already sent you a confirmation email? I thought they were going to
inform teams if they were accepted or not on April 3.

~~~
sandslash
We're slowly going through and accepting teams on a rolling basis. Finbarr is
the sole engineer building the software, so we wanted to have a bit of buffer
time in case we overlooked something in the program/product.

Apologies for the error in the messaging, it should have said _by_ April 3rd.

------
searchfaster
Congrats ! Wish I had not seen this though.. I am going to be rushing to my
phone every time I hear an email notification, all weekend :)

------
dre7413
Do you think getting into Startup School will mean you didn't get into YC
Accelerator?

~~~
sandslash
Startup School will have no effect on your YC Accelerator application.

~~~
offerquant
Good news :)

