

PG: Thank you for putting on Startup School - pyronicide

I'd really like to say thank you to PG, the folks at YC, the speakers and everyone that put time and effort into making startup school what I think was an amazing event this year.<p>All the speakers shared invaluable insights into what we all love best - building things. In fact, I've already started hounding people who weren't able to attend to watch the videos. From Brian Chesky's lessons on perseverance to Andrew Mason's comments on forgetting your grand artistic vision and just building a tool that people can use, I feel like I've gotten some wonderful tips and tricks to help out my own ventures.<p>Perhaps even more important than the speakers though, at least for me, was the people. There really isn't any way to describe how invigorating it is to be around so many excited about technology, building things and their great ideas of how to change the world. I feel like the projects and ideas I've been procrastinating are now achievable and need to be done right away.<p>So, thank you again, everyone involved, for putting on such a singular event that helps us all out so much.
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pg
Thanks, but the credit for organizing it goes to Kirsty Nathoo, Jessica, and
Kate Courteau, and of course BASES. They organized everything. All I did was
show up and speak.

This was a good one though. The speakers really delivered.

~~~
jacquesm
I loved the talks by Ron Conway and Dalton Caldwell.

Ron for giving the 'long view', a different view of what investing is like
from the way people usually have.

Nice to make the distinction between 'investors' and 'company builders'.

And Dalton Caldwell was on top of his game there, taking the failure of imeem,
showing he gave it his 100%, and why that didn't even matter, and not even
pausing his stride, on to his new venture.

What an energy.

~~~
dalton
Thank you, I really appreciate the fact that people seem to be receptive to
the things I had to say.

Frankly, I wasn't sure what kind of reaction my talk would get... but since pg
personally asked me to do it, how could I pass up the opportunity?

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teej
Median quality of atendees was also -phenomenal-. Lots of really smart and
driven hackers.

I also got to meet edw519. I can confirm - he is as awesome as his HN comments
suggest.

~~~
edw519
Thank you for the kind words, T.J. I really enjoyed meeting you (and many
others), too!

 _Median quality of atendees was also -phenomenal-_

Something magical happens when you put a bunch of us in a room together: SUS =
HN^n.

At one point, I just stood in the middle of the courtyard during a break,
closed my eyes, and picked up random bits of conversation:

    
    
      - we had to load the source code...
      - our MVP was a little too minimal...
      - we may pivot again...
      - we made it to 100,000 uniques...
      - try a different framework...
      - finding another audience...
      and my favorite:
      - we're gonna change the world...
    

I love it when you guys talk dirty.

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b3b0p
I was going to submit the following, but wasn't sure if it was following the
rules of HN posts, so here it is:

Tell/Ask HN: I attended startup school as a non-founder and it was awesome,
how was your experience?

I attended applied and attended Startup School 2010 as a non-founder and it
was quite possibly the best day of my life in recent memory.

I want to say thanks to Paul, Airbnb, Bases and all the volunteers, and anyone
else that put in any effort to make this event what it was.

Second, thanks to all the speakers! You all did an awesome job. Well done!
Words cannot describe how well everyone did. By far the best event/conference
I have ever attended mostly because of all the interesting and insightful
talks.

Some of my highlights:

I sat next to the 3 awesome intelligent founders of Dr. Chronos (plug:
<http://drchronos.com>) and spoke with them about all sorts of interesting
topics through out the entire event and after.

I met Alexis and Christopher from Reddit and we joked and talked about many
interesting topics during lunch. I even got some pictures taken with them.

Speaking of lunch, that might have been some of the best pizza I have ever
had.

I feel like I met almost the entire Airbnb team, they were all awesome. Sorry,
if I can't remember all your names, so I want to say thanks for the awesome
after party! Special thanks goes to Nick, Joe, and Erin for putting up with
me.

I briefly met Paul and got my picture taken with him, truly an honor. Thanks
again Paul!

I met tons of intelligent, fun, awesome developers and founders. The
networking was worth every single penny alone (just a little over $600 total
including hotel from Oklahoma). I learned a ton! It was truly and inspiring
time for me throughout the trip.

To all those I did not mention above, thank you for making this quite possibly
one of the most fun, exciting, and enjoyable days I can remember in recent
history.

I hope I can attend next year. I'm looking forward to it.

------
drm237
I think Jessica deserves most of the credit. So thank you Jessica and crew!

------
petervandijck
Videos are here I believe: <http://www.justin.tv/startupschool>

~~~
vaksel
I wish those videos were broken up by speaker

~~~
hieu
Here is what I did for myself.

9:30 Andy Bechtolsheim Founder Arista Networks; Founder, Sun Microsystems
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271978319> 0:02:00 (not full)

10:00 Paul Graham Partner, Y Combinator; Founder, Viaweb
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271983983> 0:00:00

10:30 Andrew Mason Founder, Groupon
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271983983> 0:29:30

11:00 Break

11:30 Tom Preston-Werner Founder, GitHub
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271992324> 0:03:20

12:00 Greg McAdoo Partner, Sequoia Capital
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271992324> 0:36:00

12:30 Reid Hoffman Partner, Greylock; Founder, LinkedIn
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/271992324> 1:04:00

12:55 Lunch

2:30 Ron Conway Partner, SV Angel
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787> 0:01:00

3:00 Adam D'Angelo Founder, Quora
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787> 0:40:00

3:30 Dalton Caldwell Founder, Picplz; Founder, Imeem
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787> 1:08:30

3:55 Break

4:15 Mark Zuckerberg Founder, Facebook
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272002787> 1:50:30 and
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272007200>

4:45 Brian Chesky Founder, Airbnb
<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272007200> 0:23:00

~~~
c3o
Justin.tv lets users trim and title recordings (they call it "highlighting").
I did that for my favorite talks, here are direct links with no skipping
required:

Paul Graham: Recent trends in startup fundraising
<http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/b/272030715>

Andrew Mason (Groupon): Polishing your turds and getting SUPER RICH
<http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/b/272030648>

Tom Preston-Werner (Github): Optimizing for happiness
<http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/b/272031754>

Ron Conway (SV Angel): You can do it too
<http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/b/272031486>

Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) interviewed by Jessica Livingston
<http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/b/272031868> \+
<http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/b/272031906>

Brian Chesky: 1000 days of AirBnB <http://www.justin.tv/c3oorg/b/272030551>

Anyone wanna do the rest?

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tmsh
another thanks. the more i think about it, the more i appreciate how
invaluable the talks were. this was my second startup school. but oddly i
think the most valuable thing is a sort of subconscious quieting of the mind
around the key places where startups really need to get going.

for so many people starting new businesses there are just a lot of unknowns
that can create noise in one's mind (and prevent one from innovating around
the other more real domain problems). when you see and hear other people's
stories, strangely, i think the mind starts to normalize them and all these
classes of fuzzy / unknown obstacles, that we don't even realize are there,
start to disappear.

serial entrepreneurs often have already created this normalized, orthogonal,
clean parse tree in their mind from experience. and big name institutions or
big name angels create the same quieting of the mind. but i think in part you
can get the same thing from startup school, whether one realizes it or not.
the ultimate hack is that you don't actually need anything to 'quiet the mind'
whatever that means, if you realize how important that resulting action is in
the physics of it..

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LeBlanc
Thank you to the YCombinator crew and BASES for creating the event, and to all
of the awesome people to came as well. Hopefully some of you will be on that
stage in the next couple of years!

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robryan
The airbnb presentation is excellent, just watching it now, interesting
because I've already heard the most of the story in other interviews but it's
still worth hearing again.

------
zbruhnke
I watched most of the speakers on Justin.tv as well. What an incredible group
of individuals. I wish I could have been there in person and there is no doubt
I will be next year. It is amazing the impact YC has made in just 5 years. I
hope you guys keep it up, you truly have a wonderful thing going all the way
through. benevolence and kindness will surely pay off in cash as well for you
guys (I think we all know it already has).

Kudos to PG and the YC team!

------
djm
I've never been to SV but watching through these video's gives me a sense of
the sheer intensity of the energy that seems to be there with so many
companies and founders focused in one place. It's intoxicating; I'm so
jealous!

Thanks to all involved in the event and justin.tv for showing them. I'm
probably going to go through them all again at some point - there was so much
good stuff and I was too excited to write notes as I watched.

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serverdude
Thank you PG, Jessica and team! It was very motivating to see everyone! I did
not attend personally but the videos were terrific!

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megamark16
Though I wasn't able to attend this year, I did stream some of the live talks
on justin.tv, and I plan on watching the rest tomorrow. What I saw and heard
was very motivating, not to mention fun! I really wish I could have been
there, but maybe next year. Anyway, I'd also like to say thanks to all
involved!

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scottyallen
Yes, thank you so much for doing this. The quality of both speakers and
attendees was fantastic. It's really awesome to be surrounded by that many
people that are as technical and as focused on building businesses as I am. I
feel very blessed to have the opportunity to attend.

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mrchess
Great show! Worth the trip. Everyone was great but the most memorable speakers
for me were Groupon, imeem, and airbnb. If anyone is wondering if they should
fly out to see it, DO IT. So much better than watching streams.

thanks ycom

~mrC from Cambridge, MA

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Raphomet
Yeah, thanks to YC for organizing it and to the speakers for volunteering
their time. I have almost never learned so much in one day for free. You guys
have really made me think about what I want to do with my life.

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c1sc0
Thanks, this was an amazing event to follow, even only the stream. The chatbox
action was also interesting at times, except for the inevitable trolls. Good
job Justin.tv

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jrockway
Perhaps off-topic question: how is HN traffic affected by Startup School? I
want to see a traffic graph with each speaker's talk time marked ;)

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prostoalex
Thanks, the quality of the speakers (and talks, since I've heard a few of the
speakers before) was immense.

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stevederico
Thanks Jessica, pg, and team for such a wonderful opportunity. Great speakers
and amazing people.

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SteveMorin
Thanks another great year at Startup School. The Airbnb after hours was good
too.

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rumpelstiltskin
Anyone working on transcripts or summaries? Would love to pitch in.

------
harscoat
Thanks for streaming the event

