
Reflections of a YC Dropout - orianmarx
http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/02/reflections-of-a-y-combinator-dropout-introduction/
======
tptacek
You're not worried that this reads a bit like you trashing your co-founders? I
assume you mean well, but:

* "Lack of conviction" reads like a moral judgement on the rational business decision to leave a startup that isn't working.

* "Fear" is an emotional word that (to me) implies irrationality; "concern" or "wariness" might be more appropriate, especially because you don't give much context. What are they "afraid" of? A company with no revenue and a 3 month runway?

* In a three-person startup, the "half developer half CEO" probably shouldn't be picking out the ex Goldman developer as good-but-not-excellent for not turning out a feed reader fast enough; why didn't you get it done then? And especially...

* ... when the CEO of that pre-revenue pre-product decides to have the company pay to fly him to SXSW during that dev crisis.

I mean, look, you can do everything right and fail, and everything wrong and
still win; startups are a huge risk, keep trying, etc etc --- but you wrote
this to get feedback from people, and mine is:

* I wouldn't want you as a cofounder (hey --- my cofounders probably don't want me --- I work my ass off to mitigate that!)

* You seem more engaged with the "lifestyle" of a startup --- lawyers, "networking", advisors, incorporation, "voting" --- than with the reality, which is a mindbending daily grind of work and fear and effort hopefully aimed at getting to cash flow neutral as soon as possible, but most likely aimed right off a cliff.

You're obviously going to do this again; all knocks aside, you read like this
stuff is in your blood. Better luck next time.

[edit: toned down very slightly].

~~~
SwellJoe
My first thought was, "Hmmm...so this guy had _several_ co-founders, and all
of them left in disgust. What's the common variable?"

Sounds like OP has some personality issues that need to be worked out. And, I
got a distinct "mad with power" vibe, as well. Early stage company founders do
not need a boss. If they do, they're already doomed to failure. It sounds like
this fellow just likes the idea of being chief of something, and isn't all
that good at it. Many nerds have started companies without management chops or
a good personality, but they made up for it by producing code that solved a
problem. I'm getting the distinct impression the OP (who may or may not be
strong on the code front) is definitely weak on the management and personality
front, but wanted to spend all of this time managing and "networking".

I don't claim to be an expert on this stuff, but I am a nerd, and I do produce
(when it's my place to do so, though in my current startup, I produce far less
code than my co-founder), and I think I would have ditched this startup, too.
Nerds, in general, aren't good at being bossed around, and the kind that start
companies _definitely_ aren't good at being bossed around.

But, I agree with you. The guy probably _does_ actually have a good company in
him (because dedication and a healthy appetite for risk are the primary
requirements...everything else pales in comparison). He just needs to keep
assessing how he can do things better next time, particularly when it comes to
interacting with co-founders.

~~~
webwright
Second the "mad with power" vibe.

Wow-- I think the OP failed to learn a few lessons. The biggie is the seeming
lack of empathy for his partners and his apparent belief that he's in charge.

At this level, it's a partnership. As a CEO, it's not your job to lead and
have your partners follow. It isn't your job to make unilateral decisions on
how you spend your time (networking versus coding). With a small team, you can
be a cheerleader, a tiebreaker, and a buck-stops-hear guy... But for the most
part-- it's a damn partnership.

And it's pretty clear to me that the poster didn't treat it like one, which is
a shame.

I think he's very right about the team needing to have the same level of
commitment... His deeper commitment is probably why he felt entitled to
"lead", even when PG suggested that that might be the problem.

------
breck
First, thanks for sharing. It's really hard to talk about past failures and
yet so valuable. I learned more from your story than reading 20 "How to
Succeed" articles.

Second, I just want to share one thing I've learned. There's a lot of
pyschology mumbo jumbo in your analysis but _all_ that really matters is the
numbers. How many pageviews/users/sales/conversions did you have? Etc.

One thing I've learned about Internet startups is that you _absolutely cannot
force them_. The market dictates your success plain and simple. It sounds like
you guys weren't listening to the market; you were not paying enough attention
to the numbers. That's really the only thing you should pay attention to. A
month into my startup last year, one of the co-founders said to me and the
other partner:

Him: "Guys, I've discovered a pattern in our traffic." Me: "Well, what is it?"
Him: "Every week it decreases." Me: (Proceed to ignore the importance of this
simple statement and pursue the idea for 5 more months, believing that because
we had a good team and _we_ thought the idea was good we could succeed, which
was too bad because from month 1 the market was giving us PRICELESS advice--we
should have been working on a different idea)

Every other mistake was irrelevant because the only thing that matters is the
numbers.

~~~
jfarmer
Correct! I call this the "cult of the product." If we just build the most
awesomest widget possible, everyone will love it and give us money!

Or, "build it and they will come."

Wrong. You need to have market hypotheses and you need to build the smallest
test cases possible to try and falsify these hypotheses.

That means instrumentation, a data-driven mindset, and the ability to iterate
quickly.

You'll know very quickly if you're sucking. And you probably are.

~~~
breck
Agreed. Adonomics eh? That's awesome, I was a huge fan. Are you in the Bay
Area?

~~~
jfarmer
Yeah, I live in Palo Alto now and was in SF for the last two years. Drop me a
line at jesse@20bits.com

------
jmtame
Wow, this is a great read.

Let me just jump in on a topic that I've seen a few times, and one that I
think throws programmers for a loop. It's the whole "premature scalaculation"
thing.

Did you know the 3 guys who built YouTube initially didn't start it out as a
video site? It was a dating site! Even more, did you know they didn't even use
a version control system? The philosophy was "push once a day, make some type
of change that the user can see." They also were focused on building out
features, not worrying too much about scalability at first.

The guy who started PayPal said that one of the most painful parts were the
times where he had to delete massive amounts of his own code. He said one of
the biggest flaws of engineers is to write "the perfect code." And yet, 90% of
it gets destroyed shortly after it's written.

I'm not an advocate of crap code. In fact, at our startup, we write very good
code and follow the API models of companies like Google and Flickr so as to
have a scalable product and architecture with clean, readable, commented code.
But when you're a startup, you have different priorities.

I'd say maybe the first 6 months (an arbitrary number) don't worry about
scalability. You don't even have a user ;) Why not worry about how you'll get
your first 100 users, or better yet, how you'll get your first 100 users
happy, as Paul Buchheit puts it?

On a final note, I read someone else mention about the CEO thing. In my
opinion, you don't need a CEO until you at least have user growth down. Yes,
you want investors, but try to offset most of that work to PG or whoever else
is investing. It's in their interest that you succeed too. You should be
working day and night with your engineers, building the product. It will make
the future fundraising and meetings much easier, just think about Google and
Andy Bechtolsheim.

I really enjoyed reading this, and I think you're going to go far in the
future. Sometimes we get dealt some bad cards, and the only thing you can do
is to fold 'em and wait for the next hand. Stay persistent, stay focused, and
kick ass.

~~~
nostrademons
> Did you know the 3 guys who built YouTube initially didn't start it out as a
> video site? It was a dating site!

Really? Source? I knew that the they'd created the "I was at a party and
realized there was no good way to share videos" story for the press. But I
thought the actual story was that they'd done market research about trends
that were changing the technology landscape, and came up with the rise of
cellphone video and broadband access. From there, it was a short leap to
"let's put video online".

~~~
jmtame
There a lots of stories of how the company started, the press not being the
most reliable. Check out the ACM talk one of the founders gave earlier at
uiuc.

I believe the idea was sparked after one of the founders read a particular
wired article.

~~~
nostrademons
I thought the ACM talk at UIUC was the one I saw where they said it was based
on growth in the cell-phone-video and broadband industries.

Hmm, here it is:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssfmTo7SZg>

The genesis section starts around 25 minutes in. Looks like we're both right:
they mention the Wired article at 25 minutes in, then the cell-phone video
aspect (via Indian Ocean tsunami) at 29:00, and the other enabling
technologies (including broadband) at 31:41.

~~~
jmtame
Lol you can see the two kids in the orange sitting on the stairs in the middle
of the screen. I'll say that the stairs were very uncomfortable.

I saw an e-mail that one of the founders wrote, and I can't remember where it
was.. maybe at the second meeting which was private/not recorded. The contents
of the e-mail were asking friends to tell their friends, and they offered to
pay girls to sign up on the site and upload videos (thinking it would draw in
guys).

It's kind of silly to argue how YouTube started--the argument I was trying to
make initially was that your code will probably be erased shortly after it's
written, especially if you're not sure what your company will be working on.

------
wheels
There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I wonder how much of it you can
really be seen without looking at things from inside a startup. A lot of is
based on what Paul's written and while I've read most of his essays, I didn't
really get some of the points until they were up close.

It's kind of like earlier today I was struggling through a paper written on a
topic of advanced mathematics that I'd never worked on before. I asked a
friend with a PhD in math if he could explain it to me. He used the same terms
that I didn't understand from the paper in his explanation. So, I stared at
the paper for another two hours. I doodled on my whiteboard. I could visualize
the solution to the problem, but I couldn't work out the mechanics. Eventually
it dawned on me, and it was really simple ... in retrospect.

I think a lot of things are like that. Parents try to warn their kids about
their mistakes and it rarely works. I think the real lesson, perhaps, is to
not be afraid to fail. Bite off more than you can chew and be willing to fail
and learn from it. You'll definitely make mistakes, and your startup may fail,
but you can at least be certain that you'll learn an enormous amount in the
process and that you'll be able to carry that knowledge with you the next time
you take a swing.

~~~
Alex3917
Similarly, I've noticed that proverbs and aphorisms only become useful after
you've been burned by violating them a bunch of times. It's weird because you
can be told them and understand what they mean immediately, but just because
you understand what they mean doesn't make them meaningful. Or something. It's
almost like you aren't able to fully grok the proverb until you have a certain
outlook on life or the right schemas or perspectives, but it's impossible to
gain those just by hearing the original saying.

(This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a
word or a concept or something. Perhaps something to do with constructivism.)

~~~
cperciva
_(This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a
word or a concept or something.)_

I think what you're looking for is two words, not one: "Experience matters".

~~~
Alex3917
Yeah, but why? Why should it be true? Logically I see no reason why experience
should matter, but it clearly does. I should be able to just read a proverb
and grok it and be better off for it, but I can't, it doesn't work that way.
Why?

~~~
gruseom
_I should be able to just read a proverb and grok it and be better off for it,
but I can't_

Maybe proverbs are more tags than content, like labels on bottles: the label
tells you what's in the bottle, but to absorb it you have to drink the
contents.

If that's right, then proverbs' main value is in retrospect - i.e. they help
to organize experience and talk about it, but not to replace it. I know I've
sometimes snorted at a proverb as being totally obvious, or a useless cliche,
only to get hammered by experience and later go, "Oh, so _that's_ what it
meant."

~~~
Alex3917
That reminds me of the saying, "The map is not the territory."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation>

Unfortunately Wikipedia fails to mention what the current academic consensus
on that is.

~~~
gruseom
I like that saying quite a bit too. It also reminds me of what I once read was
Abraham Lincoln's favorite joke:

    
    
      Q: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg?
      A: Four.

------
rokhayakebe
You sound inexperienced, which is ok by the way.

There is nothing wrong with your cofounders. They are who they are and that's
that. You spend the entire time looking for reasons to blame others, but my
friend you should look into a mirror tonight because that is where you will
face the problem.

You should try to develop your ability to pick partners, but even with a great
partner you sound like someone who is way too emotional.

I thought I would never say this to anyone, but you are not ready to be a CEO.
If the guys you thought would help you change the world, were not ready to
confirm with your strategy and you stood there trying to fight it instead of
explaining it, then you need more time and experience.

Sincerely.

~~~
orianmarx
I am inexperienced, and I probably wasn't ready to be the CEO for this
venture.

It seems that a lot of people here took my posts to be me just blaming my
partners, but that must be a light reading because I definitely talk about my
own shortcomings, and I take responsibility for what ultimately happened. I've
been looking in the mirror constantly for the last three months, and posting
here is part of that process of reflection too.

~~~
motoko
Too emotional, talk too much. Try addressing those, update us in a year.

~~~
orianmarx
Will do :-)

------
fallentimes
Here's the thing. If your company isn't over let's say 10 or 20 people, you
aren't a CEO. You just sound like a presumptuous amateur. I could tell where
the article was heading just from the number of "CEO" instances. And the title
of course.

------
JesseAldridge
Out of curiosity, what was it you were trying to build?

~~~
orianmarx
A collaborative, relevance-aware feed reader. I'll save more detail for the
future :-)

------
lvecsey
Much of this has probably already been said but here are some of my
observations. First, the lessons page was so long that I wonder whether they
have really been learned. Had they been learned it would have been stated in a
sentence or two. Rather, what you ended up with is a web page that you _wish_
you could have had weeks ago, to express much of your thinking at the time
during the crisis.

The main thing that stuck out was how you seemed to be a programmer as an
after thought. Particularly with the voting scheme; did you not have a genuine
belief about the right way to pursue certain tasks? Whether from the beauty of
a design, or the long standing approach it might have, or from a quick tweak
to an existing infrastructure. I also don't think its enough to 'marvel' at
two or more viewpoints. Just the fact that they can exist isn't enough, as you
do a disservice to both/all parties unless you go with a decision, hopefully
one that jives in some way with an internal model of how you see or have come
to see things, and thus consistent.

Finally, I got the sense that you were 'hosting a party but constantly
worrying about whether people are having a good time'.

These aren't meant to be brutal comments its just I think your series deserves
an honest response!

~~~
orianmarx
Thanks for the feedback. I quoted you a bunch in a follow-up post.

------
maxklein
Absolutely your fault. You just can't see it. You wasted money, wasted time
and wasted people when given everything in the world. You need to personally
change by becoming humble.

if I suggest this to you, what would your reaction be:

\- Call up all the old team members and apologise honestly, blaming everything
on yourself

If you instantly thought it is something you would never do, then you've not
learned.

------
jfarmer
Dude. If I'm your co-founder are you going to go blab to everyone in the high
hills about our relationship if it goes sour?

Not cool.

------
brandnewlow
I suppose it's good for the greater community to be able to read this. But
really, what good are you accomplishing here for yourself? I read this and
think, "Well, I should probably steer clear of that guy."

My startup has its ups and downs. Lately it's had several downs. C'est la vie.
People are always telling me I should be blogging about this stuff. I don't
see how it would do me much good until I'm at the point where my product is
doing what it needs to do. Otherwise I think I'd just be telegraphing to
people to steer clear.

~~~
orianmarx
Well, if it's doing some good for the greater community then I must be doing
some good for myself. There are going to be a lot of people that disagree with
what I'm saying in my posts and probably would want to steer clear of me. Then
again hopefully there will be a few interesting people that I get to connect
with through this that I wouldn't have otherwise, and that is worth it to me.

I think you should be blogging :)

------
fallentimes
So that's what happened to Orian. I actually really liked their idea, but
execution is usually the only thing that matters.

~~~
orianmarx
Yup. How was the summer?

------
nostrademons
Man, this sounds familiar. Some comments, based on my own experience with a
failed startup (<http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/>):

> Get the Team Right

> Be Wary of Founding With Friends

I think I remember Marc Andreesen writing that the best way to start a startup
is when a pre-gelled team meets a new opportunity. Can't find the blog entry
in question, but he suggested that any other founding scenario has
_drastically_ lower odds of success.

I thought I had a fairly strong team, with 4 other guys that I'd known (and
been fairly close to) in college. Over the year we worked, they all dropped
away, one by one. They just had better opportunities come up, and when it
comes to the actual daily grind, startups...kinda suck. I'm lucky; I escaped
with all the relationships intact, probably stronger than they were before,
and one of them just sent me a job offer last month to come work with him
(hmm, I wonder if that still stands, in light of the recent financial crisis
;-)). A lot of that came from deliberately taking the short end of the stick
on many occasions, eg. I put in the lions share of work and did not take a
leadership position. Many others aren't so lucky, and lose their friends in
addition to their startup.

I'd also add that it's really important to have worked with people on a
project, not just in social settings, and for them all to be on the same page
regarding what they want with their life. A lot of people really _want_ to be
an employee: they can't deal with the uncertainty and random bad luck that
comes with being in a startup. It's a losing strategy to try and force them
into a startup; it's not good either for them or for your startup.

> Connect With People to Thrive

I was a little skeptical of this: when I wrote up my postmortem, one of my
lessons was "If you're doing anything other than building your product or
getting users, you're wasting your time." But there's always the possibility
that I'm the one who's wrong: after all, we both killed our startups. ;-)

I think, in hindsight, that I'd look at it this way: Don't expect to get
anything out of networking if you don't have a kickass product. However, don't
_expect_ to get anything out of networking anyway. If you do it without any
expectations whatsoever, just taking an interest in the people around you, you
might build some useful connections.

The other thing that struck me: it seems like your startup dissolved before it
got to the daily grind of actually trying to build something people want. And
that's the part that's _really_ depressing. I never thought that emotional
stability would be the limiting factor in startups, but ultimately, that's
what killed mine. I remember talking to a coworker who'd previously done a few
startups, before starting one, and he told me "Make sure you come out with
your sanity intact." I quit because I felt like that was slipping away, and I
was becoming someone I didn't really want to be.

~~~
orianmarx
It's very interesting reading through your blog. I'm surprised I hadn't come
across it before, and I'm glad you put it out there.

------
abl
Orian,

Are you going to continue with this same concept, or going to start on
something new? What are you going to do differently now to make sure that the
startup succeeds? Or this this Part IV of your blog? :)

~~~
orianmarx
Heh, I haven't quite settled that yet. It will be on the blog eventually :)

------
mkull
Maybe I missed it, but what was the startup?

------
axod
You keep referring to the other co-founders as "my guys". I don't think having
a 'manager' in a team of 4 is a great idea.

------
abl
Based what I've read about this startup, and on the facts presented, it is
difficult to tell whether Orian or his co-founders were in the right. It would
require to place all of their efforts under a microscope - we don't know how
much time Orian sacrificed to go out of his way to find venture funding, etc..
versus the other partners who may have been slaving away over the code. My
guess on the whole venture falling through is this - the other partners felt
like they were doing more work and putting in more into it than Orian was,
probably because they felt that networking is a lightweight activity. Or
because networking sounded to them like a more glamorous activity, rather than
coding. Or, maybe because they felt they wanted an equal share in the
leadership. Whatever the case may be, we don't know how much coding and
networking took place.

Orian's case brings up a good question that I've dealt with in the past, and I
am sure is on the minds of many startup founders here - how important is it
that the co-founders are all technical, and are all coders? Is it, "product
first, marketing second?" Or is it equally just as important to have a strong
"networking" guy on the team? If so, what are his roles, just networking, or
coding as well? What about a guy who is doing the coding but feels he could do
networking just as well, is it unfair to him?

Going back to Orian... judging based on other factors, there seems to have
been some trust impediments in my opinion - having two votes when all other
things being equal is not a fair distribution, even for the sake of
maintaining decision-making. Trust between partners is more important than
decision making, otherwise the whole thing falls apart.

Rather than take apart Orian's flaws, I am trying to understand if this
startup could have been saved. What if Orian went to his parners, and said,
"Guys, how about we all participate in the networking?" (Assuming he did his
equal share of the coding by working on the demo.) Maybe this would have
generated some further excitement and instilled trust in them? AND, it would
become self-evident whether or NOT the networking efforts equaled the coding
efforts. I know that some may argue this is not a good solution, because
concentrating on networking would have further removed them from realizing a
product, but at least it could have played a role in bringing the team back,
which it sounds was their first priority. Another thing, higher visibility and
transparency. If all the partners were stuck in the same office all day long,
maybe this lack of trust would diminish? Maybe a regular status meeting to
keep tabs on everyone's progress? What does everyone (including Orian) think,
what would be possible solution in their case?

~~~
orianmarx
Obviously I can't give an unbiased representation of all the facts... so, I
did my best to convey what I felt was behind what went down. I appreciate that
you see the nuance in this. What I can say is that we spent a lot of time
talking about all our concerns, on many different occasions. So on the one
hand, this is part of why I was a little surprised by what happened in the
end, and on the other, it's why I feel there probably wasn't much to be done
to save the company at that point.

------
wastedbrains
Excellent post, interesting to here the issues another startup has gone
through... I get the complaints other have, but still thought this was an
interesting read.

------
zaidf
I think the core problem is YOU lost belief in your product.

It is very common for successful companies to have key founders quit before
payday and during shitty times. The company lives through the tough times.

What has served me well is to have an attitude that _I_ am going to go along
on this ride(my startup) regardless of my cofounders. Until you can sustain
that belief, your start-up will live on(hopefully with your co-founders--but
not necessarily).

------
jasonlbaptiste
There's never really just one point of failure. There is maybe a so called
turning point, one mistake that is then daisy chained with other mistakes.
Soon enough the compounded mistakes lead to an overall failure. You have
passion, dedication, and more. The founders there weren't right, and now
you've learned something pretty damn valuable. Time to move on and start
something new, don't let one failure ever stop you.

------
apsurd
I'm not saying this piece was bad, but this is like ... 1% of what you would
get if you just read this:

<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/>

God if I wasn't a heterosexual, I would marry David Hansson

See his presentation at "startup school 08" . You won't be disappointed.

( ouch instantly downmodded for recommending other beneficial resources....
0.o )

~~~
jamiequint
Instead I would recommend "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Gary Blank

[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-
Blank/dp/0976470705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223859647&sr=8-1)

I think this book would have helped with some of the prioritization issues the
author of this blog post describes.

~~~
motoko
Do you mean Blank's emphatic appeal to unconditionally fire or everybody in
"bizdev" in distressed startups?

Or his emphatic appeal to iteratively build a market for your evolving product
rather than over-invest in engineering, miss your sales estimate, and fail to
service negative cash flow in a "Noh play" of blame and catastrophe?

~~~
jamiequint
hah, the 2nd one.

I think the "death spiral" scenario Blank describes in the book (using WebVan)
happens less often now, but still, people don't talk to their target market
enough. Maybe this is why people who are making things for themselves tend to
do well, they can skip this step and still come out OK.

------
orianmarx
Thanks to everyone for their feedback. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the response.
I've done a follow-up post to more concretely respond to some of the main
threads here.

[http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/16/reflections-of-a-y-
combi...](http://www.orianmarx.com/2008/10/16/reflections-of-a-y-combinator-
dropout-feedback/)

------
bisi
This is why I don't have any PARTNER/s . I make decisions faster and I dont
have anyone to blame but me !

~~~
bluelu
so true.

as a friend told me once, when you add a second person to your team and it's
the wrong person, your overall performance will fall under 100% of what you
could be doing alone.

This is what I sometimes feel that I'm unfortunately experiencing myself (we
are two).

------
mcu
He needs a hug.

------
mroman
I personally can't fathom why someone would feel the need to start networking
before a working product exists.

CEO? Why would you need a CEO when there isn't a company to run either on
paper or in actuality?

~~~
konsl
Founders should always be networking.

~~~
brianlash
Eh... founders should always be talking with different, intelligent people and
soaking up ideas. If that's what you mean by networking, fine. But I think the
networking tptacek refers to is the type that's organized X times/mo. and for
the purpose of professional development. It's those ad hoc events where _this_
group is encouraged to co-mingle with _this_ one.

It has its place, but just as useful at times is getting together with a group
of peers you trust and exchanging notes. Having a few beers and talking about
what challenges you're having, what breakthroughs you've made...

I think the tradtional idea of networking is overemphasized among a lot of
startups (and sometimes dangerously so) because it's an abstraction away from
the work that keeps them alive. You've got to make sure you keep a watchful
eye on your schedule and don't confuse attending X and Y event for Z
productivity.

~~~
tptacek
Agree, networking is over-emphasized. We did a lot of networking at the
outset, with no particular plan or strategy, and it doesn't feel like time
well spent.

Not sure I'm saying "my kind of networking meets X times per month", but I
will say this: we organized monthly meetups for the professionals in our
market (computer/network security), made it as all-inclusive as we could, and
it's been far more valuable to us than the vanity networking we did early on.

Isn't this one of the major recurring criticisms of valley culture? That all
those people do is go to parties with the same people every night?

~~~
brianlash
Sorry, I was unclear. What I meant was (at least from waht I gathered from
your post) that you're skeptical of vanity networking and that you favor less
formal gatherings done in the spirit of meetups.

I'm with you on that.

~~~
tptacek
I thought you might have been, but I just wanted to plug the idea of
organizing market-specific meetups to network with customers, prospective
employees, and partners --- people who can actually help your business --- do
this!

SXSW trips not so much.

