
Anyone know if YC's recordings of the '07 startup school talks are online? - Sam_Odio

======
waleedka
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/Ycombinator-StartupSchool>

~~~
SwellJoe
The hits:

Buchheit

Levchin

Partovi brothers

Graham

McAdoo

Recent founders panel (just the end bit where Alexis beautifully zings Paul,
but you need to see the slides...I dunno if they're available)

The misses (misses because I expected a lot more from these guys, not
necessarily because these were worse than the rest of the non-hits--both
really smart guys with a lot of success under their belt):

Kapor (should have been half an hour, like everyone else)

Zuckerberg (age discrimination isn't really something useful to learn, as we
all probably have enough of that built right in)

Though, I might say that if you do watch one of the misses, you need to watch
the other. They're like Olbermann and O'Reilly squaring off on issues like
hiring, firing, employee selection, etc. By the time you suffer through both
talks you might have a balanced view.

From the 06 batch I vividly remember Kraus, Graham, and Fletcher being
fantastic. Kraus and Fletcher are always worth listening to.

~~~
gyro_robo
Max Levchin is like the Energizer Bunny. See show #2 on NerdTV:
<http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/shows/>

He said when he's not doing a start-up he lays on the couch morose, whereas
he's happy and enjoying life when he IS doing a start-up.

I infer that the secret of success is to link pleasure to working on your
start-up and pain to NOT doing it. If your start-up feels like a grind then
it's doomed. Fortunately, you can re-program your emotional responses via
various techniques.

You pretty much want to do that regardless so that if you do strike it rich,
you don't feel useless and indolent for the rest of your life afterward. The
continued success stories are the people who were REALLY into what they did.
For example, Bill Gates could have retired long ago; Michael Jordan didn't win
one championship and decide that was all he wanted; Steve Jobs kept on going
while Steve Wozniak checked out, relaxed, and got fat. (I love Woz, I just
think if you're possibly the world's best at what you do, abruptly stopping
can't be very fulfilling, even though I understand he did many other
worthwhile things like teaching kids.)

~~~
akkartik
Reminds me of Sherlock holmes and his bouts of lethargy and cocaine-use
between cases.

