Where was it advertised? I heard about it on twitter DURING the event, but I would have been interesting in going.
Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
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Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#22At the pub afterwards, about every other person I met was working at a startup - especially later on when it wasn't so packed. The pile of business cards I'm going through now reflects this. Perhaps there was some self-selection amongst the people who stayed on at the pub for a while?
(I regret that I missed the talks - unfortunately I was held up by a meeting that ran late).
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#23The HN meetup clashed with the Springboard mentoring & networking event hosted at TechHub. There must have been about 50 startups there (+ VCs/angels/jurnos/mentors). Quite a lot of HNers were there so I wouldn't be surprised if that had a negative impact on the number of startups at the HN event.
(For future reference if Springboard runs one of these events again, it's definitely worth going. I got a lot of practical advice that's going to have a major impact on my business, plus I had an early stage VC ask me for a pitch deck. I'm not sure how the event could have been any better.)
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#24I went there with the rough expectation that I might find some people to co-found something with, but since I'm a wuss I didn't talk to anyone I didn't already know.
If they're not already working at a startup, are people who attend these events likely to be open the idea of work for equity or co-founding?
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#25Where was it advertised? I heard about it on twitter DURING the event, but I would have been interesting in going.
Hi Piers, this is the meetup page http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ . We'll announce the next event shortly, expect it will be at some point in March depending on venue availability.
I did not advertise the last event on HN because it got booked up very quickly and were at pretty much full capacity last night.
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#26I live in London and work for a Boston-based startup with a small office here. So, not actually a London startup. But I'd be interested in attending one those meetups in the future. Where are those events announced btw?
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#27Logging in anonymously, because it lets me be slightly more direct. As someone who does work on a startup in London, but didn't go last night, it's because I've found the HN London meetups to be chock-full of people who don't work on startups, but simply talk all evening about recycled opinions they've garnered from reading HN posts. Not an interesting way to spend an evening.
As a not-working-at-a-startup person, when I went to the first HN meetup I was impressed by the fact that pretty much everybody I met was working at a startup. That's part of the reason I haven't been since actually, because I didn't think I had too much to add to all those startup people. So my experience was pretty much the opposite of yours. How many have you been to?
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#28Judging by the number of people in shirts and ties there, I'd imagine a large proportion are in full-time employment and on the periphery of the startup scene.
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#29Sadly missed last nights HN meetup. But just wanted to say I'm a London hacker working on a Seedcamp '10 winning startup.
Re: Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?
#30Logging in anonymously, because it lets me be slightly more direct. As someone who does work on a startup in London, but didn't go last night, it's because I've found the HN London meetups to be chock-full of people who don't work on startups, but simply talk all evening about recycled opinions they've garnered from reading HN posts. Not an interesting way to spend an evening.
Haha, I am sure you would have thought of me as 'that guy'. I'm not in a startup, I'm quite young, very interested in technology and from time to time work on web development 'side-projects'. But I want to work on a startup in the future and I want to meet intelligent people interested in creating startups. Surely that's the point?
I understand that you want to meet people that are more successful than you. You want to meet people that you can learn from. Or at least to meet people that are on the same level to you that you might share the experience with or work with. But that's exactly the same reason that people with less experience go.
So I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being hypocritical because this would be missing the point: you judge the evening on its value to you (as opposed to the value you're given others by effectively mentoring them). That is just what I do. However, at the very least I expect you could find good developers, future employees, interesting stories and people to bounce off ideas and help test your software.
edit; As others have stated: if you are really interested in startups you should probably be at home working. ;)