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Why I Love Startup School

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Re: Why I Love Startup School

#2

Post by keithwarren »

I got the chance to attend this year and what struck me as most interesting about the weekend was not the day of speakers but the people I met. I meet lots of people who talk about startups but almost everyone I met was deeply serious and wicked smart. Every person I met, every conversation I had I came away thinking that they would be successful...and I am usually quite pessimistic in that scenario. Ground zero is a great term, I feel I met so many great people and heard so many great ideas that there was almost certainly a unicorn company in that room.

Re: Why I Love Startup School

#3

Post by reduce »

"cheap, no-frills, and amazing content and people. And, of course, little to no introductory remarks."

Love that. Seeing EU events headed in the opposite direction... increasing fees, more showmanship, speakers all trying to literally sell you something, not very genuine or down to earth.

Re: Why I Love Startup School

#5

Post by jhuckestein »

I love how this year's event illustrated that you don't have to be an asshole or a sociopath to be successful. All the speakers sounded like genuinely nice and wonderful people.

Some of entrepreneurship's biggest successful outliers seem to have exhibited those traits and thus they became part of silicon valley lore. I think it's important for people getting into startups to understand that you don't have to turn yourself into a stone cold shark. Some business decisions will be tough, but that doesn't mean you have to be an ass about them. Your ambition can be to be successful, but that doesn't mean you have to "crush your competitors" or disregard other people entirely.

An article I once read cited a study showing that on average, people are more financially successful AND happy, if they are considered by their friends to be good people. I tried to find it just now but couldn't. Has anybody heard of similar results?

Edit: What are some examples of extremely successful entrepreneurs that were known to be extremely kind?

Re: Why I Love Startup School

#8

Post by pshin45 »

I was lucky enough to attend Saturday's Startup School Silicon Valley event (my first time), and I'm happy to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I've previously blogged about what I think makes a "great" startup event[1], and Startup School does seem to fulfill most of the criteria - Great speakers, a focused theme, a focused audience, and best of all it's free and highly accessible.

Despite all that, in the spirit of iteration and helping the event improve in the future, here are my 2 nitpicks/suggestions:

#1 - More transparency around how attendees are selected

YC already does a great job of explaining what they look for and how they choose teams that apply to their accelerator program[2], and it would be great if they could explain, even briefly, what selection criteria they use for Startup School. It's already free and open to anyone (to apply to), and I think being transparent with the selection criteria would be the cherry on top.

#2 - Expand the Office Hours segment

The speakers and their talks were excellent, but I think Startup School could be even better with more of an interactive, hands-on element as well.

The Office Hours segment, in which two YC partners simulated YC office hours with 3 teams selected from the audience (10 minutes each), is arguably the most interesting part of the event, and something that truly differentiates Startup School from other "fireside chat with [successful founder]" events. It gives the audience a good idea of how YC partners help founders ask the tough questions about their own startups that can hopefully point them in the right direction.

However, the Office Hours segment left me wanting more, and I started imagining how cool it would be if this was turned into a 1-hour breakout session, where 10~20 YC founders in different verticals would hold open office hours for anyone who wants to have their own startup or project critiqued.

Again, I think Startup School is a great resource for the community, and I'm excited to think about how it could be made even better.

[1] https://medium.com/@petershin45/what-makes-a-good-startup-ev...

[2] https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/

Re: Why I Love Startup School

#10

Post by Balgair »

keithwarren wrote: post #2

I got the chance to attend this year and what struck me as most interesting about the weekend was not the day of speakers but the people I met. I meet lots of people who talk about startups but almost everyone I met was deeply serious and wicked smart. Every person I met, every conversation I had I came away thinking that they would be successful...and I am usually quite pessimistic in that scenario. Ground zero is a…

Caveat: I was not there at all.

To clarify, was this time exceptional amongst other events like this that you have gone to? I am skeptical, as many people at events like these that I have attended are there to sell you themselves and idea, hence it would be by design that you walk away thinking they all are 'going to make it.'

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