Thoughts on Startup School

I thought that "Startup School" would be more like the "How to Start a Startup" lecture series that YC is running at Stanford.

Instead, it was just a bunch of celebrities talking about their startup experiences; a concentrated shot of survival bias. There's nothing practical to learn from the Startup School talks.

As for inspiration, I guess some people might be inspired by celebrity speeches like those, and I don't want to begrudge anyone that if that's what they got out of it, but I'm much more inspired by new products. (Especially imperfect products that make it seem easy to improve them.)

The Office Hours are the best part. Throw away the talks, let PG give a keynote, and turn the whole thing into Office Hours.

Now that would be an event I could imagine attending.

Every Startup School there are a few good talks (Andrew Mason's and Reid Hoffman's were two I liked), plus office hours, which are engaging - but again, these are all uploaded online. I'm not sure how office hours participants are selected, but doing that would be an obvious reason to attend.

The real reason to attend Startup School is to meet a fairly interesting, relatively accomplished, friendly crowd of folks. There's a business bent to the demographic - everyone is interested in startups, but most people I meet are technical. If you really want to, there's the chance to talk to some of the YC partners. Some of the speakers will stick around to answer questions. Last year one of the Airbnb cofounders stayed to answer questions for a while.

To get the most out of it you definitely need to introduce yourself to random people. You certainly shouldn't pull out a laptop. I never sit down with friends because sitting down next to a stranger is a great opportunity to introduce yourself.

Over the past three events I've met a few people I've kept in touch with; that alone makes it worthwhile. It also makes a lot more sense if you're local to the Bay Area - it's a great excuse to meet up with friends in the area.

I just decided to roll the dice a LOT of times, and came out with a few serendipitous contacts that will probably be sustained for years to come. But I do think that you need to go in with the mindset of having to converse with many people with whom you don't have anything in common with, before bumping into someone who you find interesting.

Thank you for saying that. I hesitated for a long time before writing this -- hence the posting almost a week after the event -- because it felt like I was being rude to criticize an event which, after all, we were all invited into for free.

Those who are undecided about attending SuS in the future whose expectations match yours can decide against it if they read your post. Then, one more space will be available for someone who may have gained a lot, but wasn't accepted.

That would certainly be one positive outcome. For me, an even better outcome would be to have Startup School cut down to 100 developers and gaining a technical focus... mind you, maybe that just means I want "hacker school" more than "startup school".