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Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

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Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#21

Post by mechazoidal »

stevenj wrote: post #3

I may be wrong about this, but I sense that Seattle's startup scene is definitely lacking something important. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it's there. In my opinion, people here seem pretty risk-averse (ie few want to jump and do a startup, especially people in their twenties). It kind of seems like people lack the drive to "change the world". Instead, people seem pretty laid back here. It's almost as if…

Possibly the Seattle Freeze? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h...

In the 5 years after college that I lived in the city proper, the only tech group I managed to hang around was Seattle.RB, and only a few meeting at that.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#22

Post by dbalatero »

Irfaan wrote: post #13
Mongoose wrote: post #7

One thing that I think would help is if Seattle startups did more recruiting at UW's CSE department. There's a reason why Seattle startups tend to be founded by ex-MS and -Amazon folks instead of fresh college grads. Very few students here know anything about the local startup scene and end up being gobbled up by big companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe) or moving to greener pastures in the Bay Area. Suster di…

Alright - how do we go about this, then? Is there anyone driving anything like this already, or are we just waiting for some one to step in and just do this? This sounds valuable enough that I'd be willing to plunk down some of my company's time to make this happen. That said, I suspect we'd be a rather poor choice to drive this as we're running pretty independent of the rest of the Seattle startup scene. Given our c…

I'm a UW CSE graduate (Mar 2009), and technical co-founder at MediaPiston. I can give good insight on recruiting at UW CSE - what works, what doesn't. Email me at (my HN username) at gmail.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#23

Post by dbalatero »

hazzen wrote: post #17
stevenj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, few good UW CSE graduates want to give up an $80,000+ job offer at a reputable company to work at a startup. If you're a good engineer, who's also a recent graduate, deciding to do a startup comes at a cost (e.g. reduced salary) -- more so depending on how much debt you've accumulated. With that said, I'm all for informing students about all the options that are available and allowing them to choose…

My observations as a (somewhat) recent graduate from UW CSE: Many of the students that wanted to go into startups after graduation instead of a job either had started on some product during school and wanted to see that through to completion, or were of the mind that they could just work for a few years at {Amazon, Google, Microsoft, ...} and then do the risky thing. There is also a lack of exposure in the curriculum…

As a startup person, I had to seek out the opportunities to build a product as part of a small team each quarter at UW CSE. That said, you can do it if you have the motivation.

All the literature about the program mentions that you can optionally take 1 capstone course (which are the big project courses that let you have free creative reign over what you produce). My solution was to just do 3 capstones instead.

I ended up taking the Google/Hadoop project course, distributed systems capstone, and Dan Weld's web services capstone. Each quarter I had 3-4 people on a team, and we were able to build something awesome.

To me it always seemed like a problem of advertising the opportunity within the department, and encouraging big risky projects vs. focused, assigned classwork.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#24

Post by tomfakes »

daveschappell wrote: post #4
stevenj wrote: post #3

I may be wrong about this, but I sense that Seattle's startup scene is definitely lacking something important. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it's there. In my opinion, people here seem pretty risk-averse (ie few want to jump and do a startup, especially people in their twenties). It kind of seems like people lack the drive to "change the world". Instead, people seem pretty laid back here. It's almost as if…

No, I don't think that's it (having lived here for 13 years). I think it's just more that people are focused on their own thing, by and large, vs. getting out with a small % of their time and building a community for the greater good. This 'problem' is so fixable; we just need another catalyst (like what www.GeneralAssemb.ly and New Work City are doing in NYC... and what TechStars did in Boulder, Seattle, Boston and…

I wonder if the problem is that the music scene is so good here in Seattle that the recently graduated want to participate in that area, both as producers and consumers, and not so much in the tech area?

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#25

Post by hazzen »

dbalatero wrote: post #23
hazzen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My observations as a (somewhat) recent graduate from UW CSE: Many of the students that wanted to go into startups after graduation instead of a job either had started on some product during school and wanted to see that through to completion, or were of the mind that they could just work for a few years at {Amazon, Google, Microsoft, ...} and then do the risky thing. There is also a lack of exposure in the curriculum…

As a startup person, I had to seek out the opportunities to build a product as part of a small team each quarter at UW CSE. That said, you can do it if you have the motivation. All the literature about the program mentions that you can optionally take 1 capstone course (which are the big project courses that let you have free creative reign over what you produce). My solution was to just do 3 capstones instead. I end…

Fun that I can recognize you based on your user name, but you probably can't do the same matching for me (its Mikey).

You were actually one of the people I was thinking of when I originally put in an aside about the really motivated people still doing it. I then removed that aside, but I probably should not have. The really motivated people are going to go into startups; they caught the itch at some point and need to scratch it to remain happy.

The subset of people that could go either way (startup or corporate) don't quite have the opportunity to see what a startup would be like at UW. The capstones are good, but for most they are an afterthought to be done in the final quarter or two, when they have most likely landed a job already. Software Engineering (CSE 403) is more about satisfying a requirement than about building something, and that is all most students end up with.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#26

Post by ghempton »

stevenj wrote: post #16
Mongoose wrote: post #7

One thing that I think would help is if Seattle startups did more recruiting at UW's CSE department. There's a reason why Seattle startups tend to be founded by ex-MS and -Amazon folks instead of fresh college grads. Very few students here know anything about the local startup scene and end up being gobbled up by big companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe) or moving to greener pastures in the Bay Area. Suster di…

In my experience, few good UW CSE graduates want to give up an $80,000+ job offer at a reputable company to work at a startup. If you're a good engineer, who's also a recent graduate, deciding to do a startup comes at a cost (e.g. reduced salary) -- more so depending on how much debt you've accumulated. With that said, I'm all for informing students about all the options that are available and allowing them to choose…

I graduated from UW's CSE program, worked at Microsoft full-time, and then quit Microsoft to do YC. I don't think the students at UW are averse to startups, I think there is just a lack of presence and exposure to those types of options. It wasn't until I lived with someone who went to Berkeley that I even knew that hacker news existed.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#27

Post by rtalwar »

Hi All-

I'd like to first introduce myself to everyone. My name is Rishi Talwar and I'm a senior majoring in Informatics at UW. I can't believe this is my first post on HN ever. I guess this topic really resonates with me because I've been passionate about the Seattle startup tech scene since the beginning of freshman year.

I too agree that there needs to be a more emphasis on startups at UW and building software that ultimately help others/create value. From my personal experience I have seen that there are a few people who feel as passionate and inspired about startups. I found this out when I was looking to work with a UW CSE student on a project I had in mind which is now up here: http://www.fratapps.com/. I'm not a CS major but I'm still up on different types of technologies. Mainly, I'm a front-end and product guy who loves building stuff. Therefore I was seeking someone who was majoring in cs.

After meeting with multiple students I finally found a friend who was willing to partner up and work with me who was a UW CSE student. But most of these students that I met didn't have any clue about the startup scene in Seattle or didn't care about building anything. This makes me feel that these students majoring in CSE are not passionate about their industry and ultimately get gobbled up by a big-co knowing that they will receive an $80,000+ salary. Maybe its not in their DNA or other factors drive them or its not in their curriculum. But there was definitely an utter lack of fire that is not money driven or by notoriety.

However, this past year I've been happy to know that these students are out there like Mongoose and a few others who has been a tremendous advocate for startups and do it purely out of passion. Also, I have had the honor to meet a freshman business student who is probably way more well connected in the Startup scene then me (twitter:@mikeytom) who has worked on FratApps.com.

When I read blog posts like this from Mark Suster it makes me want to hustle. Maybe there needs to be a startupWeekend for UW like StartupUW. Something that brings all facets of knowledge ie business, engineering, and Informatics or anyone else together on campus.

I appreciate you reading this and would like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks,

Rishi Talwar twitter: @rishtal

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#28

Post by rubyrescue »

mechazoidal wrote: post #21
stevenj wrote: post #3

I may be wrong about this, but I sense that Seattle's startup scene is definitely lacking something important. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it's there. In my opinion, people here seem pretty risk-averse (ie few want to jump and do a startup, especially people in their twenties). It kind of seems like people lack the drive to "change the world". Instead, people seem pretty laid back here. It's almost as if…

Possibly the Seattle Freeze? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h... In the 5 years after college that I lived in the city proper, the only tech group I managed to hang around was Seattle.RB, and only a few meeting at that.

actually... as a perfect example ... seattle.rb is one of the most unfriendly tech groups i've ever visited - and I know a number of others who would say the same thing.

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#29

Post by gills »

mechazoidal wrote: post #21
stevenj wrote: post #3

I may be wrong about this, but I sense that Seattle's startup scene is definitely lacking something important. I can't put my finger on it, but I think it's there. In my opinion, people here seem pretty risk-averse (ie few want to jump and do a startup, especially people in their twenties). It kind of seems like people lack the drive to "change the world". Instead, people seem pretty laid back here. It's almost as if…

Possibly the Seattle Freeze? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.h... In the 5 years after college that I lived in the city proper, the only tech group I managed to hang around was Seattle.RB, and only a few meeting at that.

In my 31 years of Seattle I guess I've found that friendships here are made and kept by doing active stuff together. Like camping, or boating, or cycling. There's not a lot of interest in "hey, want to loaf around together for a couple hours?" A lot of folks I know seem to tolerate the Seattle weather only because the summers and activities are great; killing time as bumps on a log is kind of silly.

Or maybe I'm just a poster-child for Pemco ads. I am wearing sandals and gore-tex and typing this from a Starbucks...

Re: Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

#30

Post by adpowers »

tesseract wrote: post #11
daveschappell wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean, like an Amazon? or a Starbucks? :-) or, if you want to be cynical that Amazon's a long time ago... how about like an AWS, or a Kindle? The innovation's here -- we just need to get more commingling going on it's going to happen -- if you're in town, reach out, please -- would love to have you help

For what it's worth, Lab126 (the Kindle-designing branch of Amazon) is in Cupertino, not Seattle.

But many of the backend services powering Kindle are based in Seattle.
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