Ask HN: Should I go to Startup School?

I'm undecided because of cost issues. I live abroad so a plane ticket will run ~$1K. I would need to spend on food, transport, etc. If I stay a week, costs will total ~$1.5K to 2K.

Although I will meet many people and perhaps have meetings with 5 to 10 potential customers, will it be worth the expense? I'm not as concerned about time because I will make use of it by meeting fellow techies and potential customers.

EDIT: I will also be meeting bloggers from GigaOm, VentureBeat, etc.

On the flip side, think of the potential of some awesome networking that you could do. ultimately, i think no one else can make that call for you, but I'd definitely spend way less on food / transport / acco.

I met a number of great people at the last startup school, several of whom I interact with regularly one and a half years later. One person I met almost became my cofounder this fall, and still might later on.

I got to meet a number of users from Hacker News, and put names to faces. That was awesome.

I got to meet PG, and I talked with Trevor for a while about his robot. That was very cool.

I started the Hackers and Founders meetup ( www.hackersandfounders.com ) at last years startup school for people like yourself to get together and hang out and talk before the conference. Since then, it's taken on a life of it's own, and it's grown to a membership of 400+ people, and we routinely have 20-25 people getting together at a bar to talk our startups and shiny new technologies every other week. It's a good time, and there's some good connections to be made.

Would I do it again even if I had to pay $2k for airfare, room and board? Yes. but, YMMV. A large part of the benefit that I derived from starting hackers and founders is because I had recently relocated to Silicon Valley. It may not be as beneficial for you.