On Startup School
Last weekend I had the very great pleasure of attending Startup School.
This was an absolutely amazing event. I've attended VC workshops and conferences before but none had the depth of speakers and the enthusiasm of the audience of this event. In fact; nothing that I have seen or heard of so far can even come close.
Startup School was organized by Paul Graham and his company Y Combinator. Paul is what I call a serial entrepreneur. He's been down the venture capital road several times and based on what I learned had some good success along the way. He does much more than start companies as evidenced in part by his essays and books. Paul comes across as an Internet age Michelangelo. Y Combinator is a very early stage venture capital (VC) company that seems focused (based on the presentations by the group of people they recently funded) on Web software applications.
What made Startup School great?
It was free. I got up at 3:00 AM on Saturday and drove to Boston to attend this. I drove back home to Long Island late that night (arriving home 22 hours later). It was well worth the lack of sleep, the mileage and other expenses.
The quality of the speakers was amazing. Hearing from Woz was exciting but listening to and getting the chance to ask questions of finance guys, lawyers, and VC partners was valuable (and also entertaining).
The energy and the enthusiasm of the speakers and the participants was outstanding. Instead of thinking "if" I left Startup School planning for when.
This was an absolutely amazing event. I've attended VC workshops and conferences before but none had the depth of speakers and the enthusiasm of the audience of this event. In fact; nothing that I have seen or heard of so far can even come close.
Startup School was organized by Paul Graham and his company Y Combinator. Paul is what I call a serial entrepreneur. He's been down the venture capital road several times and based on what I learned had some good success along the way. He does much more than start companies as evidenced in part by his essays and books. Paul comes across as an Internet age Michelangelo. Y Combinator is a very early stage venture capital (VC) company that seems focused (based on the presentations by the group of people they recently funded) on Web software applications.
What made Startup School great?
It was free. I got up at 3:00 AM on Saturday and drove to Boston to attend this. I drove back home to Long Island late that night (arriving home 22 hours later). It was well worth the lack of sleep, the mileage and other expenses.
The quality of the speakers was amazing. Hearing from Woz was exciting but listening to and getting the chance to ask questions of finance guys, lawyers, and VC partners was valuable (and also entertaining).
The energy and the enthusiasm of the speakers and the participants was outstanding. Instead of thinking "if" I left Startup School planning for when.
