Startup School 2008
On Saturday I attended the Startup School started and organized by Y-Combinator. The Startup School brings many notable speakers to talk about all things entrepreneurship, funding, the web, ideas, etc. This year’s speakers included:
- Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com
- Marc Andreessen, creator of Mosaic, Netscape, Ning
- David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails
- Michael Arrington, founder of Techcrunch.com
- Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail
- Sam Altman, founder of Loopt
- Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator
- Greg McAdoo, partner at Sequoia Capital
- Jack Sheridan, partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (the tech law firm)
- David Lawee, VP of Corp. Dev. at Google
- Peter Norvig, Dir. of Research at Google
There are over 500 people there who flew in from all over the country. The talks ranged from how VCs think about ventures, the legal issues of starting a company, how to get publicity, how to scale your business, and core principles can serve you well. My personal favorite was David Heinemeier Hansson, who gave a very entertaining but solid presentation on the flip side to web startups – you don’t have to be the next Facebook or YouTube or Google! Imagine if you (gasp!) charged money for your service, you could get profit! I mean, he had a picture of Eric Cartman on one slide and a lolcat reference (”I can haz scaling probs plz?”) on another. It was great. Paul Graham stressed the value of being good, Paul Buchheit described the importance of listening, and Michael Arrington gave a rather thoughtful (perhaps a tad bit melodramatic) about the troubling state of the community here in the Valley.
It was neat to see and hear from so many famous names, and during the breaks there was always a buzz of…yes…the next Facebook or YouTube or Google. Overall it was a great way to spend a Saturday.
Tim Bauer Said,
April 21, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
FYI, I wrote the DHH presentation (and took notes over what he covered) here:
http://timbauer.bauerfive.com/2008/04/21/david-heinemeier-hansson-forget-free-go-fee/
For those that don’t have 30m to watch but are curious beyond your comments above.
Mathew Said,
April 21, 2008 @ 8:42 pm
Totally jealous, sounds like a good conference.
Kyle Held Said,
June 14, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
Very cool Saket. I rss your blog and sometimes read the less technical articles (like this one!) to keep up with you.
Glad you’re doing well.
KH