Ask HN: YC interviewees coming from outside US | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: YC interviewees coming from outside US

25 pointssamcollins14 comments

We're getting on a plane from Edinburgh in about 24 hours and flying over for our YC interview this week. We want to make the most of our time out there and meet other startups, angels, find out about meetups etc. I thought it might be useful if I did a public shoutout for:

1) Anyone with a couch or floor to put up YC interviewees 2) Recommendations for which coffee shops are good to work in 3) Recommendations for good meetups over the next week 4) Anyone who wants to play tourguide or chill and work together.

-- edit: from jkaljundi: 5) Also any of the other teams for YC want to meetup?

email me at 'sam at getbloop dot com' and I'll try and coordinate something between us if there's demand.

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Crap, interviews are this weekend? Sigh. I'm flying out to NYC to visit the Hackers and Founders NYC this Thursday night, otherwise, I'd schedule something this Thursday for you guys. If you're around, there's a Hackers and Founders meetup Monday night in Mountain view: www.hackersandfounders.com.

Otherwise, any place on Castro Street in Mountain View is a decent bet, especially the Red Rock cafe. Any place on University Ave in Palo Alto is also a pretty safe bet.

And, if you're just visiting for a couple of days, I always suggest visiting the Computer History Museum. They give great 1.5 hour tours, and it's pretty amazing to see the history of computing, and realize that a great bit of it happened in the neighborhood. At times, you can hang out with some of the original engineers that build machines like the PDP 10 as they restore one to get it working. Did I mention tha they have a working Difference Engine? It's amazing.

Aside from that, as to event lists, email Chris of Brendan over at the Startup Digest: http://thestartupdigest.com/ keep good tabs on what's going on. It would be worth pinging them and letting them know what you're doing. I'm sure they could make a great bunch of suggestions.

There's always a bunch of stuff going on in San Francisco, as well. Pick a coffee shop or pub, and you're bound to run in to someone working in the biz.

Also, I'd suggest you put your email in your profile so people can ping you. Offering to take people out for a pint will often get you quality time with other founders. :)

The interviews BTW are Friday to Monday, 4 days. Many teams probably stay until Tuesday. Hackers and Founders sounds interesting, might drop by, thanks for the suggestion.

I'm flying in from Japan, would love to meetup. Just sent you an email.

Also, I found a place to stay on CouchSurfing.com if you're still looking for somewhere to crash.

Same for me, flying there from Estonia in a few days, most probably staying March 26-31 (interview on 29th). In addition to above, would love to meet other teams during those days. Our project is http://Emp.ly/ (still in very early prototype phase, just starting serious development). My e-mail is on my HN profile page.

check out localbacon - aka jibe.com - they seem to be doing the same thing as you want to do with emp.ly

i think they completely revamped their initial model and just publicly relaunched today.

Yes, it is somewhat similar, but there are many ways to approach this market. It's the same like any recruitment business: although you should ideally cater equally for job seekers and employers, at the end of the day you tend to focus more on one side of it. Same for functionality, which side uses it more actively and for whom it is more casual. It will take years for social recruiting to formalize and to see, what actually works and what not. There will be a lot of experimenting in the nearest future.

if your in palo alto coffee shops - university cafe, coupa cafe, cafe del doge, satura cakes couch/chill/work - hit me up chris@thestartupdigest.com might be able to help meetups - sign up for thestartupdigest.com! if you miss the issue this monday email me and I will fwd it to you

I hit the downvote by mistake on my cell phone and sent the post to zero. Could someone upvote to compensate? Chris and Brendan do great work with the startup digest, and it deserves kudos.

+1 for Coupa Cafe, try the Chai :)

I discovered last week that their Chai is made by this company:

http://davidrio.com/

I haven't tried making it on my own without an espresso machine yet, but it definitely is the best chai out there at least the way they make it.

I don't know if it even needs to be said but if you don't have any luck finding a free couch/floor, check http://www.airbnb.com/

Plenty of couches on there for $20/night in SF

The canonical coffee shop answer is Red Rock:

http://www.redrockcoffee.org/

I forgot to mention in my earlier comment about Hacker Dojo: http://wiki.hackerdojo.com/. The people there are really cool, and it's just a couple of blocks away from the YC office.

Several teams who were interviewed for the Winter 2010 Session stopped by at the HackerDojo. A meetup can actually be held there.

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