"I loved that I couldn't take the Auctomatics to a bar for a company meeting." | Hacker News Reader

"I loved that I couldn't take the Auctomatics to a bar for a company meeting."

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25 pointstheoneill17 comments

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So was it their great idea that Paul was sold on, or was there something else that made them stand out?

It was them, not the idea. They seemed extremely driven. I think Chris referred to this in his post.

I am not sure I know what that title/quote means. Could someone explain?

Under 21 => not allowed in bars in the US.

You're allowed, but 21 is the legal drinking age.

Depends where you are. In New Jersey and California I argued along these lines unsuccessfully for years.

So if the Auctomatic guys couldn't hack, did they learn how to in SF and did they then find Patrick and John when they were in SF?

Yes and yes

"Within a few weeks of being out in SV we were introduced to the guys behind, YouOS. As fate would have it, one of the founders (Srini) was actually living in the building next to us and we started having informal hacking lessons where he’d teach us how to hack. We got on really well and we agreed to work together more formally for the three months of YC - he’d help us build our product and teach us how to become hackers."

"Shortly afterwards, again through YC, we met Patrick Collison - a young whizzkid hacker (he wrote his own programming language when he was 16) who’d applied to YC with an idea relating to the online auction space."

http://blog.harjtaggar.com/?p=37

>wrote his own programming language when he was 16...

Do you mean he executed "man yacc"? ;)

Thats quite a stream of serendipitous events (referring the the above blog). How does one just have "intense sessions" with people like Max Levchin, Evan Williams and Naval Ravikant??

No, he wrote a fairly decent language called Croma while he was in HS and it is what is still powering auctomatic today.

I think Auctomatic uses Seaside (http://www.seaside.st).

> Thats quite a stream of serendipitous events (referring the the above blog). How does one just have "intense sessions" with people like Max Levchin, Evan Williams and Naval Ravikant??

I think I read in that blog that they first met at some Oxford business event. I'm thinking that YC brought in some remarkable people from across the 'pond (going global)

So I met Ev in Oxford in Nov 04 (I was president of Oxford Entrepreneurs, and my reward was to be able to go to the dinner that the Business School held as part of the Silicon Valley event), and had stayed in touch with him since then. In March 05 I met Max and visited the now defunct midtown doornail incubator (which spurned, Yelp, Slide amongst others). This was a pre-finals trip where 7 weeks before my final exams at Oxford, a bunch of us decided to fly to SF for 10 days was a good idea. Pics are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kulveer/sets/72057594075696873/

Then, in May 06, we were filming a documentary for Channel 4, and that's when I had my 'intense session' with Max, Naval and Evan. I was introduced to Max by my friend Bob, who was one of the early people at Yelp, and now co-founder of YouNoodle. Then it so turns out we lived one block from Naval and would bump into him every day at Crossroads Cafe.

Thanks for the link. I can totally empathise with the difficulty of finding hackers - even 9 to 5 ones. And it doesn't instill hope of finding hackers out side of London when they couldn't find any in London.

Not being professional programmers probably helped them. I joined YC after working first as a "Software Engineer", then in a managerial position in a software firm.

I had to unlearn a lot of processes and "best practices" to get to the pace a startup requires. They started at the right pace.

Nice post. Gives some extra glimpses of just a few of the many things that have to be made to happen. Congrats to all.

Chuck E. Cheese IT'S THE PLACE TO BE __

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