YC NYC, September 26 | Hacker News Reader

YC NYC, September 26

ycnyc.com

219 pointspg94 comments

Quick question for PG. Would you be interested in running a similar event in London? We've been organising an HN meetup for over a year and currently have a community of over 1100 people that would love to attend an event like this. There are also several YC companies including Songkick that have been involved in the meetup that I am certain would be interested in helping out.

Possibly. If we had an event in Europe, it would probably be in London.

I think this would be great. What would you need to turn a 'possibly' into a 'yes'?

I think we really could need some of the YC spirit over here. Even as a german, I would agree London to be the best choice.

I would be really glad, because in europe (esp. in germany) at startup events we usually see some successful copycat entrepreneur as a speaker..

It seems like nearly no one in europe is taking risk in business to develop real innovation.

We would love to have you over here:)

What about Paris? I'm hearing from neutral sources (not me, I'm biased) that Paris is ahead of London in terms of startups. I actually was surprised to hear that.

I understand that the language barrier can be stressful for Americans. London is therefore the default choice.

What is the Paris startup scene like? Can a native English speaker with a little French get a job there? (Especially one with an EU passport ;)

They're mistaken. Roughly 40% of European VC money is invested in London, nowhere else comes even close.

If you just want to do a headcount you can search Crunchbase by city.

If you could find the time to appear at that event, it may be more productive it coincide with the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event held in November, or FOWA London on 3-5th Oct, both of which you have presented at in the past.

Another vote for London!

I know that I (and most, if not all of my startup friends back in the UK) would have definitely attended a YC event in London.

London please!

+1 London

+1!

Interesting. Folks in NYC seem to think Berlin is a better environment for startups and rarely discuss London.

+1 for London

Another vote for London from us @skilio !

As one of the founders of http://www.44con.com/ I'd be happy to chat about making this happen. We have everything we need geared up for this and could do it as a free or paid for conference.

yes, London, please!

I can't understand why YC isn't involved more with London

Yes, please! I can def fly from Italy if it's planned

Yes, we have a thriving start up community in here, everyone is excited about YC spirit !!! We need u guys to be here in London !!

+1 for having an event in London

another vote for London! there are a lot of people in the world with the desire and energy to build great things that cannot get visas and up and move to San Francisco, in my opinion London is the second best place to be to create a startup.

+1 for London

I think it would be great to have a YC-style event in London, although I'd suggest that, instead of waiting for YC to do it for us, why don't we do it ourselves? I'd be willing put some money up to make a London equivalent happen. If anyone's interested in discussing further, drop me a line on jack at gavigan dot co dot uk

+1 for London. Drop me a message if you need help organising.

Same, I'd be happy to help with any organisation stuff I can do.

And another - would be great to see this come off in London.

yes

Another vote for London

+1 for London please. Dmitri's Hacker News Meetup is popular and the startup scene is buzzing here.

I'd certainly like to do an event in London. Would be hard to arrange for everyone from YC to make it over though.

Definitely a good idea

Yes I would back this

+1 for London

Totally +1 for London - we need a kick up the ass with regard to accelerators

@mstafford

+1 for London !

Another +1 for London

+1 for london! Do it :)

+1 London

+1 Be great.

+1 for London, would be great to have one over here

Yes, you could easily name it YC Europe. I'd definitely fly in for a YC event.

I'd love for this to happen, i'm really interested in going through YC and this would be amazing. Also Re: Paris. From what i've heard it's harder to start in France due to how investment law works there. Although i've seen interesting startups across Europe, my bias opinion is that YC should come to London.

+1 definitely v. useful ahead of fall program applications

+1 :)

+1 London

+1 for London

Huh. Surprised how tiny the Wikipedia article about Y Combinator is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator

I wanted to read about and see the date of a talk pg gave at Harvard before Y Combinator's first batch (not Startup School 2005; I went to that so I know a little about it).

Anyone have details? Curious.

I believe you are referring to "How to start a startup" http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html derived from a talk to the Harvard Computer Society in March 2005

Thanks! That's the one. Only a few months after it, the first batch of YC started. I wonder if it will be similar for NYC. =)

http://lanyrd.com/2005/hcs-guest-lecture/skkr/

Awesome. This page is even better:

http://lanyrd.com/profile/paulg/past/speaking/

Much more useful than Wikipedia. For an influential speaker there ought to be a list of talks just like for a famous singer there's a list of singles.

The edit history is interesting to review. They actively remove useful information from the article, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Y_Combinator&d...

I'd love to see someone create a non-broken wikipedia that keeps the citation rules but eliminates of the rest of the deletionist culture.

Yeah, me too. A Wikipedia for articles about things that happened after the Web was invented. Imagine that!

If you're in Boston on September 24th, http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/

I'd like to go to this but can't (live outside of NYC but I'll be in IL at the time). From the description of the event I'd guess it won't really be suited for this, but is any part of it going to be recorded and/or streamed?

Anyone else from Montreal planning to go ?

Curious on how many spots are going to be available and are any spots reserved for students?

We planned for 500 but we may have to increase that. None are reserved for any specific group, but we like students.

Sounds really interesting. I'm curious: how useful is the event likely to be if I already work at a (larger) startup? Is it mainly targeted at those who want to found new startups?

I like the sound of that. And here I was thinking that being a student would be a disadvantage.

What's the timeline of the event? It's Monday, so must be full day + evening?

The frontpage says 5:30-10pm, so looks like an after work event

Oh year, I was looking in the text but didn't notice the header. So, just evening then.

+1 London

Are you considering going back to the 2 city model where you have a YC batch on both coasts? It would seem to make sense in NYC, as the city has made great strides as an internet startup hub and probably significantly ahead of where Boston was when YC moved entirely to California.

edit: PG's reasons for moving to California permanently (2.5 years ago) are described here: http://ycombinator.com/ycca.html - but as YC has grown, I'd imagine things are a bit different as there are many more people involved now.

We have no current plan to. Going to Silicon Valley for YC doesn't mean moving there permanently. (There are about a dozen YC funded startups in NYC.) And if ambitious people are willing to go to another city for several years for college or grad school, it doesn't seem like a big stretch for them to go to Silicon Valley for 3 months for YC.

There's a long tradition of ambitious people travelling to the big center of whatever they're interested in. And while NYC is more of a startup hub than it used to be, the Valley is still the center. Founders who come here find it an eye-opening experience. So we wouldn't necessarily be doing NYC-based founders a favor by establishing a branch there.

My cofounder and I moved from NYC to the Valley to be part of the S2010 YC batch. The time we spent there was incredibly valuable and definitely worth it, even though we knew from the start our company would ultimately be based in NYC.

Doing YC in no way means you have to leave New York for good.

Could you elaborate a bit on what you learned or realized? Was it simply a different vibe or were there more tangible differences that the rest of the world could learn from?

Two things immediately come to mind, one specific and one a bit vague.

Specific: YC gave us an unbelievable network of founders, hackers and investors in the Valley, and that stayed with us even after we moved back to New York. There's absolutely no way we'd have as strong a west coast (or even east coast) network if we hadn't done YC.

Vague: Valley culture. YC is in many ways at the center of the Valley and embodies the best it has to offer. I don't know how to explain it, but there's definitely a different culture at YC and in the Valley in general than in New York or anywhere else I've been.

It's hard to quantify or describe concisely, because it's really the sum total of people's attitudes, and the conversations you overhear on the street, and the density of people who have built or are building startups, and a thousand other things.

The only analogy I can think of is traveling to another country. For instance, when I traveled to Europe, it felt extraordinarily different from the US, and the differences weren't always easy to pintpoint.

We didn't hesitate even a little before moving out to the Valley for YCW11. We knew, from the start, that we'd probably move back to NY because of the dynamics of our market.

Moving out there was an incredible experience, and being able to bring what we learned there, and the network we built, back to the east coast is a huge asset for tutorspree. If you're willing to do anything to make your company succeed, then moving to the west coast for a few months weighed against everything it gives you is kindof an easy decision.

Just applied, I hope I can attend. I got an error message when submitting the resume text, though.

Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): The server closed the connection without sending any data.

Sorry. The server is a bit overloaded today. Try http://news.ycombinator.com/resume?id=klbarry

Thank you for the second link - I will have to try again later though, the error unfortunately persisted.

I had the same problem

Same.

The load problem seems to be fixed, so try again now.

I beg to differ on the amount NYC has to offer compared to Wash DC. I personally believe there are more start up ready folks in and around the district compared to NYC...

I say you look into DC.

I'd be interested in what data there is to back this up? I'm admittedly biased (as a NYC resident), but I just don't see DC carrying the same kind of weight as NYC.

http://proudlymadeindc.com

An admirable list for sure - but that doesn't really tell us why DC has more startup mojo than NY. Particularly when it can be quickly countered with the "Made in NY" list of companies, all self-reported and all with over 10,000 users. http://nytm.org/made/

I'm from the DC area (now living in NYC), and all of my DC tech friends went into consulting. No one even considered a startup.

I'd love to see a great startup culture grow around the DC area, but NYC is light years ahead at this point. DC makes it too easy to be conservative.

Unfortunately, DC based on VC funding to local companies (including Maryland, VA and DC) doesn't hold a candle to NYC or Mass on the east coast.

It's funding numbers have been buoyed in recent quarters by large LivingSocial rounds but otherwise, there is not a lot of institutional investment flowing to startup in the DC area.

Look at pages 4 of 5 of the report embedded at the bottom of this link. You'll see DC doesn't figure near the top for VC deals or funding - http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/venture-capital/venture-capit...

+1 for DC and the growing startup scene there.

(I'm from DC and am on the investment team at 500 Startups.)

http://www.hipmunk.com/#!dc_NYC,Sep25

Also look at the Acela. Great high speed service between DC and NYC. Faster and sometimes cheaper than flying.

Are you asking me to come? Is this a formal invitation? :)

DC is seeing an explosion and it's great! I know of 3 co-working spaces that popped up recently. Also if you're in DC come to the meetups advertised via Startup Digest DC. There was also a group for DC Hacker News readers altho there hasn't been much movement in that there are lots of cool things going. One thing I'd love to see is an incubator program in DC proper. I know there is one that is run as a partnership with UMC CP but I've looked (and looked) and cannot find anything in DC. If anybody knows of one I'd love to check it out.

Do you want to build a scene or build a business?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com