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Tell HN: YCNYC Feedback

8 pointsneovive6 comments

Many thanks to the YC team for putting together the excellent YCNYC event last night. It was great seeing so many founders that I've only read about until now. The turnout was also amazing and way beyond my expectations. The presentations were extremely motivating and, as a native New Yorker, PG's keynote was inspiring in many ways: (1) It further validates NYC's position as a strong tech/startup hub; (2) I now know that there are many other people in and around NYC with similar interests and complimentary skills; (3) I want to work even harder to prove that NYC can compete with SV (why stop at second place).

Regarding the event, my only suggestions for next time [at YCNYC 2012 ;)] would be to create designated areas based on common interests (e.g. looking for a co-founder, looking for a job, specific technologies, industries, etc.) and give the option of including company name on your name badge. With so many attendees, although very exciting, it felt a bit overwhelming when getting started.

It would be interesting to hear feedback from other attendees.

It was an interesting experience, but several things could have been done better:

1. Introduce the people. Before PG came to the stage, some very energetic guy gave the introduction. ...wait, that guy started what? REDDIT??? I just found out while reading a blog a few minutes ago! I didn't know who any of the people on the expert panel were.

2. Make it easy to find people. I would have been interested in people who are working in the financial industry (startups, experts, whatever). There is simply NO way I could have known who did what. They should have had booths or at least a quick "stand up if you are interested in this" type thing.

3. Setup round tables, like weddings, rather than a thousand chairs facing the stage. For introverts like my self, it was too comforting to eat my slices of pizza and stare straight until the speakers started speaking :) A table where we are forced to look at each other, conversations are more likely to start.

That's all I can think of.

Terribly inspiring.

The pizza was ok. The place was big enough. The talks were awesome. The whole thing was really inspiring. The lack of "yes NYC is awesome" but instead honest "NYC can't compete with SF" was refreshing.

ps: I have an evil theory that the "put an X on your card if you're looking for a cofounder" was just a trick to mark people they'd want to avoid talking to.

I would have loved, somehow, to see a list of urls and "X of Y" pitches for all the hundreds of startups there. Maybe on a wall or something?

I do wish that there had been an easier forum to speak to startup founders who were looking for developers etc. to join their startups (even a simple sheet/board of paper stating who's looking, and what they're looking for would have been good).

I agree with this 100%. The talks were wonderful and incredibly inspiring. But oh wow, was the networking overwhelming. It was such a challenge to figure out who to talk to and many people that I did talk to agreed.

Obviously this wasn't something that could be anticipated. But there definitely needs to be a solid system (I like the idea of designated areas) for next time so everyone can use their time as efficiently as possible and talk to the people they need to talk to.

had a great time, only comment though is, while I figured it out, it might have made sense to tell people what the color codes on the name tags meant.

Agreed, I asked a bunch of people but nobody could tell me. Anyone with a company name was a YC Alum. I wound up just putting my skillset (LAMP +JS + MOBILE DEV) and what I was looking for (DESIGN HELP) on my tag. It helped me to meet a lot of people and for sometimes people would just walk up and intro mid conversation which was cool.

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