Meet YC partners and alums at MIT Wednesday 5:30PM | Hacker News Reader

Meet YC partners and alums at MIT Wednesday 5:30PM

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64 pointsgarry11 comments

Note to everyone: it's career week at MIT.

Usually, a Silicon Valley investor at MIT during career week is trying to help their portfolio find staff. Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and more are here for that purpose, but that doesn't seem to be this event's goal. Can you clarify?

It's probably just to pass on entrepreneurship good-will and generate interest in Y Combinator so more people apply. Most of the speakers are MIT alums.

I suspect it has more to do with applications for the newest class being due soon.

When pg gave a talk while I was at MIT, it was in early October (of 2006 - yikes I'm old), about 2 weeks before apps were due (I didn't get in.)

Apps for this season are due six weeks from now...so I'm guessing the purpose is still to drum up applications, and they're just more on top of their game than they were six years ago.

That said, no one is going to not hand their resume to Google because they spoke to Y Combinator that same week - if anything, it's sort of poor timing, because they're now competing against the companies for attention (who are somewhat restricted as to when they can come to MIT.)

Starting one's own company is a valid career path; since students are now considering careers, this is probably the right time to talk to them about this possibility.

It's certainly better than talking to them about it after they've accepted full-time jobs.

staff find portfolio

Can somebody verify if you can just go there, even though you're not linked to MIT in any way?!

MIT is known to be a very open university (i.e. anyone can walk in, use the libraries, sit in for a lecture etc...) So given that nature of it, it would be very unlikely for this event to be limited to a small number of MIT people.

Also, Startup Bootcamp (http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/) is a well known event held at MIT that doesn't require you to be affiliated with the school in any way, so I doubt this would.

I have the same question but seems like its free and anybody can go. Gary's blog does not post any restrictions either.

Is this open to the public, or only open to people from Harvard and MIT?

MIT's campus is almost completely open (including the room this event is in) so I'd imagine anyone could go.

Wish I was in Boston ;)

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