Watch YC Startup School 2012 Live | Hacker News Reader

Watch YC Startup School 2012 Live

startupschool.org

146 pointsdmor87 comments

Best RonCo quote: "you're going to make money while this guy fights with the record labels" -- why you should do a technology and maybe b2b startup rather than a music (or maybe even consumer generally) startup.

Dalton Caldwell two years ago presented on why not do a music startup. http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/272400211

Its funny, everyone says not to do a music startup but there is so much potential there. Maybe I'm crazy to pursue it, but it seems that from history, innovation happens when everyone is looking the other way.

In what way is everyone looking the other way?

Lots of VCs/investors say not to do anything that touches music, specifically major label content. Dalton's big talk at Startup School is an example of the (reasonable) position against doing music startups. I've heard it from lots of people who I have talked to anecdotally.

There's almost no one doing anything interesting with the creation and distribution and marketing of new music.

It's 2012, and the major labels are still enormously powerful.

I guess I was thinking of all the cool things bandcamp (which I love) and soundcloud are doing for indies, not to mention Spotify, rdio, grooveshark, itunes, amazon music, and google play.

I've been looking at the space and don't really know what I could add. It looks really crowded with innovators to me. If I read you right, you're just saying that there's still room for something better?

Seeing the brick wall in front of your face is not looking the other way. However, there is only a brick wall if you want to raise money, want an exit, or care if you get sued. I'm actually not being sarcastic here; there's something to be said for building a law firm in the shape of a music startup.

It is funny, and I do think it reflects a lack of imagination. I attended Startup School yesterday and one of my main goals for the day was to find reasons to invalidate the music-site/service/etc. idea I've been working on for the last couple of years. I couldn't find any, so today I'm putting efforts into not pissing it away and launching it this week (or next).

Depending on who you mean by the "everyone" who is looking the other way, we may be thinking in similar directions.

Here's the schedule: http://i.imgur.com/iodVL.jpg (Photo taken by Robert Scoble)

Thank you so much! One would think this would be on the 'Speakers' page.

I really enjoy watching but I am a bit occupied today. Where can I find a recording?

No webcast for Horowitz? Why?

What the hell is that about?

Perhaps they are expecting too many f-bombs...

So sad. I was waiting to see him. One of my favorite people on Venture Capital.

..and there I thought my internet connection was lost.

disappointing

It's possible that he might have requested it if he expected to divulge some sensitive information.

Aren't there tech reporters attending this?

Sounds more like for 'exclusivity' of being physically present there kinda thing to me.

Any veterans want to comment on whether this is historically consistent or something new?

There are often off the record portions of YC content.

Startup School is very public (space fitted 1700 attendees this year, no word about secrecy).

Too bad that Ben's talk wasn't broadcasted as it was really good and entertaining.

I doubt attendees had to sign an NDA - even if they did, Scoble is there ;). Pretty lame (not your comment, the 'no webcast').

Whatever he talks about will get posted somewhere, guaranteed. It's just going to be released in a spotty way now. Lame.

I sent an email to their video support and just got a confirmation that this session is not being webcast.

Webcast will resume at 4pm.

thanks.. i am sure there is some kind of agreement to not give out information on what he is talking because the liveblog is also not updating anything.

I heard the talk was great.

Here's a few fragments...

"You only feel two emotions as a founder. Euphoria and Terror.

https://twitter.com/cg/status/259789009230893056/photo/1

http://instagram.com/p/RBYEi3FfBt/

http://lightt.com/RobertScoble/s/DqvJzkGwUR4pgaEjE9FpK3

https://twitter.com/AlexWeinstein/status/259783632342880256

https://twitter.com/gayle/status/259788576110280704

https://twitter.com/wa7son/status/259785205278187520

His slides were marked with "confidential, do not distribute". That may have something to do with it. It's unfortunate, his talk was excellent, though he didn't divulge any secrets as far as I could tell.

Maybe nobody wanted to show him trotting around in a shirt which said something about "bitch".

He was wearing the shirt 'no bitch ass ness' while presenting

I would assume the material wasn't itself sensitive so much as the tone of the presentation -- for a VC, you presumably don't want to be too edgy/raw in video recorded content which might get viewed by a very conservative LP (the investors in the VC funds -- pensions, universities, etc.).

If this is the case, it makes a lot of sense. He was dressed like the lead singer of a band, cussed a lot and was very candid. None of those are a knock on him, he's awesome and it was definitely one of the best talks.

Horowitz was one of my favorite presentations. He didn't talk about anything too proprietary or different but he was extremely entertaining and funny.

Here's a summary I made with backspaces:

http://backspac.es/r/Xx8736cUap

also more at http://backspac.es/tag/sus2012

At first I was disappointed about this too. And then I remembered that Andreeseen also had his talk not televised at Intuit a year back (even though it was broadcast live -- just no recording).

And then I remembered: those guys ball so hard, people want to fine them.

A lot of the stuff Spolsky's covering right now is coming from his Strategy Letter I (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html). That's probably my favorite thing he's ever written.

Not trying to be a hater, and I know this isn't Reddit, but it kills me when people don't know the different between Effect and Affect.

Other than that, great advice and well written article.

Are you referring to the linked article? I didn't find any incorrect usages of affect or effect at all.

"It wasn't about taking over the world, it was about being baller in San Francisco." -Travis Kalanick, Founder of Uber

Sounds like a good starting goal to pursue with a start-up.

Who is that startup that had their funding yanked after signing documents and moving from Houston to San Francisco?

(EDIT: This was a YC company, and she specifically said it wasn't a YC co, so this probably isn't it, but similar)

Storenvy (Kansas City, Mo not Houston)

http://joncrawford.com/post/20378314843/how-i-got-kicked-out...

I assume that's the one you mean -- I met the guy and he's actually pretty reasonable, so I think the whole thing was just an unfortunate situation.

I thought she said it wasn't a Y-Combinator company that had this happen to them.

Ah, doh. I didn't see the talk (was trying to find parking for 45min before giving up and just watching online. I really hate the Stanford campus.)

Pro-tip for next time - park in Palo Alto or somewhere near the free shuttle [1] and bus it to campus. Or pack a bike.

[1]: http://transportation.stanford.edu/marguerite/

Wow. I wish I'd known about that! Thanks.

I gave up and parked in a restricted zone. No ticket!

Same.

Small sample size but I have a feeling they take it easy on tickets on days like today. Stanford isn't some broke municipality looking to maximize ticket revenue.

Many ticket zones are also only enforced mon-fri.

I had thought this was the case, but all the restricted zones I saw were open, so I thought it might be for a reason. But after going up 4 floors I decided to ponder instead the effects of herd mentality. As it turns out, you exit through the top anyway :)

It was a YC startup, but happened at the startup they did before they did YC (a completely different startup).

That was the most heartbreaking thing I heard. The VC should definitely be named and shamed, hope it worked out in the end for that startup...

Just another instance illustrating that at the "free money" level of business, bridges are fireproof.

What did Weebly do to start getting an upward trend? Good talk but a little light on some key details.

seriously, this is what pissed me off most about the talk. He talks in detail about the straight up and down in user signups after Time, Newsweek, and TC features, but when he shows the graph of up and to the right, he just said it was "word of mouth" and nothing else, it seemed like he acquired his users through magic.

Did users just start to get it? What changed to make it hockey stick growth? It just seemed like it was a lame pitch to work for his company because he has a ping pong table and a room that can be opened with a book.

Weebly was YC Winter 07, which roughly coincides with his "18 month" milestone, no? I don't recall him offering much data in the YC realm, so that could have been an overall force.

I wish they had two separate video feeds, one for the speaker and the other for the slide presentation.

It seemed like there was when Jessica Livingston was on. Her slides were showing to the right of the video. When Patrick came on it just showed his name and title there the whole time instead.

I don't remember Patrick having any slides. Only half of the speakers made any use of slides, with Jessica the most effective (to me) and Weebly/Pinterest/Spolsky tied for distant 2nd.

launch ticker is live blogging in case you miss anything

http://launchticker.com/#/rooms/Ticker

The notes are great.

Is there any place to watch previous videos for those of us who missed them?

http://www.justin.tv/startupschool

Nope. I'm looking for videos from this year, not previous years.

They'll probably be up on that link in the next day or two.

Isn´t that channel curated? I don´t understand why other´s people highlight are the first thing I see(first I thought that the videos where broken). Also lots of videos don´t have title, nor you know who is the speaker!. I had never used justin.tv before but I am not impressed at all.

I love YC's loyalty with their own companies, but in this case I hope they upload this year's videos to YouTube.

We have most of the videos from previous years collected on Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/series/startup-school/

simonw, lanyrd.com is a positive push. I will check it out.

(your advertisement comment is accepted as valuable).

Why the down vote?

Think.

This was useful content that was published. No doubt that this was an Ad. but that was gorilla advertising, providing useful resource. Please explain how to better communicate the fact of: "OK, true. This is advertisement, it's rare that an ad will fall in the 0.01% of useful. I wish to send a message of positive feedback to encourage such behaviour."

I didn't downvote you but I don't see the need to communicate that fact at all. If you wish to send positive feedback, just upvote!

Can anyone who's there please post the schedule for the day ?

Great work guys, thanks for live streaming it; tired of missing out on awesome events just because I don't live in San Francisco

Some Ben Horowitz gems (paraphrased):

You have to have a 10x better product to beat (established) competition.

There is no number 2 in tech.

Over time, "wants" become "needs." (Ex: the refrigerator)

When Loudcloud was burning cash and going downhill: "I sleep like a baby... I wake up every two hours and cry."

Breakthrough ideas seem like hallucinations.

> There is no number 2 in tech.

Depends entirely on the market, although it's often more likely in tech because of the global reach of companies, positive network externalities, and other factors like that, that make it a very different sector, than, say "small Italian restaurants".

Awesome, though I wish they would write the name of the person/company actually speaking, since I don't know what some of these (http://startupschool.org/speakers.html) people look like

Patrick Collison Founder, Stripe http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/87/Patrick_...

Ron Conway Partner, SV Angel http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/11/1106_ceos_on_electio...

Ben Horowitz Partner, Andreessen Horowitz; Founder, Opsware http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/ben-horo...

Travis Kalanick Founder, Uber http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/images/201...

Jessica Livingston Partner, Y Combinator http://www.foundersatwork.com/author.html

Hiroshi Mikitani Founder, Rakuten http://www.japantimes.co.jp/images/photos2007/nb20070331a2a....

Tom Preston-Werner Founder, GitHub http://mixergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Preston-Werner...

David Rusenko Founder, Weebly http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/David_Rus...

Ben Silbermann Founder, Pinterest https://talentmechanic.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/ben-silbe...

Joel Spolsky Founder, StackExchange, Fog Creek Software http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Joe...

Mark Zuckerberg Founder, Facebook http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...

Please post links to videos, youtube ? you cant watch it here? how do i watch it?

Is there a recording somewhere for those who missed it?

Given the choice between switching to a computer with Flash (I'm on an iPad) or not watching this, I'm choosing not to watch.

I love watching these talks every year! It would be really good if there was a way to pause/rewind the feed, though.

And to make the feed lower resolution.

and buffer slower

I missed it, is there a recording of it ?

Is there a list of people who have already spoken? I have missed quite a few.

This link should help. It seems like they've live blogged everyone who has been on.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4677964

we need a site for matchmaking startup entrepreneurs

please find your seats guyzzzzz

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