My key takeaways from Y Combinator’s Startup School 2012 | Hacker News Reader

My key takeaways from Y Combinator’s Startup School 2012

nowaternomoon.com

124 pointsDanielRibeiro21 comments

I was there. And I can say that this would not be my summary of Startup School. This summary makes me question every other summary of events on HN. Not to say that the author didnt provide a good summary for himself, but instead I now realize how radically differently two people can perceive the same event, based on their experience.

I couldn't be there, but I would be very interested to hear your perspective.

I posted my takeaways on Quora (second one, currently)

http://www.quora.com/Startup-School/What-were-the-key-takeaw...

I agree that two people can have vastly different takeaways from an event like this, but don't see anything wrong with that. Different people have different backgrounds and different things they wanted to learn going in.

Thank You. Upvoted (both here and on quora) That was a very interesting bunch of takeaways. I found them more interesting than the ones in the OP.

I wasn't there so I'm probably imagining things, but I'm getting the vibe that the VC/investor types were giving canned pop psychology 'MBA'/management consulting type advice like advice, where the hacker/founder folks sound more original (and useful).

Thank you for sharing! Upvoted.

That lucky office you mentioned apparently casts it's glow on its surroundings as well. La Boulange opened a new cafe next door, and 1-2 weeks later announced that Starbucks had bought out the entire bakery chain for $100 million. (I'm sure they had already struck the deal, but the lucky locale makes for a better story!)

These are quotes from the talks, not his summary of startup school.

It doesn't say anything about his perception of the startup school experience. Please tell, what's your startup school summary?

Patrick Collison of Stripe, his quote is a paraphrase of the US Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, "Training doesn't get any easier, you just go faster.".

Another of LeMond's that I always felt applicable was, "You don't suffer, kill yourself and take the risks I take just for money. I love bike racing.".

You better love what you do.

It wasn't paraphrased, he gave a direct quote and a picture of LeMond was one of his slides.

I enjoyed reading this.

My takeaway from his takeaways would be:

1. Commitment matters. Stop talking, make it happen. - Ben Silberman

2. Don’t worry about competition, just improve yourself. - Hiroshi Mikitani

3. Failure to decide is what kills you. - Joel Spolsky

I've shortened the Joel's quote because your inability (unwillingness) to decide whether you'll ‘get big fast’ or have an ‘organic growth’ is not the only place where indecision shows its ugly head.

Thank you for sharing this! Does anyone know if YC will post the video? I couldn't watch the live stream on Saturday.

Too bad about Instagram for Squirrels. I would've been one of their 5 users.

Did Zuck really claim: "Human is the only animal who dreams about social interactions"?

No, he claimed that no other animal dreams about social interaction as much as we do. He mentioned a study into it.

Why the surprise? It's a reasonable guess. Everyone wants to say something is unique about humans. As more of our features are being discovered in other animals, it's good to assert something that's hard to disprove.

Yes, or something very close to that.

"Human is the only animal who dreams about social interactions."

How could we possibly know that?

Is there video of this event anywhere?

There are some videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/mshelengelena but it's not complete and doesn't appear to be official.

Also, Ben Horowitz apparently not a fan of "bitch ass ness"

Good photos - did you take them?

Yup. Most - on my camera, some - on the phone.

Good post.

"Palantir (I didn’t understand the market)" I'm pretty sure he said he didn't understand the size of the market. Subtle but important difference.

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