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Comment by dfabulich | Hacker News Reader

I attended Startup School 2011; I regret wasting the day there.

I thought that "Startup School" would be more like the "How to Start a Startup" lecture series that YC is running at Stanford.

Instead, it was just a bunch of celebrities talking about their startup experiences; a concentrated shot of survival bias. There's nothing practical to learn from the Startup School talks.

As for inspiration, I guess some people might be inspired by celebrity speeches like those, and I don't want to begrudge anyone that if that's what they got out of it, but I'm much more inspired by new products. (Especially imperfect products that make it seem easy to improve them.)

The Office Hours are the best part. Throw away the talks, let PG give a keynote, and turn the whole thing into Office Hours.

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Throw away the talks, let PG give a keynote, and turn the whole thing into Office Hours.

Now that would be an event I could imagine attending.

Yes, please.

But that's the YC business. Startups wouldn't apply to YC if they could get the Office Hours for free (instead of in exchange for significant equity).

Not knocking on YC, just pointing out that that's not happening, doesn't make financial sense for YC.

Surely there's more value to being a YC backed startup than just the office hours?

Sure they would. It's not like YC puts on startup school every week.

I think I can address your point, as I organize a similar event with similar goals and a similar audience.

It's obvious that in an audience of 1000+, there are differing people at different stages of their startup.

Some people need to hear the motivational speeches to dare take their first step toward starting their startup.

Other people are further along and really are just looking for very practical or tactical advice that would solve their current issue (it could be related to growth, finding customers, dealing with press, dealing with co-founder fights, the list is long).

And other people are looking to network, find their co-founder or that business person who'll help them close their first sale, or get an intro to a famous VC.

When you put an event together, you try to address all those differing needs into one coherent package. Therefore, any geek can figure out that some content will not be directly applicable to why they attended. But overall, if the organizers do a good job, the event will turn out to be valuable.

The last important factor is that a significant part of the audience doesn't know what they really should know, so they sometimes attend for one reason, but are enlightened by something completely different.

I thought the Office Hours this year were borderline mean spirited. When a team is willing to come and be grilled in front of 1,700 people, it needs to be done with a lot of tact. If you rip someone apart in a public environment like that, it becomes about you, and not about the company that you're critiquing.

Sam and PG did a great job last year. They seemed to be able to hit the right balance of probing questions while being respectful of the people they were interviewing.

I thought the Office Hours this year were borderline mean spirited.

They didn't seem mean spirited to me; but they certainly did rip people apart (especially with the UI critique). At the end of that I left thinking "I'm glad they weren't doing this on Tarsnap, because they would probably have opened patio11's blog post and read the whole thing out in front of everybody".

The UI critique to me was crazy. They were interviewing a B2B company which wasn't using their website as a lead generator. Plus, given the space, the website wasn't really all that bad compared to anyone else. If they had been critiquing a B2C company, I would have agreed more, but really I thought the most insightful feedback was to make the API documentation more prominent.

I've seen some Startup School talks and the simulations of office hours or a YC interview are by far the most useful content. (At least if you're sitting in your bedroom, watching videos. In person, it's probably about meeting people).

Alexis Ohanian, Reddit founder, just started a podcast where the content includes real-life office hours. http://www.nyrdradio.com/

> a concentrated shot of survival bias

Depends on whether any of speakers had a track record of two or more successful startups. Not advising, not managing, but actually starting a company from zero and growing it into a meaningful business.

Because, as they say, once - you're lucky, twice - you're good, a bunch of once'es is a selection bias example.

Couldn't agree more.

Although, YC wouldn't attempt giving 'real' advise at this point. (advise that would end up being labeled elitist, misogynistic etc.) They're under the spotlight, and have to be politically correct.

As startup advisors and accelerators go, they are google/microsoft. Held back by their own weight.

The same was true of Startup School London, btw.

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