Ask HN: Your favorite Startup School moments? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Your favorite Startup School moments?

59 pointsprojectileboy60 comments

Here are mine:

- Just about anything out of the mouth of Paul Buchheit. I'm convinced he's actually Bob Newhart. If I had to pick only one quote: "If I work for a long time without releasing, I get bored and I go home and watch 'Dukes of Hazzard'."

- Lots of little gems from Jason Fried: "Planning is guessing", "Funding is like crack", etc.

- Chris Anderson: "I recommend not having crappy products, even free ones."

- Evan Williams: "Trust your instincts - except when they're wrong."

- Scoble asks Mark Zuckerberg: "What management skills are you learning?" Zuckerberg: "...management skills?"

- Tony Hsieh: "We don't think about work/life balance; we think about all of it as life."

It was a fantastic experience. Thanks to YC, UC Berkeley, and everyone else who hosted.

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Most surprisingly good speaker: Chris Anderson

I have to admit, I wasn't particularly excited about hearing him speak. I read his Long Tail book, so I knew he wasn't just any journalist, but I couldn't help thinking "what does Wired know about startups"? By the end I was enthralled, and rather sad he couldn't speak for longer.

Best repeat performance: Paul Buchheit

I was fortunate enough to see him last year, so I kind of knew what to expect. One of the most honest and amusing talks of the day. It seems like he'd be fun to work with/for.

Amusing scheduling decision: Jason Fried after Greg McAdoo

For second year in a row, someone from 37signals comes on directly after Greg McAdoo from Sequoia. The contrast is kind of stark. The 37signals guys like to poo-poo on what they see as the pompous funding scene, and advocate bootstrapping, so hope Greg doesn't take it personally. ;) I thought Greg had some great points regarding how a 'bad economy' (for whatever value of 'bad' you choose) makes you focus on the important stuff. Jason's angle was that charging money forces you to make something people are willing to pay for (ie - something useful). I think in the end they were both kind of saying the same thing... focus on making something people want... just through their own lenses of experience.

Best stories: Mark Pincus

I had no idea what to expect from this guy, and he was a lot of fun. Before he started I was kind of ready to get out of there (because the room was becoming a sauna) but by the end of his talk, I was actually sad we ran out of time. Jessica was right: he made an excellent closer.

Other random amusements/thoughts:

PG: "You have to have a liquidity event before you can have a liquidity event."

A lot of the talks this year seemed to be about company culture. I wonder if that was a coincidence, or if it had to do with 'the economy' and some soul searching on the part of founders that is going around. Last year the common topic seemed to be 'raising money'. I wasn't at the 2007 one, so I'd be curious if there was also a theme that year.

Berkeley was a far superior venue as far as lunch and other travel logistics were concerned, although their mic system seemed haphazard.

Also, it was a blast to meet up with some of my fellow HN'ers... both those I was meeting for the first time and those I knew from last year. PG, JL, TLB, and the rest of the YC companies that hosted pre/post parties... thanks! Best of luck to everyone on their endeavours once we all head home!

Most surprisingly good speaker: Chris Anderson

Really? I'd be curious to hear what you got out of his talk. I thought most of the discussion of Freemium business models was pretty rudimentary.

Well I meant that he was an entertaining speaker, and kept me interested. The only thing that stands out in my mind that I hadn't really distilled out before was the slide about the half dozen things people will pay for, and how your freemium model has to work around one of those things. But then again, I haven't spent much time thinking about Freemium, so I suppose this wasn't exactly mind-blowing for those that have.

The format doesn't really allow anyone time to go very deep on a topic, so I wasn't expecting anything too rigorous... although Peter Norvig came kind of close last year with his word segmentation problem.

Well, I thought he would bomb hard, I expected heckling — and I was pleasantly surprised that nothing of the sort happened.

I do wish he talked less about the obvious price structure / customer interaction stuff and more about the actual process of shipping such things.

Robert Scoble making an ass out of himself repeatedly.

He actually interrupted Tony Hsieh in mid-sentence in the middle of his talk, and with an obviously stupid question that Tony shot down without really missing a beat: "What specifically do you ask people in interviews to see if they're egotistical?"

A few minutes into Zuckerberg's talk he started raising his hand, and then spent the remainder bouncing up and down in his chair. From all that buildup I expected him to ask a confrontational drama-queen non-question about Friendfeed, but instead he nervously asked a nonsense question about how he's managing his employees as he wanders their offices. It seemed to me that it was some veiled drama, or something only a company-tour addict would give a shit about.

In one of the later talks someone thankfully took the microphone back from him before he could try to ask another question after the final one (he was standing and approaching the stage!)

At first I was thinking that he should be actively disinvited from future events, but I had a long productive conversation with him afterwards (though not about his recent asshattery, his face is pink enough as it is). I've come to the conclusion that his presence is useful, but that he should never be allowed to ask questions — the best that could happen is irrelevant softball non-questions that waste everyone's time.

Seconded. I recognize that he's an influential member of the tech community, but interrupting Tony Hsieh with his lame question? Totally unacceptable.

I sat up to see who the hell was being an idiot and when I saw him I was just like "oh, Scoble". I guess people kind of expect it from him these days.

To be honest he wasn't the only one asking stupid/long-winded/time-wasting questions. Some people kinda need to learn how to prepare and succinctly make a point.

a) The people asking questions weren't public speakers. Speaking in front of 800+ strangers with a mic in your hand is nerve wracking for a lot of people; cut them some slack.

b) Nobody else had such a huge ego to interrupt a speaker on stage in the middle of his talk. Let alone in the first 5 minutes of it. It was humorous that he interrupted the CEO of Zappos to ask a question about how to figure out who the ego-centric people were.

I accidentally insulted Mark Zuckerberg. I asked my question about PR lessons and he kind of put it back to me.

If I had had Zuckerberg's PR lessons, I would have more deftly answered his yes or no question with an explanation, but I was kind of uncomfortable since I wasn't expecting to have a dialog.

I do think that going through the process of PR training makes one less interesting. It's not that he and other high-profile CEOs aren't honest, it's that they are hyper-aware of their words and are most comfortable sharing thoughts they have already had, the particular talking points that they know are ok to repeat in public. To me, candor is always more interesting than old thoughts.

Anyways, that's what I was thinking; I'm aware I kind of looked like an asshole. Sorry about that; didn't want to create any question drama. I apologized afterwards and he said he didn't care and thought it was funny.

Zuckerberg was probably my favorite talk. In a room full of entrepreneurs, none of us will probably achieve what he has achieved. Most of us aren't even trying for something like that.

Dude, I didn't take it that way - the tone with which you asked the question seemed more like genuine curiosity, as opposed to trolling. Hopefully Mark took it that way as well...?

:) I thought Jessica looked a little horrified. And I had some people mention it to me later how I "insulted" Mark. Mark himself was definitely not offended or insulted.

It seemed really awkward, and judging from the stare he gave you just before he walked off the stage, I would say he got a little offended.

I agree - he didn't seem offended to me. As evidence, I remembered yesterday that he actually followed up with a really great comment that I think a lot of folks missed. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like: "Everyone likes controversial questions and controversial answers, but we don't necessarily learn a lot from them."

For me the best by far was Paul Buchheit, because he was not only honest in a general sense (all the others seemed so as well), but also intellectually honest.

There's no one way to do things, what works for one won't work for another. His talk acknowledged that right off the bat, stayed true to that philosophy, and still managed to impart lots of wisdom (some implicitly)... while being very engaging. (Humor is underrated.)

Thanks Paul, and thanks to all the other speakers as well! This was my second startup school (my first was Fall 2005 in Cambridge - jeez, was it really that long ago??) and both times I've come away inspired and fired up.

Paul's talk was refreshing, but is he always like that? He kinda seemed high.

I'll definitely know I'm successful when I can just stand on stage and ramble about my life in front of 800 people. How awesome!

Only the first one is a funny moment.

Paul Graham, in the middle of all the AV trouble, says "What Talks Are Really Like".

Greg McAdoo: To sell to enterprise, offer an ROI so powerful that a person who turns you down would be scared of getting fired.

Jason Fried: "Cool wears off; useful never does. You will be using Post-It notes in 20 years."

Paul Buchheit: 1) Was working at Intel, hanging out with some friends, when they started talking about the company's retirement plan. Got depressed and the incident encouraged him to move on. 2) Gets bored with something unless he's constantly releasing, and knows how to work with himself on that limitation. 3) Every company has corporate superstitions: things you have to do if you work there because they worked for the company earlier, or appeared to.

Zuckerberg: 1) "When we got money, what we decided was that the best feature we could give to people is having their friends on there." (On increasing capacity vs adding new features) 2) "Values are worthless unless they're controversial. What are you willing to give up? We give up a lot for speed [of development]" (e.g., they maintain a single code base)

Tony Hsieh: Core values should be commitable: are you willing to hire+fire based on them.

Gee, I think I like your list better than mine! Thank you especially for the reminder of what Greg McAdoo said; I missed capturing that one in my notes.

Mark Zuckerberg yelling "yeah" from the audience when Mark Pincus said you should control your board.

I think one gem was overlooked...

Paul Graham: In order to have a liquidity event, you need to have a liquidity event.

...priceless.

I remember it as, "You need to have a liquidity event to have a 'liquidity event.'"

There was an absolutely fantastic question from the audience (rms?) for Zuckerberg, followed up with a perfectly elucidated back-and-forth reparté between them (though Jessica was freaking out a bit).

The TechCrunch transcript is just a teaser, the video clip could easily turn into a meme:

  Q: Can you talk what it’s like in order to speak publicly so people don’t
     pounce on you? Seems like you’ve changed since 2006.
  A: Have I not said enough offensive stuff? Is this less interesting?
  Q: Yeah… probably less interesting (oooooh from the crowd)
  A: Maybe we need more controversial questions.

Early internal feedback on Gmail: "I would like it to search my email, not just yours" — Paul Buchheit's talk

"It's like we're married, but we're not fucking." — Some startup founder who went through Y Combinator quoted in PG's talk

Thanks! It was exhausting, but a blast to host

(<--podium setup guy with black CSUA t-shirt/black open hack hoodie)

EDIT: Major props go to all the speakers, guests, Jessica, Dwight Crow (who was the main organizer on the Berkeley side), Eli Chait, Corey Reese, and everyone else from the CSUA and Startups@Berkeley and YC who made this possible, and of course everyone I forgot to mention.

I was sitting right behind you and was trying to figure out your t-shirt. Was it some kind of MUD joke?

In Soda Hall, no-one can hear you scream.

When is the proper video from the event being released?

When Cal Events encodes it. I believe the place it will be put up is http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events.php but I am not an authority on the matter as I wasn't the one who arranged for Cal Events to record.

Yeah, I couldn't watch the stop-and-go live stream last night, even though I stayed up til 5AM for it.

AirBnB's electronic music rooftop dance party. Don't get me wrong, SUS it self was a great experience -- but it was reassuring to see that a tech start up crowd could throw a legitimate party!

It helped that most of the party crashers were girls!

What was with the hats?

All the people in pilot costumes were the hosts from AirBnB

Big thanks to UC Berkeley. As a current senior, it's incredible to see how the school has opened up to the idea of pushing entrepreneurship over the past 4 years. The Berkeley CSUA and ST@B worked their butts off to make this an incredible experience, and they'd do a lot to make sure that Berkeley gets the exposure that it deserves.

Hope to see Startup School 2010 return to Berkeley. :)

As a recently graduated senior, this was great to see but we've still got a long way to go. What else can we do on this side of the bay?

I had a fantastic time as well. thanks to everyone!

My favorite moments were outside the hall, just mingling with you guys. I said I would talk to at least 20 people, and I did. Nice to meet you all, and thanks for the beer.

Yes, it was great to meet so many fellow HN readers.

Thanks to everyone who tool the time to organize, speak, or throw parties!

Zappos core value 10: be humble. Egotistic engineers ruin startup cultures.

Control your destiny, control your board. -Zynga

Complete paraphase, but when Jason Fried talked about a company's relationship with customers: "'We apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused' - What do you mean may have caused? You f-ing caused it."

Companies need to be more honest, open, and transparent when dealing with their customers. Make your products easy enough that anyone can use them (sort of "assume a dumb customer"), but when you deal with your customers, treat them with the utmost respect and appreciation for their intelligence.

"Can anyone here tell me how to sell stuff for free? You can't. You can only sell stuff for money." - Jason Fried

"So when your friend performs the most intimate human act of love by giving you a dollar bill..." - Chris Anderson

"Hey, I'd like to be able to search my mail, not just your mail." - Paul Buchheit

Apparently I went looking for a good laugh.

Those are all paraphrases, by the way.

+1 on the Paul Bucheit paraphrase.

@projectileboy: your analogy (Paul Buchheit channeling Bob Newhart) is perfect.

Heh heh... thanks. I of course mean hilarious young hip Bob Newhart from the 60s, not boring old former TV star Bob Newhart of today.

Did anyone else think the beginning was much stronger than the end? Paul Graham, Jason Fried, and Chris Anderson were great but I didn't care for the Q&A sessions at all. What happened to actually preparing a talk for a big event you've been invited to? I wanted more on startups and advice, not just more pandering to twitter and facebook.

I completely agree... using an interview format for Twitter and Facebook proved to be boring. It just wasn't the right forum for asking pointed, controversial, information-eliciting questions. Jason Fried, both Pauls, Tony Hsieh -- pretty much all the speakers -- proved that you can deliver much more valuable insight if you prep your own talk. I really would have loved it if the Twitter guys and Zuckerberg, especially, had done the same.

I was surprised, despite the laziness, that the Twitter interview was so good. Their articulation of the realization that they did NOT want to be the kings of podcasting was eye-opening to me, maybe it was old news to others.

Mark Zukerberg: "It's ok to make mistakes."

Evan Williams: "Trust your instincts - except when they're wrong."

It's more like a Zen proverb/koan.

Links to uploaded videos?

Sorry... I would have included a link to justin.tv/startupschool, but there's not much there (yet?).

Based on the comments, it sounds like Yogi Berra would have been a hit at this event

"These are my people" -- Zuckerberg.

Fucking stud. Period.

Ok, I wasn't there, but here's a bit from my somewhat silly imagination:

When PG descended on the stage with his jetpack, and the enthralled crowd prostrated themselves in his direction with one flowing movement while chanting PEE GEE PEE GEE PEE GEE.

...

He landed in a Harrier... jetpacks are for kids.

(Seriously though, why so negative?)

It's not negative, it's just kind of a random bit from my head. I wouldn't have spent so much time on this site if I didn't have a great deal of respect for pg and what he's done with YC. I thought it was over the top enough to make other people smile at the image too, rather than think it was in some way nasty.

Hmmm. I think it's tempting to appear jaded in these instances. To poke fun at the omg-I'm-seeing-famous-people-in-the-flesh mentality. I know I have thought about what makes social interactions different when one person is known by reputation or "claim to fame" and the other person is relatively anonymous. I think about this most acutely because I'm effectively nobody... so when I meet someone I and others look up to, it's definitely awkward. I second guess everything I say and every gesture I make... and I hate myself for it.

It creates an asymmetrical dynamic. The whole interaction depends on the magnanimity of the so-called 'famous person' to ignore the awkwardness. It's interesting and weird and (at least for me) relatively rare and novel.

But they are human beings.

It's almost nice, being anonymous as I am, if you don't know who the hell the person is. Then you don't have to spend so many brain cycles going "wow WOW I'm talking to insert-celebrity-here".

It's like Mark Pincus. I could have walked up to him randomly during a break and had a conversation and thought "wow, that was a cool guy with interesting perspective". But even the label on his name tag... "Speaker" gave him away as 'someone important'. Suddenly you feel like the emperor with no clothes... you start trying to justify why the heck you should be wasting this guy's time. It's funny how you don't have that concern with someone you don't look up to.

So yeah, there is a lot of ooh-ing and ahh-ing in the crowd. You can't get around that really, but the day wasn't a PG worship-fest. If anything, it seemed less centered around him than last year's SUS (although I might just be projecting).

The biggest collective inhale comes with someone like Zuckerberg or Fried walks in the room... and there is no real avoiding that. They are the current players that inspire and lead by example.

And that is ok. There is always going to be someone serving that role. We as a species seem to need celebrity both for motivation and allegiance. People pick sides because it's natural to back a champion.

But really, I promise you, there was no prostrating. ;) I respect PG and YC and thank them for putting on the event, but I, for one, come here for the conversation, just like I came to Startup School to talk to motivated people trying to make cool stuff. Randomly bumping into 'famous' people is a bonus I guess.

You say a lot of quite intelligent things, but you're still taking what I said way too seriously.

Oh I laughed pretty hard when I read it... it was funny.

I guess I asked whether it was negative because it was kind of hard to tell... but then you answered that.

Then I mostly used your answer as an excuse to talk about something that had been on my mind. I wasn't trying to start an argument or anything. ;)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60357

Hail Paul G. Atreides, the Muad 'Dib.

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