I was lucky enough to attend Saturday's Startup School Silicon Valley event (my first time), and I'm happy to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I've previously blogged about what I think makes a "great" startup event[1], and Startup School does seem to fulfill most of the criteria - Great speakers, a focused theme, a focused audience, and best of all it's free and highly accessible.
Despite all that, in the spirit of iteration and helping the event improve in the future, here are my 2 nitpicks/suggestions:
#1 - More transparency around how attendees are selected
YC already does a great job of explaining what they look for and how they choose teams that apply to their accelerator program[2], and it would be great if they could explain, even briefly, what selection criteria they use for Startup School. It's already free and open to anyone (to apply to), and I think being transparent with the selection criteria would be the cherry on top.
#2 - Expand the Office Hours segment
The speakers and their talks were excellent, but I think Startup School could be even better with more of an interactive, hands-on element as well.
The Office Hours segment, in which two YC partners simulated YC office hours with 3 teams selected from the audience (10 minutes each), is arguably the most interesting part of the event, and something that truly differentiates Startup School from other "fireside chat with [successful founder]" events. It gives the audience a good idea of how YC partners help founders ask the tough questions about their own startups that can hopefully point them in the right direction.
However, the Office Hours segment left me wanting more, and I started imagining how cool it would be if this was turned into a 1-hour breakout session, where 10~20 YC founders in different verticals would hold open office hours for anyone who wants to have their own startup or project critiqued.
Again, I think Startup School is a great resource for the community, and I'm excited to think about how it could be made even better.
This was my first time, too, and it was a fantastic event. Visiting the YC offices for the BBQ on Friday evening (really their extension offices/meeting building, I think the HQ is down the street) is a religious experience. And, yes, I admit that walking into that orange glory I was as giddy as a high-school groupie (wasn't the only one!). The food was FANTASTIC (both days) and everything was well-planned. And it was all free. Amazing.
No event (esp. one this big) is perfect enough to not warrant and suggestions for making it better, though, so to extend this thread, here are a few of my own:
1. +1 for more Office Hours. I would suggest to pepper these in between talks, after a few back to back talks the audience got a bit of an information fatigue, I think. I saw a lot of people on their phones after 4pm. The informational value of the session on Saturdays were huge. IDEABOLT: How about having a web cast of these, I would pay to watch it and I heard other people saying so, too.
2. More interaction with YC'ers and speakers. Maybe this was an absurd expectation with 1,700 people in attendance but I was looking forward to saying hi to pg, Jessica, sama, and the gang during the breaks at SC and at the BBQ but couldn't see them mingling with the crowd (could be that I was too preoccupied with the great food and drinks). Having the speakers available outside to ask questions would be great, too.
3. Better nametags. I think there should be a customizable area on the printed nametags, e.g. I would like to see people's HN nicks (for those who want to put it there, of course). I know/follow quite a few people here but don't know their names, this would have been helpful in saying hi to these folks. Also I saw a lot of people adding information by pen to their nametags about their startup, it would be nice to be able to do this at the signup web page, too. Now that I think about why not even include a NFC tag with more personal information, company website, etc. This would solve the problem of not remembering the names of the many people you chat with during the event.
4. Startup story booths. Picture booths are now popular at parties. Why not set up one which, when you enter your registration code, will tape you for 30secs. You can use this time to pitch your idea/company. These can then be posted online, voted on, etc.
I went to the last event in London and the thing I felt was missing most was social interaction between attendees who wouldn't otherwise meet and hearing stories of other startups not (yet) in YC. This was mostly down to the attendees, which if you didn't know anyone else could be a bit intimidating.
It'd be nice to see a few more social elements to encourage mingling - for example an open mic area to talk about your startup and solicit advice, discussion groups (or office hours) for different startup categories (travel etc) in smaller rooms so that people with similar interests could gather, or perhaps some kind of mini hackathons lasting 15 minutes on different subjects. Anything that lets people interact in a non-forced way.
People mingled at the drinks at the end to some extent, however that was pretty random I felt more group interaction earlier on would have helped break the ice a little more rather than simply leaving that to drinks etc. and my only regret about the event was that I didn't speak to more people.
I would suggest to pepper these in between talks, after a few back to back talks the audience got a bit of an information fatigue, I think
Definitely - the talks were all in contiguous blocks, which meant by the end it was difficult to take it all in, though in London I loved Paul Buchheit near the end - he started to guffaws from some kids in front of me because of his gnomic delivery and by the end had them rapt. They do at least have the ones from the event online. More office hours between talks would be great - perhaps each speaker could give an office hours open to the floor?
Smaller talks to smaller groups (perhaps in parallel) would also work wonderfully, as having such a large audience makes the dynamic very different when it comes to questions and even for the speakers themselves. There are of course issues with that in terms of money and it's already a free event.
More interaction with YC'ers and speakers.
I don't think this is really possible, given the number of people in attendance. At the event in London speakers were mingling but were mobbed by hopefuls standing in rings around them and it all became a little odd and celebrity-focused, which I don't think was the intention. Perhaps some people find this useful, but I wasn't sure it added much given the ratio of speakers to attendees.
Great events though and cheers to YC for putting them on.
There was also a BBQ held Friday night at YC offices that some attendees were invited to and others not. This ended up being confusing because not all of us knew if we should go, do something else or what. More transparency would have helped.
I am on visit to US for the first time and luckily I was selected for both BBQ and main event. It was really a great experience going to both events (specially the BBQ one) because I had been HN reader for few years and had been applying to YC (and drooling over YC offices on streetview, crazy I know). Meeting YC partners was a great experience sadly couldn't find pg. But it was a great experience. Nobody should miss these events ever!
I've previously blogged about what I think makes a "great" startup event[1], and Startup School does seem to fulfill most of the criteria - Great speakers, a focused theme, a focused audience, and best of all it's free and highly accessible.
Despite all that, in the spirit of iteration and helping the event improve in the future, here are my 2 nitpicks/suggestions:
#1 - More transparency around how attendees are selected
YC already does a great job of explaining what they look for and how they choose teams that apply to their accelerator program[2], and it would be great if they could explain, even briefly, what selection criteria they use for Startup School. It's already free and open to anyone (to apply to), and I think being transparent with the selection criteria would be the cherry on top.
#2 - Expand the Office Hours segment
The speakers and their talks were excellent, but I think Startup School could be even better with more of an interactive, hands-on element as well.
The Office Hours segment, in which two YC partners simulated YC office hours with 3 teams selected from the audience (10 minutes each), is arguably the most interesting part of the event, and something that truly differentiates Startup School from other "fireside chat with [successful founder]" events. It gives the audience a good idea of how YC partners help founders ask the tough questions about their own startups that can hopefully point them in the right direction.
However, the Office Hours segment left me wanting more, and I started imagining how cool it would be if this was turned into a 1-hour breakout session, where 10~20 YC founders in different verticals would hold open office hours for anyone who wants to have their own startup or project critiqued.
Again, I think Startup School is a great resource for the community, and I'm excited to think about how it could be made even better.
[1] https://medium.com/@petershin45/what-makes-a-good-startup-ev...
[2] https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/