I'd really like to say thank you to PG, the folks at YC, the speakers and everyone that put time and effort into making startup school what I think was an amazing event this year.<p>All the speakers shared invaluable insights into what we all love best - building things. In fact, I've already started hounding people who weren't able to attend to watch the videos. From Brian Chesky's lessons on perseverance to Andrew Mason's comments on forgetting your grand artistic vision and just building a tool that people can use, I feel like I've gotten some wonderful tips and tricks to help out my own ventures.<p>Perhaps even more important than the speakers though, at least for me, was the people. There really isn't any way to describe how invigorating it is to be around so many excited about technology, building things and their great ideas of how to change the world. I feel like the projects and ideas I've been procrastinating are now achievable and need to be done right away.<p>So, thank you again, everyone involved, for putting on such a singular event that helps us all out so much.
Thanks, but the credit for organizing it goes to Kirsty Nathoo, Jessica, and Kate Courteau, and of course BASES. They organized everything. All I did was show up and speak.<p>This was a good one though. The speakers really delivered.
Median quality of atendees was also -phenomenal-. Lots of really smart and driven hackers.<p>I also got to meet edw519. I can confirm - he is as awesome as his HN comments suggest.
I was going to submit the following, but wasn't sure if it was following the rules of HN posts, so here it is:<p>Tell/Ask HN: I attended startup school as a non-founder and it was awesome, how was your experience?<p>I attended applied and attended Startup School 2010 as a non-founder and it was quite possibly the best day of my life in recent memory.<p>I want to say thanks to Paul, Airbnb, Bases and all the volunteers, and anyone else that put in any effort to make this event what it was.<p>Second, thanks to all the speakers! You all did an awesome job. Well done! Words cannot describe how well everyone did. By far the best event/conference I have ever attended mostly because of all the interesting and insightful talks.<p>Some of my highlights:<p>I sat next to the 3 awesome intelligent founders of Dr. Chronos (plug: <a href="http://drchronos.com" rel="nofollow">http://drchronos.com</a>) and spoke with them about all sorts of interesting topics through out the entire event and after.<p>I met Alexis and Christopher from Reddit and we joked and talked about many interesting topics during lunch. I even got some pictures taken with them.<p>Speaking of lunch, that might have been some of the best pizza I have ever had.<p>I feel like I met almost the entire Airbnb team, they were all awesome. Sorry, if I can't remember all your names, so I want to say thanks for the awesome after party! Special thanks goes to Nick, Joe, and Erin for putting up with me.<p>I briefly met Paul and got my picture taken with him, truly an honor. Thanks again Paul!<p>I met tons of intelligent, fun, awesome developers and founders. The networking was worth every single penny alone (just a little over $600 total including hotel from Oklahoma). I learned a ton! It was truly and inspiring time for me throughout the trip.<p>To all those I did not mention above, thank you for making this quite possibly one of the most fun, exciting, and enjoyable days I can remember in recent history.<p>I hope I can attend next year. I'm looking forward to it.
another thanks. the more i think about it, the more i appreciate how invaluable the talks were. this was my second startup school. but oddly i think the most valuable thing is a sort of subconscious quieting of the mind around the key places where startups really need to get going.<p>for so many people starting new businesses there are just a lot of unknowns that can create noise in one's mind (and prevent one from innovating around the other more real domain problems). when you see and hear other people's stories, strangely, i think the mind starts to normalize them and all these classes of fuzzy / unknown obstacles, that we don't even realize are there, start to disappear.<p>serial entrepreneurs often have already created this normalized, orthogonal, clean parse tree in their mind from experience. and big name institutions or big name angels create the same quieting of the mind. but i think in part you can get the same thing from startup school, whether one realizes it or not. the ultimate hack is that you don't actually need anything to 'quiet the mind' whatever that means, if you realize how important that resulting action is in the physics of it..
Thank you to the YCombinator crew and BASES for creating the event, and to all of the awesome people to came as well. Hopefully some of you will be on that stage in the next couple of years!
The airbnb presentation is excellent, just watching it now, interesting because I've already heard the most of the story in other interviews but it's still worth hearing again.
I watched most of the speakers on Justin.tv as well. What an incredible group of individuals. I wish I could have been there in person and there is no doubt I will be next year. It is amazing the impact YC has made in just 5 years. I hope you guys keep it up, you truly have a wonderful thing going all the way through. benevolence and kindness will surely pay off in cash as well for you guys (I think we all know it already has).<p>Kudos to PG and the YC team!
I've never been to SV but watching through these video's gives me a sense of the sheer intensity of the energy that seems to be there with so many companies and founders focused in one place. It's intoxicating; I'm so jealous!<p>Thanks to all involved in the event and justin.tv for showing them. I'm probably going to go through them all again at some point - there was so much good stuff and I was too excited to write notes as I watched.
Though I wasn't able to attend this year, I did stream some of the live talks on justin.tv, and I plan on watching the rest tomorrow. What I saw and heard was very motivating, not to mention fun! I really wish I could have been there, but maybe next year. Anyway, I'd also like to say thanks to all involved!
Yes, thank you so much for doing this. The quality of both speakers and attendees was fantastic. It's really awesome to be surrounded by that many people that are as technical and as focused on building businesses as I am. I feel very blessed to have the opportunity to attend.
Great show! Worth the trip. Everyone was great but the most memorable speakers for me were Groupon, imeem, and airbnb. If anyone is wondering if they should fly out to see it, DO IT. So much better than watching streams.<p>thanks ycom<p>~mrC from Cambridge, MA
Yeah, thanks to YC for organizing it and to the speakers for volunteering their time. I have almost never learned so much in one day for free. You guys have really made me think about what I want to do with my life.
Thanks, this was an amazing event to follow, even only the stream. The chatbox action was also interesting at times, except for the inevitable trolls. Good job Justin.tv