Here you can see the brave souls who are answering questions about the startups that have recently been funded by ycombinator. (You can find a pretty decent list here.) They were part of a panel that ended the day of lectures and panel discussions.The Roundup
Overall, I give startup school a 99%. My complaints are very minimal. Chiefly, though I have 2 negative remarks, and they are related. Nobody presenting spoke (as the subject of their talk) about a startup that had failed. As a corollary, I didn't catch any statistics that said anything about how often software (specifically Web 2.0) startups succeed or fail (meaning a percentage), but I imagine those kinds of statistics are hard to come by. Specifically, because it's a new thing and not many people have had time to fail, or more generally, because someone probably wouldn't volunteer the fact that they had done something that failed if it had never been heard of. I don't mention to you, dear reader, every failed attempt at something I've tried. The internet simply isn't big enough to contain that sort of information. That's about all the negative things that could be said, really.
The Good
These are things that were absolutely right. I'm bound to leave something out here, so my apologies from the beginning.
-free
-excellent speakers
-nice range of experience and expertise from speakers/panelists
-good presentations (they ranged from index cards (with a dead-on invective from Om Malik about why he doesn't like .ppt) to a minimal approach of 11 slides with one word per slide (by the founder of del.icio.us) to standard word-heavy slides by lawyers and venture capitalists
-intelligent and motivated collection of individuals
-very open presenters fielding good and bad questions
-the reception the night before
-the large metal robots at the reception the night before
-good natured ribbing of MicroSoft and MySpace
It's really no wonder that this part of the world is a hotbed of innovation. My background, or presentground if I can use/coin that term, though, is slightly biased against the ultimate end of most of the people there. I think biotechnology can be a better use of resources. The market served by most of the entrepreneurs were internet users. I don't have any hard numbers, but I'd guess the people most excited by the innovation was white upper-middle class males. In an excellent talk, Chris Sacca of google (who had a job that was most certainly the envy of everyone in the room "head of special initiatives") said basically what I just said. I ask: Are these innovations making the world a better place? I might buy some argument about Web2.0 being a middle ground between the then and the future. A sort of critical path step. Otherwise, I might say, would I rather have a cure for (terrible disease x), or a suite of really great computer applications?
Hopefully, the next post or two will detail my reactions to what people had to say more specifically. Soon there will be a podcast of all the talks. If I say something about a talk that interests you, head on over and download it. Most of the talks were great, and I was glad to be a part of it.
5 comments:
Interesting points. Note though that a number of speakers did talk about their mistakes and a even few failures. For example, one of the rules of thumb that came up over and over was the "hire slowly, fire quickly" -- Caterina Fake mentioned how they failed in that.
You're correct. To clarify, while people mentioned some failures or lessons learned, part of the feel of it was that startups rarely fail. Biotechnology startups (my focus in grad school) typically fail somewhere between 80-90% of the time. I suspect the statistics for software startups are pretty different and far less knowable than with biotech companies (who require millions of dollars to launch anything in most cases). If you run across any statistics, please send them my way. In the meantime, thanks for your comment, and the possible corrective it was against my statement.
Ah, yes, some folks are so pro-startups that they over-hype to good parts and under-report the hard parts. I think that's a very common trait with people who do startups. There's a saying in racing that says that the best drivers have very poor memories.
Ann Winblad had some statistics in her talk (she said to send her an email asking for slides if you want a copy).
In my opinion, you are mistaken.
It is scandal!
Post a Comment