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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

...priceless.

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.

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

(<--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.

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

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.

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

Control your destiny, control your board. -Zynga

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.

"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.

It's more like a Zen proverb/koan.

Fucking stud. Period.

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 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.

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. ;)