Startup School Recap(andybrett.com)
andybrett.com
Startup School Recap
http://andybrett.com/startup-school-2010
1 comments
Definitely agree, those were both great talks. It was easy to see how Brian's personality comes across in the AirBnB culture (or maybe vice versa).
1) Tom Preston Warner's focus on "optimizing for happiness instead of money". Watching the archives out of order won't give the same feeling as being there in person, but Tom's talk provided a very, very different point of view from the other 10 speakers (bootstrapping vs. angel/VC funding). Also, aside from Startup School, my impression of Tom is that he has very strong convictions about his ideals and is extremely hard-working. He was at the airbnb party after Startup School, and was inside talking to people, then moved outside - presumably because it was too loud inside to really converse effectively without yelling. I hadn't seen him for a while before I left, then saw he was still outside talking at ~12:30. He's now answering questions "all day" today on HN at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1804443
2) Brian Chesky was also one of my favorite speakers. I think his talk showed a great understanding of the audience. A lot of questions posed to the speakers focused on how to grow a startup -- Brian Chesky's entire talk was about how airbnb did that.