Todays Startup School 2010 organized by the YCombinator was great. So many fascinating talks by good entrepreneurs and passion for startups of any kind. As an entrepreneur and doing Preona as a startup it was the place to be.

We pitched and showed our LazyReadr, the personalized newspaper iPad app to many people and gotten some good feedback. It seems like the thing to pitch and show it to the best crowd of tech and like minded people as we are waiting to be reviewed by Apple.

As we are also applying to the winter YC it was great to see how the Silicon Valley startup scene looks like and what people are doing. Yesterdays YC dinner was also nice, pitching and mingling with everyone. Also talking to Robert Scoble and other, an awesome experience and we hope to come to SF again in a few months.

Now on to some notes and topics that each speaker pointed out. One topic throughout all the talks was that the team is more important and the best asset for the startup. The vision and just doing it is first and having a team that can make it is also the thing. Execution and product is the next step to a big company and also further development, talking to users, growing and hopefully going public or being bought in the end.

Do leave comments with your thoughts.

Now here are the talks:

Andy Bechtolsheim
Founder Arista Networks; Founder, Sun Microsystems

Innovation is the never ending search for better solutions. Best thing is to learn from the big. As a startup we have the advantage of spending loads of time in the ideas and starting innovation, being agile, while the execution is just following your vision and coding/building the thing you are working on. You don’t need a lot of money to start a web business, but if it takes off… Do what you want to do, external input only goes so far (pretty useless).

Paul Graham
Partner, Y Combinator; Founder, Viaweb

Super angels and VCs are fighting, higher evaluation for startups, which is good for founders. There will be lots of new investments into startups and is looking like a big new bubble for startups. Rounds that close fast at high valuations for founders are good news.

Andrew Mason
Founder, Groupon

Take one feature/use case and make a new business out of it when you fail. Build it and they will come concept for getting users is a fail. You have to target people, buy ads, sales. Push emails to users instead of just sending Groupons in the case of Groupon.

Tom Preston-Werner
Founder, GitHub

You have to read drive by Dan Pink. You always have a choice, do the stuff at your own pace, if you can – Be happy rather than get the money. Get users engaged through personal meetups and meetings. An engaged user is a lot better then the one you just buy or get from sales.

If you have T-shirts or other promotional material like cups – Don’t give away free stuff, sell it. It doesn’t need to be for money, it can be for engaging or happy users, a win-win for both.

Greg McAdoo
Partner, Sequoia Capital

Building great startups requires a long period of time. Startups need a few years to grow, develop and monetize to get to a point. You need to solve your own problems. The ones you are having everyday and with solving your own problem you will also help other people that have the same. To get introduced to Sequoia Capital a referral from another founder/someone they funded is a whole better way to get in. It gives you credibility and people know you are cool if you get recommended.

Reid Hoffman
Partner, Greylock; Founder, LinkedIn

Before you can go to the market, you need to get into distribution and engagement of the users. You can have a great idea, that is going to be great once the users are there. But how to get to the beach, to make the users, it is going to be hard. Make a plan. Communities, engagement. Talk to anyone that wants to talk to you. More intelligence and data gives you more pivots and thinking about how to go further on. How fast are you going? Observe similar companies to determine the pace. How do you get 10000 users, 10000000 users… Through distribution.

Ron Conway
Partner, SV Angel

Really, anybody can do it. Everybody started small and mostly as a 2 or 3 person team. If you are 1, you will need a team sooner or later, why not start making one from day 1 already.

Adam D’Angelo
Founder, Quora

Having a product is good, but experience with other startups brings also a good reference to angels. Other option is having lots of users to get on their radar. The design of an application can be important if you want it to be, and can play the advantage or differentiator in the product.

Dalton Caldwell
Founder, Picplz; Founder, Imeem

Don’t make a music startup. Period. Too much fuss and issues. Similar to software patents.

Mark Zuckerberg
Founder, Facebook

He started by moving to the Valley for just a short time. Didn’t really think it would be permanent. You should think about making a good architecture already in the beginning, otherwise it can happen that you need to fix it for years at a later time when you are already big.

Brian Chesky
Founder, Airbnb

Had loads of launches, are now doing it for 1000 days. And the business didn’t really take off. Applied to YC after a long time, sold breakfast cereals as a side thing for a while. Pivoted about 5 times after feedback from users and ideas. They are growing for the last few months and have really taken off.