Beautiful comment, both insightful and self-aware. I wish this was an article so I'd look through your blog; instead I'll have to make do with looking at your HN comments and try not to be a creeper.
I went to the event with a couple friends (them: corporate + quarterlife-ish crisis) and found the event to be heavy on the inspiration side, with the constituency consisting of those hungry (students, underemployed folks) and those who are in the process of "killing it" and looking for new acolytes.
I had a mildly unsettling feeling that, at the end of the day, like any other domain that celebrates superstars, this celebration serves the interests of the investors who want and need that kind of competition to hone the best of us into market-disrupting entities. And while the interests are completely understandable, they are maximized towards extreme outcomes... good and bad. Some would see it as tough love; others… need to see it.
And to be fair it is what it is -- the ability to efficiently bring about change makers is a net positive to society as a whole. But the vision and expectations of many people in MemAud that day were probably on the prize of greatness and billion dollar valuations, not in seeing what constitutes passion, work, and self-awareness. (Many speakers touched on this, though perhaps it's just poor sampling on my part to the people I interacted; it left nary a mark on them.)
I guess if I had to sum up my thoughts and highlight some advice from SS as a startup survivor (Bellyup School, if you will):
Things are always harder than they seems (Marc Andreessen touched on this with his MJ story).
Dedication does not preclude optimization (focus on your startup only after you get the commitment in terms of users or funding -- see Zuckerberg/Livingston stories on both).
Work hard, and be luckier/opportunistic. For every Dropbox that nailed the vision/execution, is most every other startup that pivoted a bunch till they found their niche.
Hrm, I gotta admit, now that I'm reviewing things, pretty much everyone has warned of how much things would be difficult... but somehow it just doesn't stick with most of us. Caveat emptor. :)
Entrepreneurs are the sperm of venture investors. If you are a venture investor who wants to "conceive" a Google, it helps to have a high count as well as high quality. The perspective of an individual swimmer would be different, of course.
I went to the event with a couple friends (them: corporate + quarterlife-ish crisis) and found the event to be heavy on the inspiration side, with the constituency consisting of those hungry (students, underemployed folks) and those who are in the process of "killing it" and looking for new acolytes.
I had a mildly unsettling feeling that, at the end of the day, like any other domain that celebrates superstars, this celebration serves the interests of the investors who want and need that kind of competition to hone the best of us into market-disrupting entities. And while the interests are completely understandable, they are maximized towards extreme outcomes... good and bad. Some would see it as tough love; others… need to see it.
And to be fair it is what it is -- the ability to efficiently bring about change makers is a net positive to society as a whole. But the vision and expectations of many people in MemAud that day were probably on the prize of greatness and billion dollar valuations, not in seeing what constitutes passion, work, and self-awareness. (Many speakers touched on this, though perhaps it's just poor sampling on my part to the people I interacted; it left nary a mark on them.)
I guess if I had to sum up my thoughts and highlight some advice from SS as a startup survivor (Bellyup School, if you will):
Things are always harder than they seems (Marc Andreessen touched on this with his MJ story).
Dedication does not preclude optimization (focus on your startup only after you get the commitment in terms of users or funding -- see Zuckerberg/Livingston stories on both).
Work hard, and be luckier/opportunistic. For every Dropbox that nailed the vision/execution, is most every other startup that pivoted a bunch till they found their niche.
Hrm, I gotta admit, now that I'm reviewing things, pretty much everyone has warned of how much things would be difficult... but somehow it just doesn't stick with most of us. Caveat emptor. :)