Learning the business of innovation: Stanford hosts sold out Startup School weekend
Palo Alto - 600 people from countries as far away as Brazil and Japan will converge at Stanford University Saturday for Startup School 2006, a conference featuring a dozen tech industry movers and shakers such as Caterina Fake of Flickr fame and Joshua Schachter of social bookmarking site, del.icio.us.
No, attendees won’t learn how to build next generation Web 2.0 websites with PHP, Python or Ruby on Rails. Instead, they’re coming to receive a one-day crash course in how to build a successful technology business.
For those lucky enough to nab a ticket to the invitation-only conference, Startup School 2006 will offer attendees a rare chance to hear first-hand war stories from the successful pioneers behind some of the biggest technology trends shaping the industry today.
Y Combinator [http://ycombinator.com], a venture firm based in Cambridge and Mountain View, organized the event in association with Stanford’s BASES [http://bases.stanford.edu/site/index.jsp] organization.
"Startup School is the only event of its kind to serve next generation founders of technology companies," Jessica Livingston, a partner at Y Combinator, said. "Most attendees have computer science and engineering backgrounds. This conference exposes them to the business side of startups, and it’s the business side that can often seem mysterious."
If you want to attend the event but you don’t have an invitation, you’re not alone. Nearly three hundred applicants were turned away due to space limitations. But don’t fret. Podcasts and PowerPoints from the conference will be archived online at http://startupschool.org/ early next week.
As you wait for the new presentations to come online, check out the Podcast archives from last year’s Startup School 2005, held in October at Harvard University, at http://startupschool.infogami.com/Presentations . Speakers included Steve Wozniak of Apple, Langley Steinert of TripAdvisor, Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica and numerous other tech veterans.
Editor’s note: Mark Coker will be on hand to cover the event for Silicon Valley Watcher.
