4 posts and columns on Startup School

QOTD: No Such Thing as Easy-Bake

The problem with true hyper-growth … It’s the problem like baking a cake in three minutes.

— Marc Andreessen, talking about growth at Y Combinator’s Startup School this weekend

QOTD: Zuckerberg — Go East, Young Geek!

There’s a culture out here where people don’t commit to doing things. I feel like a lot of companies built outside of Silicon Valley seem to be focused on a longer-term. You don’t have to move out here to do this.

— Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview this weekend at Y Combinator’s Startup School event, noting that he would have stayed in Boston if he were founding the social networking site all over again.

Facebook and Zappos's Different Views on Worker Retention

in News on October 30, 2009 at 1:00 am PT

For fast-growing technology start-ups, there are many approaches to employee hiring and retention. Two of the more successful ones, Facebook and Zappos, have very different methods, each with different goals: Facebook wants to hire entrepreneurs even if that means they will eventually leave, while Zappos wants to hire the best people to fit its culture and figure out how to keep them.

Twitter Founders: From "Stupid" Idea to Possible IPO

in News on October 26, 2009 at 10:06 am PT

It all started with a “stupid” idea and a message about pinot noir. Two of the founders of Twitter Inc., Evan Williams and Biz Stone, talked about how the micro-blogging service began, the challenges it faced and an eventual potential IPO, at Startup School, an event organized by Y Combinator held at the University of California-Berkeley on Saturday.