Tell HN: We're bringing back the “Work at a Startup” event on Saturday July 28

125 points

8 years ago

Back in 2010 and in 2012, YC organized a "Work at a Startup" event, for founders of YC companies and prospective hires to meet each other in person. It got great feedback and we wanted to keep doing it, but we got stretched too thin for a while. This year, a bunch of us revived the project. Our goal is to fundamentally improve the experience both of joining a YC startup and of being an early employee in general. You may have seen some of the recent discussions about this, including a big discussion last week about concrete ways to improve things for early startup employees (see links below). As part of this, we've decided to bring back an expanded version of the original "Work at a Startup" event. That's what we're announcing today.

On Saturday July 28, we'll host our third Work at a Startup Expo: https://workatastartup.com/expo. We'll begin with a talk answering the most common questions about working at a startup. Then we'll have a series of rapid-fire presentations by 35 YC companies currently hiring engineers. After the event, we'll have an open house where you can talk one-on-one with the founders of any company that interested you.

New this time: we'll have a hardware demo area where companies building physical products can show them off. YC has more hardware companies than ever now, building everything from satellites to industrial robots.

For those not in the Bay Area, we will live stream all the videos, and if people are interested we can have an ongoing HN thread to discuss them as well.

If you're interested in attending, please apply at https://workatastartup.com/expo. Any questions or ideas, please comment below!

Links to previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286939

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15916350

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3676578

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346103

p.s. That recent thread about the pros and cons of working at a startup was one of the best discussions I've ever seen on Hacker News. I went through it carefully, tried to make sure that every comment got attention, and compiled a list of the main points, which got a thorough discussion at the last YC partner meeting. We're going to develop some substantive programs in response. It will take some time to responsibly make changes that affect the whole ecosystem, but we're going to work hard on it; it's an opportunity to make things better for everyone. Please stay tuned!

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