Startup School in Palo Alto, CA

The whole Palo Alto/Startup School experience was absolutely AMAZING. I'm going to try to relive it day by day.

Day 1, 4/28/06
I arrived in San Francisco, CA at roughly 11:00AM. After I got off the plane and collected my checked bag, I took the airport shuttle to the BART connection. I got on the BART to go to Millbrae where I met Nick and Doug. I had to rush to get a ticket for the CALtrain so I could continue to Palo Alto, CA which is south of San Francisco. I love their public transportation there! About 25 minutes later we were walking down El Camino Real to our first hotel. This was a nice hotel. $260 a weeknight nice. After putting our stuff down, we decided to walk about 2.5 miles to Fry's, an electronics store. It's like a Best Buy, only bigger, better, and cheaper with more electronics. By the time we got back, it was almost time for the reception at Y Combinator for some selected startup school attendees. They served free beer, wine, salmon, cookies, etc. There were many people there, none of which Nick or I knew.

There were several metal robots there, one of which was basically a copy of human legs. The operator set something and then would gently push the robot in one direction and the robot would shift its feet in order to keep its balance. There was a homemade segway there that we both got to ride. Now I really want one. I didn't even attempt to ride the unicycle segway.. I may have killed someone.

While we didn't know anyone there, we did happen to meet Aaron Swartz who helps the Reddit guys and has his own website called Infogami. We also met a guy named Vinnie Lauria of Meetro.com. Meetro is a creative location aware instant messaging program. That night we rode the train back to Palo Alto and then hung out with him among others. We went to a Sushi Bar where whenever a group of people wanted to do a shot, they would all stand up in their chairs with one person leading, shouting "Sake!" and then the rest yelling "Bomb!" three times and then they drank. The energy in that place was awesome.

Later we went to a bar called Nola's across the street from the Cardinal which is where we stayed my third night. We made it back to the hotel and fell asleep.

Day 2, 4/29/06
This was startup school day. We woke up early and walked to the Stanford campus to the location of the presentations. They went on from 9AM to 5PM roughly. It was a long day. The notes for what happened at startup school can be found here. After that day Nick and I worked on Scenefoo a little, got something to eat at a good Thai restaurant, and then went to sleep.

Day 3, 4/30/06
We woke up early and got something to eat at the University Cafe which was pretty good in my opinion. After that Nick and I decided to go into San Francisco via train to see the city. We saw the city all right. We walked about 7 miles that day from the baseball stadium down to Fisherman's Warf. There we saw these seals that were just sunning themselves and play fighting.

We ate above them in a seal cafe where we could also see Alcatraz in the distance. Luckily we were able to catch the trolley about two blocks from there and ride it back to the train station where we took the train all the way back to Palo Alto. Vinnie texted us and invited us over to drink some beer at the Meetro Headquarters. We accepted and walked about 10 blocks over there. The Meetro crew was just hanging out in front of their place with a sign that said "Beer 10 cents" so we paid and drank.

We talked for a long time, traded stories, bought more beer, and rode in their rickshaw. We had a great time talking about ideas, what Nick and I have been working on, Meetro, the future of the internet startup world among other things. At one point an employee of google came over from across the street to hang out. At about 10:30PM we decided to go and to keep in touch with the Meetro guys. I left the next day around 12 noon.

The overall experience of Palo Alto was a truly inspirational one. Hanging out with people that have similar ideas, experiences, backgrounds, and interests was one that does not happen often at all at least in Memphis. I truly hope I can arrange to visit again, possibly move out there.. where it's a perfect 68 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.