Ain't No Party Like A Paul Graham Party Cuz A Paul Graham Party Don't Stop
The Cambridge experiment is going pretty well. I’d be lying if I said I love the city, but then, that may be because I haven’t really seen much outside of my apartment. We’ve been so incredibly focused on getting work done that there has been very little time for anything else. It’s unquestionable that we’ve been at least five times as productive here as we were at home, so I guess Cambridge is at least serving its purpose.
There are a few things I’d do differently if I had to do it over again. For one, I would live either in a suburb, where rent would probably be cheaper anyway, or over in Harvard Square. Right now we’re about a mile from Davis Square, which is rather unimpressive. Alternatively, I would have rented a fully furnished place near Porterand just flown out here. The main reason I drove was so that I could bring my 24″ monitor, the Aeron, some tables (which ended up going unused in favor of the kitchen table) and some computers that it turns out we really didn’t need. In retrospect, I should have simply mailed myself the chair and monitor and just packed some clothes into a suitcase and called it a day.
We’ve now been to two dinners at the offices so far, plus one Thursday tea. It’s been a pretty cool experience. On some level, we feel out of place there. We’re very atypical among the groups involved. We’re older, for one thing. Most of these guys seem like recent college grads. I’m the youngest in my group at 26, and there might be two or three groups total in which I wouldn’t be the oldest.
Also Chad and I are financially solvent, and John is used to years of the poker lifestyle. So whereas other people are living on Ramen, probably paid for with some of the investment money they got from the program, we’re shopping at Whole Foods out of pocket. I was telling Alexis something about my trip there and one of the other founders said “You can afford Whole Foods?”
We also joke that if you ranked all of the people in terms of programming ability, John and I would be in last place. Most of the people are MIT CS students. John does have a CS degree, but he hadn’t written a line of code in maybe four years. Chad’s the only proficient programmer among us, and of all of the founders he might be the best person at designing scalable apps, since he has a lot of real world experience with that.
At the same time, I like the atmosphere, and if we feel out of place at all, it certainly isn’t because of any attitudes or actions of the YCombinator people or other founders. It’s a very free-spirited, congenial atmosphere. The exchange of ideas is rather impressive, and there are a lot of very smart people there.
Saturday was a party at Paul Graham’s house. It was fun to meet up with the other founders in a more social atmosphere. With the group being so large you don’t really get a chance to know everybody. Jessica said she wanted us to leave knowing everyone’s names, and while I’m not there yet, I think I’m close.
Also I got to see Paul’s rather unique ear plugs. If you ever meet him, be sure to ask about that.
As far as the startup goes, I feel it’s progressing at a good pace. We’re near doing some private testing. We’re also working on a Facebook app that I think has some potential. It’s only marginally related to our core business, but it is in the same niche and if nothing else could serve to load us up with accounts if it catches on.
I’ve also realized something about the startup world that I think I will soon write an essay about. It basically came to me from telling everyone at YCombinator about our idea and only one or two people even having any idea what we were talking about. If my theory is correct, and I’m almost positive it is, I think there’s a vast well of untapped startup idea potential out there.
