Favorite SUS presenter?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=168276

by LukeG • 18 years ago

3 4 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Who was your favorite presenter? Bezos was pretty sweet.

dkokelley• 18 years ago

I haven't seen them all yet, but I did see and like David Heinemeier Hansson's presentation. It was energetic, covered an important topic, and was entertaining/funny (though NSFW at some points).

samratjp• 18 years ago

Haha, Bezos' fan thanking him for Gmail or something lost in translation was the defining moment; although Bezos' AWS pitching to the ground made me groan.

Definitely, Hansson's was better; who'd have thought charging your customers wasn't a bad idea after all?

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

Bezos was good, though it was primarily an ad for AWS. I did find him quite entertaining, though. During the Q&A, when he passed the question on to an AWS developer (I presume), the answer was painfully weaselly--completely without an answer--and Jeff's response was along the lines of, "since that didn't answer your question, I believe that means if you call him up he'll take care of your problem". It was a very nice way of calling out his employee for giving such a weaselly response.

Buchheit is always enlightening and entertaining, though this one was a bit disjointed and far less polished than previous presentations I've seen him give. Still enjoyable, however, and his insights are always...insightful. His brand of dry nerd humor is very enjoyable, as well. He's also one of the most arrogantly humble people I've ever seen--he's smug about knowing the limits of his knowledge. (I mean this in a good way. It's a self-confidence born of awareness of the limits of human beings, which leads to him being really wise about a lot of things.)

pg was also a bit less organized than usual--it didn't quite hold together the way his "Why Not Start a Startup" talk from last year did, or the one he gave the prior year. But I think he's on to a really interesting idea, with his "do good, and you're more likely to be successful" theory...I think his excitement to share it led to it not getting the polish of his prior efforts (which is OK--I'd rather have heard it today in a rough form than have to wait another year to hear it in a fleshed out form--but I do hope there's an essay that gets it perfect).

DHH was a nice counter-balance to McAdoo--I enjoyed both, and think very highly of both. I think DHH thought he was saying something counter to what McAdoo believes, though...but I've talked to McAdoo in the past, as he's quite sympathetic to lifestyle businesses--his presentation was about VCs and what VCs look for. They aren't after lifestyle businesses, because they would make no money on them, not because they think you're an idiot for building a lifestyle business. Anyway, it's a good idea to have two possible paths presented.

I enjoyed Arrington. He was very forthcoming about the direction TechCrunch has been going as it has grown--while the site is generally quite generous to the startups it covers (and harder on bigger businesses), the comments are almost universally hostile. It's one of the things that makes TechCrunch far less enjoyable for me, and I was happy to note that it's a problem that he's aware of and is trying to do something about. I found him genuinely likable.

The lawyer, as always, was painfully boring. The Wilson Sonsini folks are awesome, and actually better than the non-WS lawyer talks I've seen, but still quite a snoozer that early in the morning (and there was no more hot water by the time I arrived, so I was running without tea...now that I think of it, the hot water is always gone by the time I get there...three startup schools in a row, now).

larryfreeman• 18 years ago

I thought that Sam Altman's presentation was very informative. He gave great advise about VCs. His talk fit in well with Jack Sheridan's talk.

For me, David Hansson's talk was pretty obvious but it seemed to be very relevant to most people. It was well received by others.

I had heard Greg McAdoo's talk last year but I really enjoy hearing him speak.

Paul's talk was also very interesting about being benevolent as a strategy for a start up.

Favorite SUS presenter?

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