Introduction by Kirsty Nathoo

Hi everyone, uh my name is Kirsty. Auu, I'm one of the partners at Y Combinator, and I would like to wish you a very warm welcome to this amazing venue for Startup School. This is our first International Startup School that we've done, so we're very excited to be here in London with you all.

Um, we've traveled a long way and we'd like to thank you as well. We know from reading the applications that a lot of you have traveled not just within the UK, but also from Europe and from the rest of the world. So, thank you for coming here today.

We have an amazing day of events, uh, of speakers for you today. Um, but before we start with those, just a couple of housekeeping points.

We have um, the hashtag #StartupSchool, so please do tweet throughout the day and use that hashtag so you can see what's going on. You can follow us on Twitter at @StartupSchool and @YCombinator. Also, be sure to download the Weave app so that you can see who else is here today and find people that you would like to meet with and arrange times to meet up with them.

There is plenty of time to talk to people both in breaks and at lunchtime, and we will be serving food um, and drinks at that point. We're also going to be doing a question and answer session today with some of the Y Combinator partners, and it's your chance uh, to ask us any questions that you have.

So, the way that we're going to do this is you're going to email us any questions to StartupSchool@YCombinator, and you'll see that coming up on the screen during breaks to remind you. Please get your questions in by 4 p.m., and then we can go through, and we'll do our best to answer as many as we possibly can in the short time that we have available to us.