Introduction at Startup School NY 2014

• Hi everybody. Ya'll realize this is the first Startup School here in the amazing, one of a kind, unparalleled, New York City. It's exciting! Yes. This is the city that made me. I'm from Brooklyn, anyone from Brooklyn here?

[audience cheering]

There's some...I expected that. Lots of good Brooklyn noise. Any, anyone here from the Bronx?

• Yeah!

• Bronx representing. That's good, loud and proud. How about Queens?

[audience cheering]

Woo, you guys been going to work. Queens Tech showed up, and how about Staten Island?

[murmuring audience]

That's what I...yeah, you know a noble effort. And probably a few of you from Manhattan as well right? You had the easiest...

[audience cheering]

Nice. Were those boos? Is that Brooklyn going on? We know- we know Brooklyn's the best borough, we don't need to rub it in their faces.

[audience cheering]

I'm gonna get in trouble. Uh, there's a bunch of people here though who aren't even from New York City. You've traveled quite a ways to be here right? Make some noise for yourselves.

[audience cheering]

Yes! Thank you, thank you for coming. I hope you have a wonderful time here in New York. As you can see, it's another beautiful summer day in New York City, very mild, temperate. You know I- I love it here though, I really do. And, the first Startup School, this is some Y Combinator history. That was up in Boston, and I was lucky enough to participate in it. My co-founder and I, Steve Huffman, I'm Alexis.

Uh, my co-founder and I, Steve, started Reddit, and we were at the very first Startup School, and trust me, YC was just begging people to come and show up. This was such a new thing, this new idea back in 05, about helping, you know, early stage founders just get insight from their peers, from people who are doing it and have done it in a way that was approachable. In a way that was helpful and in a room full of people who are all actually doing great stuff. Right, we don't want to have scenesters. We don't want to have people who are just sort of talking about doing startups. We want to be with people who are doing it.

And so, know that you're in a really special audience right now. Right? Everyone around you, look to your left, to your right, during all the breaks, these are all people doing cool stuff. So, please take advantage of the discussions you'll have here during the intermissions, just as much as you'll enjoy the talks you'll hear on stage.

Uh, this is exciting, and I know, I know a lot of you have decided to come out in spite of the fact that the World Cup is going on right now. Which is impress- I wonder about your priorities, but clearly you're the right kind of founders, and just so you know I think Chile is still up on Spain 1-0. I don't know how you guys feel about that. Bit of an upset, some very happy Chileans here, but we'll see what happens.

Uh, but look I just wanted to point one other thing, you know, we're also lucky enough to have, I think it's there are now 28 Y Combinator companies that are based here in New York. And this is kind of exciting, we got companies let's see who we have here. We got Amicus, Hacker School, One Month Rails, Viable, Rant Hop, Weave, Rocket Trip, and I think Tikana's here from Parse and Scribd. These are all members of the YC family who spent three months out in the valley. Right? They worked on their companies, they did YC, they took advantage of all the sort of Silicon Valley network, and then they came back here to grow their companies, and that is awesome. Because obviously, our food is better, because obviously, the quality of life here is better, and because obviously, this is one of the greatest cities in the world.

And so I'm happy you guys are all here, I'm so happy Startup School is here, and I hope the rest of this afternoon is as valuable and entertaining for you all as I know it will be for me. And so, you know I, I have one other thing that I wanted to mention.

Uh, and this is something...make sure I got my notes here, yeah. This is something that I cannot stress enough. Right? I've just gotten done an 80 University tour across the country. All right, I got to visit 80 universities, well and Canada, our hat to the north.

• Wooo - Yes, Canada. And I've seen firsthand the fact that entrepreneurship is alive and well, and students are taking it upon themselves to just start building, and start learning, and start coding, and this is crazy to me. Because nine years ago I would have killed for any ounce of this kind of energy, back when I was just an undergrad at UVA and getting Reddit started.

And I can assure you some people here in this audience are gonna go on to do amazing, world changing things, so be nice to everyone. But also take full advantage of this moment. We are so lucky to be talking about this stuff right now. We are so lucky to be sitting in a nice, air conditioned auditorium talking about these amazing opportunities we have, because of the new economy, because of technology, and because if you want to change the world, you know in the internet age, you don't need to open a factory, you just need to open a laptop.

Right? That's a really big deal and we're really lucky to be here taking advantage of it.