Ask HN: What Happened to the Startup School MOOC?

82 points by Suncho ↗ HN
There were no lecture videos posted this week and one of the old lectures (How to Invent the Future Part II) has been removed. Anyone know what's going on?

10 comments

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Sorry about that. There were a few technical difficulties this week that delayed our lecture releases. Alan Kay's second lecture will be up again asap this coming week, with our new lecture as well.
(comment deleted)
Unrelated, but also check out http://schoolofherring.com/videos/ for some general leadership lessons.
This site lost me with the existence of a "Believe in the Positive Energy" lecture. YMMV.
I mean, even MIT is into that crap now.
(comment deleted)
Maybe because it's not crap? Positive energy is probably behind about 80% of all success.
And the course could be primarily about debunking belief in positive energy

Being skeptical is great but dismissing a potential trove of useful info for some topics that are unappealing is close-minded. I've recently discovered http://edx.org which has a lot to offer :)

Here's the email that was sent out by YC:

___________

DATE: Sun, May 28, 2017 at 12:53 PM (Pacific Time)

SUBJECT: Announcement: Startup School Delay in Videos This Week

BODY:

Startup School Delay in Videos This Week

Hi all,

We apologize for the lack of videos this week. We ran into quite a few technical difficulties with video editing/publishing, so this past week's lectures will be delayed until the coming week.

In addition, Alan Kay wanted to update a few parts of his lecture slides, so his second lecture will be back up this coming week as well.

Best,

I have to say I was initially excited about Startup School but that wore off pretty quickly. This "school" amounts to a bunch of interviews with a bunch of company founders. That's fine, but these are not much more than the history of these folks and their business yet, in my opinion, don't deliver much in the way of actionable value. And, as an aside, if I have to sit through five more minutes of up-talk I'll have to slice my veins (say that in up-talk).

I am not saying this to be mean. I just don't think this effort has delivered actionable value. Years ago I subscribed to Mixergy. The site is about interviewing successful entrepreneurs and delivering usable wisdom in the process. I have to say the difference could not be greater. Mixergy interviews are genuinely useful, something I cannot say about Startup School. Beyond that, the site has hundreds of interviews across every imaginable topic. I have no relation whatsoever to Mixergy other than having been a subscriber for a couple of years and thinking of going back.