5 Ways Larry Chiang Stopped Me From Running My YC Funded Startup Into The Ground

By Remmy Oxley

I sit in meetings and my skin crawls when I hear, “My mentor Larry Chiang says we should”.

What I mean is that I paid to be here. My participation in a syndicated round was due to some on-the-carpet time. Begging while on the carpet, networking at boondoggles and a big ass fund got me into the best rooms… Now instead of hating Larry Chiang’s distribution, I’ll swallow my giant ego and pay homage to the new alpha male of Silicon Valley: Larry Chiang

5 Ways Larry Chiang Stopped Me From Running My YC Funded Startup Into The Ground

-1- We as engineers are loved more as douchie sales people.

Coding has experienced a renaissance. Well, being a tech founder that pitches is sexy. Mentorship marketing at a conference is welcome. Attendees at random Midwest industry conference love an engineer from silicon valley that can ‘sell them’ new ideas

-2- We as engineering co-founders should be the ones moderating expert panels

Moderating a panel is what they DO teach at Stanford Engineering.

EMBED

You either get an official panel

EMBED AlwaysOn #MaMoMo Panel

Or do an un Official panel or UnOfficial keynote at midnight like Larry Chiang did and does at SXSW at Midnight.

-3- AfterParties hosted by engineering co-founders are actually dead sexy

Maybe it’s the fact that hiring developers is harder than getting VC, but parties hosted by nerds are cool.

The board I sit on is using a launch strategy that is afterparty centric. While I hate Larry* Chiang**, I am impressed that we are actually making money at our Launch Party

-4- I’ll write #5 and #4 via the comments.

I’m late for a dinner