[jmw]

From this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=8830 it looks like there are other things like this going on. Anybody go to either of these and can comment on the quality of the people or how things went?

I don't want to duplicate efforts, but I'm still game for some informal chill/hack time on Sunday at ERC.

[ed]

I saw that thread when researching YC Meet-ups. I signed up for the Yahoo! group, which says it's targeted at "Founders and those interested in becoming founders of software and Internet businesses in and around Boston. No consultants please."

I was hoping to start something which would better cater to our age bracket and, if possible, involve the YC. I love the values and core ideas of PG's essays -- I think at its heart YC is more about hacking and discussing/developing interesting ideas than it is about VC networks and structured business plan presentations.

In essence I want to meet people who operate with a similar philosophy. The existing groups just don't provide that.

[shimon]

ed: you should give the Boston startup meetup a shot. We started it after YC's first Startup School (at Harvard in 2005) so initially it was entirely made up of this kind of crowd. The group has broadened quite a bit since then, and some of the early members have entered new ventures or moved to the SF bay area, but there's still a core of fairly young, hackery folks. You should drop by some time. (So far nobody has brandished a business plan, and AFAIK most of the group members' ventures are bootstrapped or angel-backed.)

On the other hand, there's something undeniably energizing about being able to engage every single other person at the table with you in a debate about filesystem performance (or whatever). A more focused group would probably do well. I want to be there (but might not be able to attend this one) and we should see if there's some way we can work together, because we both want the same thing: more happy smart people hacking on ambitious, interesting startups in Boston.