I have been to 9 grubwithus dinners so far and loved every one of them.. this is a really awesome concept!!
Eventually they should come up with 'Grubwithus Now' where people can join impromptu organized meals with a bunch of random strangers whenever they want to, instead of having to plan the thing in advance.
Pardon my ignorance, but will there be a ‘alumni to attendee’ ratio maintained? Is there any guarantee if alumni will show up? If yes who and how many?
This page was sent out to a bunch of YC founders before posting it here. Just scanning the list I see at least two YC alumni (and usually three or more) at every meal except for La Fiesta, where it's apparently just me so far!
LA seems to have none. I did a manual google search for each attendee (after going through individual profiles) and no one seems to be a YC alum. (I could be wrong, just looked quickly through 10 people)
They should just have a separate list for YC alum attending, kind of like you have for speakers at an event.
The first meal in LA has Hamilton Chen from Paperlinks and Nikhil Pandit from Graffiti Geo (sold to Loopt). The second meal has Joey and Yotam from Earbits and..me
Hamilton is awesome. I don't know Nikhil, but I can say that dinner with Hamilton will be full of great insights on people, products, business, and your ideas. He's an awesome guy, and I'd be grabbing this meal if I was down in LA!
FWIW, I went to "Grub with Techcrunch Disrupt Attendees" and no one at the table was an actual TC attendee. Other than it happening to fall on the same day, there was no connection.
Many attendees list the company they are associated with in their profile, so you can get an idea from that. You can more or less crossreference the company names with yclist.com to spot the yc companies.
The second meal in Chicago (at Dearborn st.) has no vegan options at all. I know the value is mostly from the social experience but even so having nothing that one can eat at the dinner deters someone like me from attending.
Does Grubwithus take requests to include vegan / vegetarian options?
I'm vegetarian so I know your pain. We try to have veggie dishes whenever possible, but that restaurant is a barbecue joint...sorry. I'll see if there's anything they can make though.
I believe the menus are usually publicly available beforehand. If there are no vegan options, just don't go. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that every dinner with a pre-set menu will cater toward every minority's dietary choices.