philcrissman.com

I’m not there yet, of course, but it all came together.

Here’s the backstory: I saw the startupschool.org pitch, and always assumed I couldn’t go. After all, I’m in Minneapolis — it’s at Stanford. Besides which, you need to apply and be accepted… well, I thought, I could apply. What could that hurt? I probably wouldn’t be accepted anyways.

So I applied. And then forgot about it, like you buy a lottery ticket or a sweepstakes ticket, and realism makes you compartmentalize the possibility of “winning” in the “that’d be nice but isn’t going to happen” part of your brain.

Only next, I received an email telling me, “Congratulations!” And I was accepted. Now what?

The trouble was, as I examined the options, it was increasingly clear that a trip to Stanford for the weekend was just not in the budget. It looked like it would only cost in the neighborhood of $600, but with mortgages, bills, etc, that $600 might as well have been $6,000. So, no trip, I figured.

At the last minute, I remembered seeing the Point, a web application that seemed like it would be a cool way to try to raise the money. $600 was such a (comparitively) small amount, I thought that perhaps if a handful of folks wanted to contribute a small amount, it would all come together.

It was a longshot, but since it seemed that the only other option was not to go, I decided I didn’t have anything to lose by trying.

So I did that; announced the campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and Pownce. I believe most of the initial response came from Twitter (thanks Twitter!), which is no real surprise, since my network there is orders of magnitude larger than the other networks mentioned. The first day, the campaign reached 50% of the goal. This includes $100 I contributed myself… it wasn’t that I could afford nothing, just not the whole amount.

The next place I publicized the campaign was news.ycombinator.com. I was hesitant, as I really didn’t want to be “panhandling” in the YC board, but I figured it was certainly a place where a lot of folks would sympathize with what I was trying to do, so it seemed worthwhile.

The next afternoon, Dharmesh Shah of OnStartups.com decided to try an experiment of his own, and basically sponsor the remaining $300 for the trip, if in return I would compile my notes and insights from the workshops into some blog posts for OnStartups. I gladly agreed, of course.

So, that’s the skinny. I’m bound for Stanford on the 19th of this month. More information as it happens.

To everyone who helped with the campaign, start to finish: Thank you.