Saum's back. It had been ages since we met.

Hit the beach, got to drive his gorgeous Toyota MR2 Spyder, and catch up on life.

Amazing timing that Saum was visiting the East coast just when I was visiting the West. His roomie DV picked me up at the airport and I was absolutely thrilled to be at their sprawling and very inviting apartment.

I was skipping School to attend TC50, but not skipping on assignments.. so basically I've slept very little in the past 4 days.. man what an experience. Imagine a venue that's packed with entrepreneurs.. the place was buzzing with energy on every single day of the conference. And the nights were only for partying.

I think attendance at conferences like these is of tremendous value to wannabe-entrepreneurs like myself. Here's why:

i) Three days at TC50 were the equivalent of Cliff's notes on every entrepreneurship course you wish you'd taken.

ii) Your linkedin account gets populated by the who's who of Silicon Valley. Great people attend that event to find other awesome people.

iii) In addition to the 50 Demopit companies that have been shortlisted after a rigorous selection procedure, there are a host of partners and exhibitors that are scouting for talent.

iv) Watch the Demopit presenters get grilled by the people who first invested in Google, Facebook, and the future of the web. If you're an entrepreneur-in-waiting, attending this event will give you some perspective of what kind of problems you should have thought through before announcing your product to the world.

v) Talk to entrepreneurs like yourself, and discuss how they solved common problems that you will most likely also face.

vi) Accidentally learn about jobs like the Entrepreneur-in-residence: Get paid to be associated with a VC firm, getting ample time to work on your own business idea, and get immediate access to the very people who could potentially fund your big idea.

vii) Practice pitching your ideas to a group of crunched-for-time investors. Actually, practice the art of getting their attention first, like, in one sentence. And reflect on how you can improve it further.

viii) As Bill Kaiser of Greylock Venture Partners remarked "when I hear about a company once, I often ignore it, when I hear about it twice, I pay attention, when I hear about it for the third time, I take a meeting". Make your presence felt. The VCs attending TC50 are a close-knit group. They bump into each other all the time (the camaraderie was evident at the event). It helps if you can bump into them enough times to get their attention (assuming ofcourse that you have a truly great idea).

ix) Meet folks like Martin Obert who showed up at Mike Arrington's door uninvited, made a pitch, and got himself written about on Techcrunch.com, resulting in a million hits on his website. The people attending a TC Conference are a different group of individuals. Get inspired.

x) Get lucky in partnering with the companies at the event. Suggestion Box offered all the demopit companies one year's subscription to their service for free. Entrepreneurs are good people. Be nice to them, and they will be nice to you. But first get connected.

xi) Wake up to a culture other than your own. I'm sure there was representation from a lot more countries other than the US; I met entrepreneurs from Israel, Japan, India, United Kingdom, Mexico, France, Switzerland, Turkey,and Germany.

I think I should move to the Bay Area.