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Have you thought about joining a startup, but have no idea what you could possibly offer? Perhaps you are looking forward to graduation and want to pick some skills that will help you work for a startup when you leave school. Maybe you want to change your career and get into the exciting world of tech startups, but do not know what it takes to succeed in that type of high-pressure environment. Perhaps it is time to look into Startup School.

LinkedIn employees get a 24-hour gym. Twitter workers get free laundry service. Googlers get Japanese toilets with a cool "rear-cleansing" function. How can your startup compete with that? It's not easy.

When tech giants such as Facebook give their workers six-figure packages and everything up to and including free leather repair (leather repair?), a salary in the low 80s isn't going to land you any elite tech talent. But you can still reel in good people - if you're generous with your equity.

With its billion-dollar sale to Facebook, Instagram instantly became the latest poster child for startup success. In just 551 days, the photo-sharing mobile app zoomed from zero to 30 million-odd users, and 10 million U.S. visits by March 2012, up 1000% since December 2011. Its valuation outstrips that of the 116-year-old New York Times.

An amazing run, and it wasn't all just luck, though the company enjoyed plenty of that. To boost its chances to win the startup lottery, Instagram did eight very important things right.

Startup School is an annual event co-sponsored by Y Combinator and BASES, Stanford University's Business Association for Entrepreneurial Students. Today's Startup School, now in its sixth year, was a day full of speakers, imparting their knowledge to a packed auditorium of entrepreneurs.

The topics at Startup School ranged from the history of Silicon Valley innovation and the history (and future) of startup funding, to testing your hypothesis, pivoting, and optimizing for happiness. The speaker - 11 all told - gave presentations, followed by a short Q&A with audience members.