3 ms·

Any independent opinions of EF? They are great things about them in most media, though most articles have a PR flavor to them.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JazzMachine 11y ago
As someone who went through the process, I'm glad I did. They do a great job of building up a good atmosphere among the group, and just working with such a high concentration of smart, engaged and interesting people is a great experience. That said, as a model for building startups, I remain skeptical. Given such a short time period, there's a lot of pressure to grab quick wins and sell an idea before writing any code. That takes a certain kind of customer, and a certain kind of idea. Nothing wrong with it as such, but it's pretty narrow and it's easy to reel off interesting companies which wouldn't fit well in that model. Stripe probably would, but less so Google, Uber, EF itself etc, especially not anything with an unclear trajectory or that will grow its own market. There's a strong feeling among my group that the most successful members have been the ones who most wanted to start a company for its own sake, without particularly caring how, and there's plenty of people who started out wanting to solve some problem in biotech or education only to end up data mining online shoppers. There are exceptions to this, like OpenCosmos, but they usually started EF pre-formed. (As an aside, they haven't quite resolved the tension between making EF seem valuable and the fact that people who see EF as a gatekeeper have the wrong mindset. Those who think about it too hard might also realise that they are disincentivised from taking EF's funding at the end of the program.) Speaking of PR flavour, I think improving communication about what the process is actually like (perhaps as opposed to what they would like it to be like) would be a key improvement. Their marketing about being obsessed with problems and deeply technical doesn't tell the above story. Their definition of "deep tech", which basically means "not a CRUD app", probably seems sane to your average web designer or VC, but if you spend your days in the guts of an OS or compiler you might be disappointed. Ok, so if your programming itch is scratched by chucking data into scikit-learn and selling it as an API, you're going to have a great time – and you can slap the "AI" label on your company as a bonus. Lest that sound too negative, again, I did enjoy the process and they seem to be doing well so far. My impression is that all the cohorts have had a different feel, and they're still iterating on the process. Right now they have something pretty good, and they might just be able to make it great.
- photonicist 11y ago
  Largely agree there - given that EF itself is iterating and changing quite rapidly, it should be interesting to see how it evolves now that it seems to be entering hockey-stick stage. The deep tech didn't really materialise too much IMO, but as a former physicist I guess I have fairly extreme expectations regarding what constitutes "depth" in technology. I'm quite impressed with Accelerated Dynamics and ThirdEye, I'll be following them closely.
nailer 11y ago
Fifth cohort here. - Everyone else here seems to have a doctorate in machine learning, have three of more degrees, and be from Impbridge. I'm an anomaly in terms of being a generalist with kernel -> UX experience. Teams are always two tech cofounders, there's no 'business guys', just another programmer who knows a lot about business metrics. - e.f. made a solid difference in unknown unknowns - things that retrospectively seem obvious. In my case the effect of webcrypto on my funnel, but that's a pretty specific example. - Here's my revenue before/after joining e.f. http://imgur.com/3ImMybc http://imgur.com/3ImMybc : if you want the Y axis book a meeting.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JazzMachine 11y ago

As someone who went through the process, I'm glad I did. They do a great job of building up a good atmosphere among the group, and just working with such a high concentration of smart, engaged and interesting people is a great experience. That said, as a model for building startups, I remain skeptical. Given such a short time period, there's a lot of pressure to grab quick wins and sell an idea before writing any code. That takes a certain kind of customer, and a certain kind of idea. Nothing wrong with it as such, but it's pretty narrow and it's easy to reel off interesting companies which wouldn't fit well in that model. Stripe probably would, but less so Google, Uber, EF itself etc, especially not anything with an unclear trajectory or that will grow its own market. There's a strong feeling among my group that the most successful members have been the ones who most wanted to start a company for its own sake, without particularly caring how, and there's plenty of people who started out wanting to solve some problem in biotech or education only to end up data mining online shoppers. There are exceptions to this, like OpenCosmos, but they usually started EF pre-formed. (As an aside, they haven't quite resolved the tension between making EF seem valuable and the fact that people who see EF as a gatekeeper have the wrong mindset. Those who think about it too hard might also realise that they are disincentivised from taking EF's funding at the end of the program.) Speaking of PR flavour, I think improving communication about what the process is actually like (perhaps as opposed to what they would like it to be like) would be a key improvement. Their marketing about being obsessed with problems and deeply technical doesn't tell the above story. Their definition of "deep tech", which basically means "not a CRUD app", probably seems sane to your average web designer or VC, but if you spend your days in the guts of an OS or compiler you might be disappointed. Ok, so if your programming itch is scratched by chucking data into scikit-learn and selling it as an API, you're going to have a great time – and you can slap the "AI" label on your company as a bonus. Lest that sound too negative, again, I did enjoy the process and they seem to be doing well so far. My impression is that all the cohorts have had a different feel, and they're still iterating on the process. Right now they have something pretty good, and they might just be able to make it great.

photonicist 11y ago
Largely agree there - given that EF itself is iterating and changing quite rapidly, it should be interesting to see how it evolves now that it seems to be entering hockey-stick stage. The deep tech didn't really materialise too much IMO, but as a former physicist I guess I have fairly extreme expectations regarding what constitutes "depth" in technology. I'm quite impressed with Accelerated Dynamics and ThirdEye, I'll be following them closely.

nailer 11y ago

Fifth cohort here. - Everyone else here seems to have a doctorate in machine learning, have three of more degrees, and be from Impbridge. I'm an anomaly in terms of being a generalist with kernel -> UX experience. Teams are always two tech cofounders, there's no 'business guys', just another programmer who knows a lot about business metrics. - e.f. made a solid difference in unknown unknowns - things that retrospectively seem obvious. In my case the effect of webcrypto on my funnel, but that's a pretty specific example. - Here's my revenue before/after joining e.f. http://imgur.com/3ImMybc http://imgur.com/3ImMybc : if you want the Y axis book a meeting.