Our company - [The Social Collective](http://www.thesocialcollective.com http://www.thesocialcollective.com) - was part of last years class (their second). It

Our company - [The Social Collective](http://www.thesocialcollective.com http://www.thesocialcollective.com) - was part of last years class (their second). It is very much in the spirit of YCombinator/TechStars where the focus is very much on advice and structure and execution. I would definitely not be worried about a [Bootup Labs](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266723) type situation or anything like that. All of the startup CEO / Founder / Mentors that they brought in were excellent and gave extremely frank practical advice. This was actually somewhat surprising because if you're hanging out on HN; watching talks these people give it's somewhat easy to think that you're getting the full picture. But, when you sit down at lunch with a founder and he describes exactly what happened in a situation the take away is quite different. If you are at the right stage with your startup, I would definitely recommend applying to their program.