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AGHHH. "The so-called Y Combinator model, in which small amounts of money as well as office space, mentoring and networking opportunities are sprinkled among a

• vyrotek 16y ago
  I guess I would ask why Y Combinator doesn't provide office space. Our company went through one of these so-called 'clones' and really appreciated the office space. It made the mentoring and collaboration much easier.
  • randall 16y ago
    Emmett can speak to this better than I can, but if I recall correctly, it's so that companies can foster their own cultures without being cross bred as directly from YC.
    • rdl 16y ago
      I think it's also that silicon valley is a relatively efficient market for finding office space on short term leases, housing, contractors, and employees, vs. a non-silicon-valley place, where an incubator really might need to provide that kind of stuff. Recruiting full-time employees is the one exception, and some of the top VCs (e.g. Andreessen-Horowitz) now have an in-house recruiter to help portfolio companies with that. (Though, I hope there is some kind of internal-to-YC bulletin board of housing, though, because I really need to find a place to live, ideally in Mountain View.)
    • drusenko 16y ago
      The logic when we were in YC was that office space does not foster the same kind of scrappy culture that working out of your garage or apartment does. Working out of an office takes away some of the urgency and gives you a more laissez-faire approach to building the company as well as clear work/life separation, which isn't really a good thing very early on in a company's life.
      • ryannielsen 16y ago
        Having all companies in one location also, to an extent, inhibits each company from growing or fostering its own personal culture. At the very least, their culture changes as a result of being in that environment. My takeaway is that YC would rather each individual company decide with whom and where to work – it's all in the spirit of encouraging entrepreneurs and not forcing them down a predefined path.
• sbisker 16y ago
  Like you said, the vast majority of Y Combinator clones do seem to offer office space to their companies. IMHO, too many programs do this for it to be a coincidence. The best reason I can think of for this phenomenon is that for a program that has yet to establish its sense of community, the physical space acts as a rallying point, and helps project its "presence" amongst entrepreneurs, investors, what have you. Whether or not it's the best move for a struggling company to get shared office space is a different discussion entirely - but it may well be the best move for a "struggling incubator" (so to speak) to have a vibrant, bubbling shared space to show off to would-be investors, the press, etc. Or, of course, it may be that lots of incubator program heads simply disagree with Y Combinator. But I have trouble believing the Y Combinator view is that extreme that so few incubators would at least try it their way. The logic behind it is reasonable enough, and the results speak for themselves.
• seiji 16y ago
  I was going to go full-on somebody is wrong on the internet fashion too when I saw "office space," but then I remembered seeing WEPAY plastered on a doorway in the office a long time ago. So, in a sense, you get the ability to have an office (or at least the ability to lie about having an office so you can push through Official Srs Business Paperwork).
• johnrob 16y ago
  Because it was written by a journalist. Practically by definition, there will be an astonishingly large amount of incorrect data.