Agreed. I blew it. I started the conversation by saying "So, YC is a summer program that gives you $20k for about 10% of the company..." From that point on, no

Agreed. I blew it. I started the conversation by saying "So, YC is a summer program that gives you $20k for about 10% of the company..." From that point on, no matter what else I or the YC alums we talked to said, they seemed fixated on that part of the value proposition, which made other accelerators seem comparable. So they'd say things like "I don't really like Silicon Valley, I'd rather spend the summer in Providence," or "Why should we give 10% of our company to YC if this other accelerator will only take 6%?" or "YC doesn't even provide office space?" At one point I said: "Look, giving 10% of the company to YC would be worth it even if they gave us $0." That didn't make sense to them—too much of a risk. That was about when it started to dawn on me that we had very different notions of what it means to be a cofounder.