The article makes exactly the right realization: Y Combinator is heading in the direction of scholasticism. I wrote an article recently on this topic, which I q

The article makes exactly the right realization: Y Combinator is heading in the direction of scholasticism. I wrote an article recently on this topic, which I quote below: http://www.exratione.com/2012/01/the-future-of-the-venture-capital-industry.php http://www.exratione.com/2012/01/the-future-of-the-venture-c... The present direction of some incubators is towards the concept of schools, in the older sense of the word. To some eyes present experiments look like an early stage in the development of a new scholastic institution of practical business development. With well tuned entry requirements such an entity might serve as a filter that allows venture investment in all graduates with comparatively little detailed due diligence, trusting to the quality of the school (the filter) to raise the expectation value of these blanket investments. Experiments in this sort of model are already taking place at Y Combinator, and others will no doubt follow. If they see success, expect to see more rapid movement towards formalized schools of practical entrepreneurship, which will orbit established venture funds to act as feeder mechanisms. You might look on this as a structured, industrial manifestation of the informal process of apprenticeship and networking that always existed in the startup community - and either like it or loathe it for exactly that reason, depending on your tastes. It is worth remembering that while venture capitalists and organized groups of angel investors can enter the space of incubators-as-schools from one side, existing scholastic institutions can just as well enter it from their side. I can't image that the traditional schools will be any good at this if they do try, given long-standing academic hostilities towards the business of being in business, but some of the younger less hidebound institutions might well be successful. Consider the present University of Phoenix, a future Khan Academy, and a range of other entities establishing their own early stage venture funds, or partnering with venture funds to do something new in this space - it isn't so far fetched an idea. Note that a more scholastic form of incubator is, to my mind, a very different concept from what I'll call Vingean Scholastics. This is the vision put forward by Vernor Vinge in Fast Times at Fairmont High in which building startups is a part of the curriculum for all young people and at least ramen-level economic success is necessary for graduation at a high school level. Building a business, or at the least a short-term economic success, is how the students pay for school and how the schools earn their keep as businesses themselves. In that fictional near future, this is all a part of teaching young adults how to live in a world of constant, enormously rapid change driven by computational technology, in which the idea of holding down a job doing roughly the same sort of thing for five years is laughable, and everyone must know how to be an entrepreneur in order to flow with the pace of change. But this too will come to pass, I think, with Vingean Scholastic organizations as another sort of filter to build and channel groups of startup founders - with, collectively, a positive expectation value on investment - towards future forms of venture fund.