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Having done a Techstars program myself, I was also surprised at some of the companies that were allowed in.
by buf 3y ago
Having done a Techstars program myself, I was also surprised at some of the companies that were allowed in.
- loceng 3y agoWould that most likely be an artifact of not enough in-flow/supply of startups to choose from? If not, a mechanism to let the other participants anonymously vote and rate and comment such things, and then administrators can look at that data - and see what specific admin(s) was/were responsible for inviting them in, and then address the issue as close to the core as possible might of helped?
- buf 3y agoLikely this is true. I also think that the Techstars staff members were not adequate. Every single staff member had left by the next year. And when I would email the subsequent MDs about anything, I'd get no reply.
- loceng 3y agoSo I guess there's a lack of passion-sense of commitment and perhaps an incentives issue.
- michaelt 3y agoIsn't the whole point of a VC/Accelerator to take investors' funds and idenfity good investments to make, while not making bad investments? Is that not the core of their job? If the only investments available are unprofitable, you don't invest. I don't see why you'd introduce a reality-TV-style backstabbing mechanic, just to get the 19 year old founders to do the work the rich, sophisticated investors were supposed to be doing but weren't.
- pyb 3y agoThey always say that finding great investments is much more important than avoiding bad investments. This is because the upside is unlimited, whereas you cannot lose more than 1X what you put in. However, Techstars always had an adverse selection problem : the best companies usually prefer to join YC.
- itsoktocry 3y ago>This is because the upside is unlimited, whereas you cannot lose more than 1X what you put in. Well, yes, this is exactly what someone who sells this kind of service would say. Where is the skill, though? Just spray and pray. Eliminating survivorship bias, is it actually successful, on average? Can it beat the S&P? The upside is certainly not unlimited, and you can lose all of your money before you find a big winner. >the best companies usually prefer to join YC. If they are already the best companies, what does YC add? Besides, most of the best companies don't join any incubator.
- pyb 3y ago> Where is the skill, though? 100's of competing accelerators popped up but none could match these results : https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/ https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/
- alephnerd 3y agoThere are a couple niche ones - Team8 (Cyber), PearVC (YC lite), Antler (YC for Asia), Sequoia Surge (YC for Asia but better terms), Thiel Foundation - but yea, it is hard to beat YC's mentorship and network.
- CalRobert 3y agoI just finished a few days at another accelerator in Berlin (not Techstars), and I mostly came away feeling like I should be bootstrapping.
- Jgrubb 3y agoI’m interested if you felt like elaborating on that.
- itsoktocry 3y agoThe angel investing landscape is filled with ZIRP morons, both founders and investors. You attend these things (I do, less now) and the conversation revolves around raising money, exits, and nothing else. Hardly any talk about building a business or the actual products. Raising money to exit is a game in itself for these people. Check out VCs Congratulating Themselves twitter feed.
- dartos 3y agoI feel like that’s tech in a nutshell now too. Only now am I starting to see smaller web companies be product focused instead of funding focused. Probably bc ZIRP ended.
- sanderjd 3y agoYep, it feels tough at the moment, but what's happening right now is actually a healthy retrenchment.
- mistrial9 3y agosome people might call this "money-first" companies.. financialization of company startups normalized a lot of historically-impossible means of operation IMHO
- CalRobert 3y agoI took a try at emailing you based on your username and domain