23 ms·

A horrifying startup accelerator story

330 points by awwstn 13y ago

auctiontheory 13y ago
Startups looking for accelerators remind me of authors looking for agents and publishers - we don't realize how much power we have in the relationship, and also how much we can do for ourselves without someone to "help" us for a chunk of our equity. Of course the right accelerator/VC/agent/publisher, at the right time, can help. It works best if you see them as a piece of YOUR plan, rather than see yourself as a supplicant to their network/deep pockets.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  Amen I've been approached by a few startup-ish projects in the past few years, all wanting to 'partner' up and 'join an accelerator' or 'apply for startup program XYZ'. I proceed to ask "what are you going to do with the $50k you'd get if you get in?" There's typically a blank stare. Now, I get that you get more than just money; hopefully you're getting connections and introductions and press you couldn't get on your own. But not always. But I'm still shocked that typically there's no answer at the top of their minds. And they're asking me to invest the next 6 months or more of my life with them to 'do a startup'. As a tech/dev, I am an investor, investing my time, knowledge, energy and passion in to something. If they can't convince me to invest, they're not going to convince an accelerator.
radiusq 13y ago
I see no problem in naming names. It's for the benefit of everyone here. Otherwise its just another sad story which we've heard the likes of before.
kumarski 13y ago
Have fun figuring out which one it is: http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
- omegant 13y ago
  The numbers are amazing, it really puts in to context the meaning of Venture Capital!. Just a bunch of accelerators are getting exits so far.
  - jedc 13y ago
    This is mainly because a) most accelerators are new so the companies haven't developed enough to exit and b) it takes time to build a program that reliably finds/develops companies that can exit.
- minimax 13y ago
  I think the bit from the letter about "billed as campus, community, accelerator, and more" will probably narrow it down. That seems like a pretty distinctive way to brand your accelerator.
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- varelse 13y ago
  Wow, if I'm reading that table correctly, the odds of playing the slots are still better than funding startups blindly: http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/ http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/
  - ajross 13y ago
    Presumably what you're talking about is the fact that the summed "exits" are less than the input investments. But it's not a steady state environment. Obviously exits are going to lag the investments by several years, and the rate of investment hasn't been constant -- it's been increasing steadily for several years itself. So you wouldn't expect to see a net profit. The real question, of course, is whether we should expect to see a net profit across the incubator/accelerator world at some point in the future, or if we're indeed in the bubble some of us think we are...
gojomo 13y ago
Seems mostly a story about one problematic manager with some personality disorder(s).
jack9 13y ago
Why anyone thinks we need the details, is strange. You partner up, found things weren't right and continued on. It doesn't become a horror story at the end. The team chose to live in a bad situation and let it develop. Every single sentence of this should have been ended with, "I know I should have bailed out, but I didn't."
RyanZAG 13y ago
"The weird thing is that the MD keeps making intros, speaking highly of us and sending people our way. We think she does it because she doesn’t want us talking about our experiences." Well that doesn't seem too bad, it even feels like the story had a happy ending as it sounds like they've been able to get investors and the startup is working.
- jmspring 13y ago
  It more feels like the MD wanted to keep schmoozing and acting important ignoring the reality of the situation. There have been a few stories over the passed couple of years where someone name drops and schmoozes to elevate their own profile. In the end, they are found out to be frauds or worse. Any area that gets a lot of hype will have those that want to cling on.
  - BWStearns 13y ago
    >> It more feels like the MD wanted to keep schmoozing and acting important ignoring the reality of the situation. I wouldn't be surprised if "she" demanded something if she even knew of an investor OP's company ended up taking on.
johnrob 13y ago
With that many red flags, why would anyone accept an investment and enter a relationship with such an organization? The things people will do for funding... I'd rather have a day job or a consulting gig in a heartbeat compared to a situation like that.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  If you have a crazy family, then crazy often seems tolerable, until it really isn't.
- BWStearns 13y ago
  In college I flailed around for funding for an idea for a bit. I accepted the first offer I found. Said "investor" jacked half of his money back out of the account (he needed a card because he was supposed to do some work on the financial end) and spent it on parties and shit. Very similar tendencies to what was described in the article and lots of the same red flags. He then threatened to sue me if I talked about the whole thing. Thinking about posting the whole story somewhere. But the broader point is: if you need investment and can't find anyone else, it's very easy to convince yourself that it won't be as bad as it will.
brandnewlow 13y ago
This story is really frustrating and sad to hear, but I have to say, in the three years I've been working on my startup, never once has anything good happened from paying for access to any type of person (investors or customers), using any currency (equity or cash). We did YCombinator, which could be described as an "access" play, but apart from that, every time someone has offered us access to something in return for something else, we've always politely declined and then just gone and won the business or relationship on our own merits. Gatekeepers suck, and doing business with gatekeepers leads startups to doing sucky things and pulls them down as well. The minute I read him deciding to do a second accelerator so he could get access to "his vertical" I started getting a sinking feeling in my stomach.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  What made you feel differently about YCombinator than everyone else? Or rather, how did YC get their foot in your door?
  - brandnewlow 13y ago
    PG's essays. Years of participating on HN. People I knew who had done YC. The litany of neat companies with products I liked that had come out of YC. The way they had been amazingly accomodating and flexible in smart ways during our application process. Lots more.
- Cookingboy 13y ago
  I agree, very often we have these average gatekeepers who imagine themselves as top level power brokers at an elite world, and those should be avoided. But the best "gatekeepers" are not the ones that guard the gate, they are the ones who can show you where the gates even are, it's just very difficult to be able to distinguish the real valuable guys from the "hustlers" without having a lot of experiences yourself.
  - brandnewlow 13y ago
    One of the great things about the SF/valley startup scene is how the whole gatekeeper dynamic doesn't work so much. The best VCs are all just a tweet or HN post away if you're really working on something great that they'll get excited about.
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JonnieCache 13y ago
Came here hoping for a particle accelerator horror story. Bo-ring. For anyone else who thought the same, here's an article about a russian who got his face caught in a proton beam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski#Particle_accelerator_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski#Particle_acce...
- ISL 13y ago
  Wasn't hoping for one, but I did expect an accelerator accident.
- meepmorp 13y ago
  This was what I thought - some poor guy was doing maintenance at the wrong time.
  - wwweston 13y ago
    And didn't even get superpowers out of it. :/
- ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
  Your link made up for the lack of clarification. Cheers!
- aylons 13y ago
  Clicked on the news, was frustrated by the kind of accident and came here to post something just like your comment - link included. Not only me - this is the top comment and there are three more comments about this. This is a good measure of how geek this site is.
- Bjoern 13y ago
  Not quite Anatoli Bugorski, but still a very interesting discussion here: "Putting your hand in the Large Hadron Collider..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMqPT6oKJ8&list=TLwUB7ALPnOh7PeIpLnO8ZE_Mbh3bdh3dE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMqPT6oKJ8&list=TLwUB7ALPnO...
ballard 13y ago
I've walked away, shaking my head, from several YCombinator-alikes. They're too often about trying to put together deal-flow without understanding what's helpful. Now I'm all for new things if there were solid principals, strats and connections, but that's rarely the case.... anyone with half an aptitude is likely already in play. Basically, their "help" is a waste of my time and something I can do on my own, better, without giving up an iota of equity. My conclusion is you don't need most of them, most of the time, even the ones that try not to be instant wantrepreneur bootcamps. If you're focused, hungry and persistent... you already have what it takes. So where's the value?
swamp40 13y ago
It seems to me like a lot of accelerators would be better off throwing this one to the wolves ASAP before they all get tainted by a stench of unknown origin.
pavel_lishin 13y ago
> At this point we decided that some of this behavior was pathological I want to say that this fact should have been obvious long before, but I have the benefit of third-person hindsight.
woodchuck64 13y ago
This doesn't seem to be about an accelerator as much as about a person with a behavior disorder that sounds very much like narcissistic personality disorder. NPDs cope with their incompetence by abusing and blaming those around them, creating chaos and misery yet still managing to escape responsibility 9 times out of 10. The right thing to do here is anonymously expose the managing director.
- rhuppert 13y ago
  My thoughts exactly. In my business experience, I dealt with two individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Of course, I did not see their medical records; it was hearsay. However, it explained much about their behavior. It's a sad story, but it is also the face of mental illness, which is all too real. Learning to recognize and deal with this is another thing to store in one's experience quiver.
ryguytilidie 13y ago
I've always been scared to death at how many people who add zero or negative value are involved in this process.
citricsquid 13y ago
Design tip: if a quote is a quote, have a quote style. If a quote is the entire content of your article and is many paragraphs long, rethink styling it as a quote and instead label it, or something.
- rblatz 13y ago
  Absolutely agree. It was very difficult to read, and I ended up having to remove the italic and color styles applied to that section, just to be able to read the article.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Readability that shit. Though honestly, in this case, I couldn't even be arsed to do that.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  And whatever you do: don't grey out the fucking text.
- marshray 13y ago
  When Ctrl-A makes the text more readable it's an indictment upon the designer.
  - Luyt 13y ago
    In Firefox, I often use View/Page Style/No Style, in such cases.
slaven 13y ago
I've read several posts where people are trying to identify a female-lead accelerator - exactly counter to the warning in the story: "I may have also changed the gender of certain people (i.e. he/she), again, with approval of the author." So lets not point fingers based on gender alone.
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philzdelish 13y ago
Nothing as bad, but heard of bad experience by teams at Microsoft + Techstars accelerator in Seattle where both sides lost interest in the class in the middle of the program. Not sure how good/bad the fundraising was across the board.
- jedc 13y ago
  Details are here: http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=95003 http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=95003
- ashbrahma 13y ago
  Could you elaborate on the bad experiences? And any idea which class it was?
brianmcconnell 13y ago
Classic narcissistic personality disorder. Run for the hills. With NPDs, it is always everybody else's fault. Add pathological lying, some bipolar, and maybe just for fun booze/drugs and they'll drive you insane too.
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- hedwall 13y ago
  where do you pick bipolar from?
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  - 6d0debc071 13y ago
    Assuming you're trying to reply to auctiontheory, I read that as borderline personality disorder - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  To me it feels much more BPD than NPD. Which is not a good thing!
accelanon 13y ago
My experience was not nearly this bad, but still horrifying for me, my co-founder, and our families. We had been talking off and on with an accelerator for about a month. We had pitched them, had a few calls, but lived on the other side of the country. They wanted to meet in person which was really not feasible for us. We worked at full-time jobs while hacking away on the side and scraping together whatever money we had to fund our company. A little flashback, first: I had dropped out of grad school and taught myself programming to start my first company. After a year of living on my wife's student loans, I got "acquihired" by a startup that was run by one of the accelerator's mentors. They gave me 3% equity, a $10k moving bonus, $15k for the company, and a $75k/year salary. I said yes. Three months later, I decided to quit. I was the only technical person in a company consisting of the two non-technical co-founder, co-CEOs, a project manager, and myself. They had burned through $700k already and hadn't built anything yet. It was becoming clear that my product was going to be their product. In the best case scenario I would spend the next four years working on my original startup, only now for pennies on the dollar. The purchase of my assets still hadn't gone through and I hadn't yet been paid, aside from the moving bonus and salary. The co-founders claimed I had acted in bad faith and asked for the moving bonus back. I explained that I wouldn't have moved had the moving bonus not been offered (as I couldn't have afforded it). If they had wanted that money back in case I quit, our contract should have specified as much. They relented, and we went our separate ways. Fast forward another year, back to our accelerator story. The accelerator decides they want to afford us the opportunity to meet in person. They agree to pay for flights so long as we pay for our own hotels and car rental. We also have to talk up the trip on social media, talking about how they paid for our trip, our meetings with investors, etc. Small price to pay, we think. We make the trip and have some pretty productive meetings. They seem to like us. We fly back, and after some back and forth, they decide they want to invest. Of course, they still need to do their due diligence, so it's going to take some time. In the meantime, my co-founder and I get fired from our jobs. You see, our boss found out about our trip to the accelerator since it was broadcast over social media. It was cool when we were working on a startup after hours. It wasn't so cool when we were talking openly about actually starting a company. It doesn't matter, though. We made it into the accelerator. They send over the paperwork. It's a convertible note with pretty standard terms, fully signed by all the partners. We sign and send it back. We can't believe it's happening. I sign a lease on an apartment in the new city and my wife and I pack up our apartment. My co-founder does the same. Suddenly the music changes. They go dark for a couple days. I'm nervous because I have a U-Haul scheduled. I finally get a call with one of the partners; I'm supposed to start a 3,000 mile move the next day. He explains that they can't do the deal. A check isn't coming. He can't explain why. My mind races and I think: it couldn't have been that mentor, could it? My resume was fully transparent. They should've seen the connection. And they did their due diligence before they made the deal. How could that have slipped by? I ask for an explanation but to no avail. They can't explain it. Not even a little bit. Now I have to try to reorder my life. My job is gone. My apartment is already rented out to someone else. Luckily the landlord at the new place lets me out of my lease. I reschedule the U-Haul to take us to my wife's parents' house instead. My co-founder was devastated. He wasn't used to startups. In fact, to this day he's been bouncing around trying to find a similarly stable job. I can't help but feel responsible. I recovered better. I decided to start consulting for other startups and have made a pretty good go of it. That's my accelerator horror story. Anyone else have others?
fizx 13y ago
A word of warning: these personality types are incredibly common in the startup world, for a number of reasons: Driven, strong personalities are valued. It's easier to hide in a small company. As a founder, it's relatively easy to build a team that will tolerate your excesses. Don't be afraid. Moving on after one month is ok. It won't irrevocably stain your resume. The self-aware hiring managers know this dynamic exists, and won't hold it against you. There are thousands of amazing, hard-working, kind, creative, interesting people and teams. Find one and cherish it.
- RougeFemme 13y ago
  I think a fair number of those personality types hide in larger companies, too. They don't have the clout/vision/cult-leader personna of a founder with that personality type. After a number of years of observing people like that who should be marched out the door - but aren't - I've concluded they must be blackmailing someone powerful within the company.
  - fizx 13y ago
    "I think a fair number of those personality types hide in larger companies, too." You're right, of course. A difference when you're stuck near one is that it's generally easier to switch teams than companies.
  - quanticle 13y ago
    It doesn't have to be blackmail. It could be that the person has so entrenched himself or herself in his or her role that even their boss can't really fire them. This is especially true in companies that tend to hire top management from outside or do a lot of lateral transfers. It's entirely possible that the middle manager here knows more about that part of the business than his or her boss, and so the boss can't let this person go, because the boss doesn't know enough about the requirements of the position to hire a replacement.
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caycep 13y ago
maybe a noob question but usually, the agreement to do an accelerator program is usually overseen by an attorney? or is it just a handshake between accelerator and acceleratees?
- jedc 13y ago
  The 'agreement' between them is meaningless (in a legal/financial sense) until they both sign the docs to officially transfer money for an equity stake.
api 13y ago
I had an awful experience years ago that reminds me of some of these stories. I'd have to tone it down to make it believable. Short short version: a guy with no money pretended to be a deep-pocketed investor, talked me into leaving my day job. At least that's how the story begins. Then it gets progressively more insane.
- amorphid 13y ago
  I met a one of these faux investor, charlatan, stone soup types a few years ago. When he talked about making investments, it took a while to figure out he'd invest time and no cash. When he talked about how was was affiliated with some impressive named and organizations, he really meant he'd done a shitty website for a semi well known author and he'd visited the Harvard campus once. At every turn when I asked him for a hard commitment of something I could use, actionable advice or hard cash, he never produced. I recommend demanding excellence from your investors and expect them to demand excellence from you. Strong relationships improve when tested, others buckle and fade away. That's been my experience anyway.
jedc 13y ago
I'd just like to say that the reason I created Seed-DB (http://www.seed-db.com http://www.seed-db.com) is because the world of seed accelerators should be more transparent. I've currently got a list of 170+ accelerators around the world, and the list makes it pretty clear which ones get results and which don't. (Or don't care enough about publicizing results). If you have any feedback for me as to what would be useful to you when choosing between accelerators, please let me know. Email is in profile.
- accelanon 13y ago
  Oh, this is great. I'm going to look through it more deeply through the lens of my experience and give some feedback via email. Thanks for sharing!
- brayton 13y ago
  This is an amazing resource! Working at an accelerator, I know it is very important that both sides are transparent with each other to make sure the program/session is effective and enjoyable.
- aziari 13y ago
  Very cool. Have you thought about adding a feature for people to review their accelerators?
  - jedc 13y ago
    I'd like to make it easier for founders to "claim" their startup on Seed-DB, which would lead to the ability for them to privately rate their accelerator and their VCs/Angels if they've received funding. I'm not sure how many startups would do that, though... it's surprising to me how many startups from accelerators don't even have a Crunchbase or an Angellist page. Seed-DB is a nights/weekends project for me and I've already got a backlog of stuff I want to add. :)
- arbuge 13y ago
  How do you update that list? I'm familiar with a few of the lesser known accelerators on it and I'm aware of some pretty nice exits they've had, but their exit column is listed as $0 on your list. This is probably complicated by the fact that many of the smaller acquisitions (<$100m) are for undisclosed sums. Not sure how you can ever account for that unless you make wild guesses. Also it looks like companies which are very valuable but not formally exited yet (AirBNB, Dropbox etc.) aren't accounted for here... a column for "current portfolio valuation" might be more valuable. Again, if it were ever possible to put such a thing together accurately, which I doubt.
taroth 13y ago
Site down. Not cached by google. Anyone have a link?
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angelhacksucks 13y ago
This is a throwaway account because I want to publicly expose AngelHack (or HACKcelerator): After we "won" a local hackaton -that had an entry fee- they didn't help us with the housing, zero, no cash for any of the 20 "winner" teams and only gave $1000 (per team, not person) for fly expenses (hint: not enough) then suggested us to stay in one of the worst hostels in San Francisco (European Hostel). Later on I also found out that they are already searching volunteers around the world to help them out organizing the 2014 competition... in my opinion all this is pretty shady but we the teams are holding up just in case the demo day brings something good (a.k.a. investors and new contacts).
photorized 13y ago
It's stuff like that that just made me launch my own accelerator on the East Coast (in addition to running a few startups): http://www.colodesk.com/ http://www.colodesk.com/ We don't trick people, but we do "force" them into success or failure quickly.
zabramow 13y ago
Was just having the discussion of whether or not to accelerate your company with one of the leaders of Bizdom accelerator in Cleveland. http://www.replyall.me/zach-talks/to-accelerate-or-not-to-accelerate/ http://www.replyall.me/zach-talks/to-accelerate-or-not-to-ac... One issue I haven't brought up yet (but will) is whether a young company wants that kind of "access" or whether having to crawl before you walk makes companies iterate and get it right and get the "access" the old fashioned way. Sometimes think accelerators give companies access a little too quickly for the company's own good.
aioprisan 13y ago
what is the real recourse here? you can't out them because of their connections in the community and needing to do business with their business partners in the future? I wish someone like David Cohen or PG would out them publicly and let the court of public opinion do the rest.
aioprisan 13y ago
is there a glassdoor for startup accelerators?
arbuge 13y ago
Just as there are horrifying VC stories, so there are bound to be horrifying accelerator stories. With VCs it's really the top tier firms that are the ones you want to work with; many of the others are under pressure at all times to make up for mediocre returns, which is not a formula for a happy working relationship with them. It's going to be the same with their earlier stage cousins...
FridayWithJohn 13y ago
Error establishing a database connection... that is all I get.
jbjohns 13y ago
Site is down for me: "Error establishing a database connection"
- astrodust 13y ago
  That's one hell of a horror story.
wiradikusuma 13y ago
I actually received an email from "Pre-Accelerator", submitted just now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301565 which seems to be in the same theme with this topic.
marchra 13y ago
cache?
jnty 13y ago
Obviously their webhost only accounted for people reading it once.
6d0debc071 13y ago
The accelerator went back on their word fairly early on in the arrangement. When someone does that, that's basically the time to start looking at walking away IME - dishonesty is a matter of habit, chances are they're not going to turn over a new leaf and everything else is going to be fine from there on in.
buncle 13y ago
I've become very wary of accelerators that make bold promises, although my experience is nowhere near as bad this story. Having been approached by 3 different accelerators, the story is always the same: 1. They offer a very nice chunk of funding 2. Declare how fantastic their team of mentors and legal connections are 3. They say they have some very low equity requirements ... fast forward ... about to sign an agreement ... 4. Funding is suddenly limited, or is now a range, with the upper figure as what they originaly offered... but with additional caveats 5. The equity requirements are now greater, since they 'forgot' to mention that additional equity is required at the end of the program 6. There is also suddenly an 'entry fee' to cover various expences that they also conveniently 'forgot' to mention 7. Many of their so called mentors/connections have not even agreed to be part of the program There are certainly many good accelerators out there, but there are many more two-bit players out there willing to screw over early stage startups just to get themselves some funding (and equity, on the off-chance one of the startups actually become successful despite their 'help').
jmartens 13y ago
I had the displeasure of meeting this MD earlier this month. She was one of the most offensive people I've ever met. Treated the employee she had with her like shit. Was a total bitch. I knew nothing about her, the accelerator, or this story when meeting her, and I still knew instantly that I never wanted to talk to the women again. How did the founders of companies in her accelerator not see the same thing I did in our first meeting?

330 points by awwstn 13y ago

Startups looking for accelerators remind me of authors looking for agents and publishers - we don't realize how much power we have in the relationship, and also how much we can do for ourselves without someone to "help" us for a chunk of our equity. Of course the right accelerator/VC/agent/publisher, at the right time, can help. It works best if you see them as a piece of YOUR plan, rather than see yourself as a supplicant to their network/deep pockets.

mgkimsal 13y ago
Amen I've been approached by a few startup-ish projects in the past few years, all wanting to 'partner' up and 'join an accelerator' or 'apply for startup program XYZ'. I proceed to ask "what are you going to do with the $50k you'd get if you get in?" There's typically a blank stare. Now, I get that you get more than just money; hopefully you're getting connections and introductions and press you couldn't get on your own. But not always. But I'm still shocked that typically there's no answer at the top of their minds. And they're asking me to invest the next 6 months or more of my life with them to 'do a startup'. As a tech/dev, I am an investor, investing my time, knowledge, energy and passion in to something. If they can't convince me to invest, they're not going to convince an accelerator.

radiusq 13y ago

I see no problem in naming names. It's for the benefit of everyone here. Otherwise its just another sad story which we've heard the likes of before.

kumarski 13y ago

Have fun figuring out which one it is: http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators

omegant 13y ago
The numbers are amazing, it really puts in to context the meaning of Venture Capital!. Just a bunch of accelerators are getting exits so far.
- jedc 13y ago
  This is mainly because a) most accelerators are new so the companies haven't developed enough to exit and b) it takes time to build a program that reliably finds/develops companies that can exit.
minimax 13y ago
I think the bit from the letter about "billed as campus, community, accelerator, and more" will probably narrow it down. That seems like a pretty distinctive way to brand your accelerator.
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varelse 13y ago
Wow, if I'm reading that table correctly, the odds of playing the slots are still better than funding startups blindly: http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/ http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/
- ajross 13y ago
  Presumably what you're talking about is the fact that the summed "exits" are less than the input investments. But it's not a steady state environment. Obviously exits are going to lag the investments by several years, and the rate of investment hasn't been constant -- it's been increasing steadily for several years itself. So you wouldn't expect to see a net profit. The real question, of course, is whether we should expect to see a net profit across the incubator/accelerator world at some point in the future, or if we're indeed in the bubble some of us think we are...

gojomo 13y ago

Seems mostly a story about one problematic manager with some personality disorder(s).

jack9 13y ago

Why anyone thinks we need the details, is strange. You partner up, found things weren't right and continued on. It doesn't become a horror story at the end. The team chose to live in a bad situation and let it develop. Every single sentence of this should have been ended with, "I know I should have bailed out, but I didn't."

RyanZAG 13y ago

"The weird thing is that the MD keeps making intros, speaking highly of us and sending people our way. We think she does it because she doesn’t want us talking about our experiences." Well that doesn't seem too bad, it even feels like the story had a happy ending as it sounds like they've been able to get investors and the startup is working.

jmspring 13y ago
It more feels like the MD wanted to keep schmoozing and acting important ignoring the reality of the situation. There have been a few stories over the passed couple of years where someone name drops and schmoozes to elevate their own profile. In the end, they are found out to be frauds or worse. Any area that gets a lot of hype will have those that want to cling on.
- BWStearns 13y ago
  >> It more feels like the MD wanted to keep schmoozing and acting important ignoring the reality of the situation. I wouldn't be surprised if "she" demanded something if she even knew of an investor OP's company ended up taking on.

johnrob 13y ago

With that many red flags, why would anyone accept an investment and enter a relationship with such an organization? The things people will do for funding... I'd rather have a day job or a consulting gig in a heartbeat compared to a situation like that.

foobarbazqux 13y ago
If you have a crazy family, then crazy often seems tolerable, until it really isn't.
BWStearns 13y ago
In college I flailed around for funding for an idea for a bit. I accepted the first offer I found. Said "investor" jacked half of his money back out of the account (he needed a card because he was supposed to do some work on the financial end) and spent it on parties and shit. Very similar tendencies to what was described in the article and lots of the same red flags. He then threatened to sue me if I talked about the whole thing. Thinking about posting the whole story somewhere. But the broader point is: if you need investment and can't find anyone else, it's very easy to convince yourself that it won't be as bad as it will.

brandnewlow 13y ago

This story is really frustrating and sad to hear, but I have to say, in the three years I've been working on my startup, never once has anything good happened from paying for access to any type of person (investors or customers), using any currency (equity or cash). We did YCombinator, which could be described as an "access" play, but apart from that, every time someone has offered us access to something in return for something else, we've always politely declined and then just gone and won the business or relationship on our own merits. Gatekeepers suck, and doing business with gatekeepers leads startups to doing sucky things and pulls them down as well. The minute I read him deciding to do a second accelerator so he could get access to "his vertical" I started getting a sinking feeling in my stomach.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
What made you feel differently about YCombinator than everyone else? Or rather, how did YC get their foot in your door?
- brandnewlow 13y ago
  PG's essays. Years of participating on HN. People I knew who had done YC. The litany of neat companies with products I liked that had come out of YC. The way they had been amazingly accomodating and flexible in smart ways during our application process. Lots more.
Cookingboy 13y ago
I agree, very often we have these average gatekeepers who imagine themselves as top level power brokers at an elite world, and those should be avoided. But the best "gatekeepers" are not the ones that guard the gate, they are the ones who can show you where the gates even are, it's just very difficult to be able to distinguish the real valuable guys from the "hustlers" without having a lot of experiences yourself.
- brandnewlow 13y ago
  One of the great things about the SF/valley startup scene is how the whole gatekeeper dynamic doesn't work so much. The best VCs are all just a tweet or HN post away if you're really working on something great that they'll get excited about.

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JonnieCache 13y ago

Came here hoping for a particle accelerator horror story. Bo-ring. For anyone else who thought the same, here's an article about a russian who got his face caught in a proton beam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski#Particle_accelerator_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski#Particle_acce...

ISL 13y ago
Wasn't hoping for one, but I did expect an accelerator accident.
meepmorp 13y ago
This was what I thought - some poor guy was doing maintenance at the wrong time.
- wwweston 13y ago
  And didn't even get superpowers out of it. :/
ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
Your link made up for the lack of clarification. Cheers!
aylons 13y ago
Clicked on the news, was frustrated by the kind of accident and came here to post something just like your comment - link included. Not only me - this is the top comment and there are three more comments about this. This is a good measure of how geek this site is.
Bjoern 13y ago
Not quite Anatoli Bugorski, but still a very interesting discussion here: "Putting your hand in the Large Hadron Collider..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMqPT6oKJ8&list=TLwUB7ALPnOh7PeIpLnO8ZE_Mbh3bdh3dE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMqPT6oKJ8&list=TLwUB7ALPnO...

ballard 13y ago

I've walked away, shaking my head, from several YCombinator-alikes. They're too often about trying to put together deal-flow without understanding what's helpful. Now I'm all for new things if there were solid principals, strats and connections, but that's rarely the case.... anyone with half an aptitude is likely already in play. Basically, their "help" is a waste of my time and something I can do on my own, better, without giving up an iota of equity. My conclusion is you don't need most of them, most of the time, even the ones that try not to be instant wantrepreneur bootcamps. If you're focused, hungry and persistent... you already have what it takes. So where's the value?

swamp40 13y ago

It seems to me like a lot of accelerators would be better off throwing this one to the wolves ASAP before they all get tainted by a stench of unknown origin.

pavel_lishin 13y ago

> At this point we decided that some of this behavior was pathological I want to say that this fact should have been obvious long before, but I have the benefit of third-person hindsight.

woodchuck64 13y ago

This doesn't seem to be about an accelerator as much as about a person with a behavior disorder that sounds very much like narcissistic personality disorder. NPDs cope with their incompetence by abusing and blaming those around them, creating chaos and misery yet still managing to escape responsibility 9 times out of 10. The right thing to do here is anonymously expose the managing director.

rhuppert 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. In my business experience, I dealt with two individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Of course, I did not see their medical records; it was hearsay. However, it explained much about their behavior. It's a sad story, but it is also the face of mental illness, which is all too real. Learning to recognize and deal with this is another thing to store in one's experience quiver.

ryguytilidie 13y ago

I've always been scared to death at how many people who add zero or negative value are involved in this process.

citricsquid 13y ago

Design tip: if a quote is a quote, have a quote style. If a quote is the entire content of your article and is many paragraphs long, rethink styling it as a quote and instead label it, or something.

rblatz 13y ago
Absolutely agree. It was very difficult to read, and I ended up having to remove the italic and color styles applied to that section, just to be able to read the article.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Readability that shit. Though honestly, in this case, I couldn't even be arsed to do that.
dredmorbius 13y ago
And whatever you do: don't grey out the fucking text.
marshray 13y ago
When Ctrl-A makes the text more readable it's an indictment upon the designer.
- Luyt 13y ago
  In Firefox, I often use View/Page Style/No Style, in such cases.

slaven 13y ago

I've read several posts where people are trying to identify a female-lead accelerator - exactly counter to the warning in the story: "I may have also changed the gender of certain people (i.e. he/she), again, with approval of the author." So lets not point fingers based on gender alone.

deleted 13y ago

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philzdelish 13y ago

Nothing as bad, but heard of bad experience by teams at Microsoft + Techstars accelerator in Seattle where both sides lost interest in the class in the middle of the program. Not sure how good/bad the fundraising was across the board.

jedc 13y ago
Details are here: http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=95003 http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=95003
ashbrahma 13y ago
Could you elaborate on the bad experiences? And any idea which class it was?

brianmcconnell 13y ago

Classic narcissistic personality disorder. Run for the hills. With NPDs, it is always everybody else's fault. Add pathological lying, some bipolar, and maybe just for fun booze/drugs and they'll drive you insane too.

deleted 13y ago
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hedwall 13y ago
where do you pick bipolar from?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Assuming you're trying to reply to auctiontheory, I read that as borderline personality disorder - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder
auctiontheory 13y ago
To me it feels much more BPD than NPD. Which is not a good thing!

accelanon 13y ago

My experience was not nearly this bad, but still horrifying for me, my co-founder, and our families. We had been talking off and on with an accelerator for about a month. We had pitched them, had a few calls, but lived on the other side of the country. They wanted to meet in person which was really not feasible for us. We worked at full-time jobs while hacking away on the side and scraping together whatever money we had to fund our company. A little flashback, first: I had dropped out of grad school and taught myself programming to start my first company. After a year of living on my wife's student loans, I got "acquihired" by a startup that was run by one of the accelerator's mentors. They gave me 3% equity, a $10k moving bonus, $15k for the company, and a $75k/year salary. I said yes. Three months later, I decided to quit. I was the only technical person in a company consisting of the two non-technical co-founder, co-CEOs, a project manager, and myself. They had burned through $700k already and hadn't built anything yet. It was becoming clear that my product was going to be their product. In the best case scenario I would spend the next four years working on my original startup, only now for pennies on the dollar. The purchase of my assets still hadn't gone through and I hadn't yet been paid, aside from the moving bonus and salary. The co-founders claimed I had acted in bad faith and asked for the moving bonus back. I explained that I wouldn't have moved had the moving bonus not been offered (as I couldn't have afforded it). If they had wanted that money back in case I quit, our contract should have specified as much. They relented, and we went our separate ways. Fast forward another year, back to our accelerator story. The accelerator decides they want to afford us the opportunity to meet in person. They agree to pay for flights so long as we pay for our own hotels and car rental. We also have to talk up the trip on social media, talking about how they paid for our trip, our meetings with investors, etc. Small price to pay, we think. We make the trip and have some pretty productive meetings. They seem to like us. We fly back, and after some back and forth, they decide they want to invest. Of course, they still need to do their due diligence, so it's going to take some time. In the meantime, my co-founder and I get fired from our jobs. You see, our boss found out about our trip to the accelerator since it was broadcast over social media. It was cool when we were working on a startup after hours. It wasn't so cool when we were talking openly about actually starting a company. It doesn't matter, though. We made it into the accelerator. They send over the paperwork. It's a convertible note with pretty standard terms, fully signed by all the partners. We sign and send it back. We can't believe it's happening. I sign a lease on an apartment in the new city and my wife and I pack up our apartment. My co-founder does the same. Suddenly the music changes. They go dark for a couple days. I'm nervous because I have a U-Haul scheduled. I finally get a call with one of the partners; I'm supposed to start a 3,000 mile move the next day. He explains that they can't do the deal. A check isn't coming. He can't explain why. My mind races and I think: it couldn't have been that mentor, could it? My resume was fully transparent. They should've seen the connection. And they did their due diligence before they made the deal. How could that have slipped by? I ask for an explanation but to no avail. They can't explain it. Not even a little bit. Now I have to try to reorder my life. My job is gone. My apartment is already rented out to someone else. Luckily the landlord at the new place lets me out of my lease. I reschedule the U-Haul to take us to my wife's parents' house instead. My co-founder was devastated. He wasn't used to startups. In fact, to this day he's been bouncing around trying to find a similarly stable job. I can't help but feel responsible. I recovered better. I decided to start consulting for other startups and have made a pretty good go of it. That's my accelerator horror story. Anyone else have others?

fizx 13y ago

A word of warning: these personality types are incredibly common in the startup world, for a number of reasons: Driven, strong personalities are valued. It's easier to hide in a small company. As a founder, it's relatively easy to build a team that will tolerate your excesses. Don't be afraid. Moving on after one month is ok. It won't irrevocably stain your resume. The self-aware hiring managers know this dynamic exists, and won't hold it against you. There are thousands of amazing, hard-working, kind, creative, interesting people and teams. Find one and cherish it.

RougeFemme 13y ago
I think a fair number of those personality types hide in larger companies, too. They don't have the clout/vision/cult-leader personna of a founder with that personality type. After a number of years of observing people like that who should be marched out the door - but aren't - I've concluded they must be blackmailing someone powerful within the company.
- fizx 13y ago
  "I think a fair number of those personality types hide in larger companies, too." You're right, of course. A difference when you're stuck near one is that it's generally easier to switch teams than companies.
- quanticle 13y ago
  It doesn't have to be blackmail. It could be that the person has so entrenched himself or herself in his or her role that even their boss can't really fire them. This is especially true in companies that tend to hire top management from outside or do a lot of lateral transfers. It's entirely possible that the middle manager here knows more about that part of the business than his or her boss, and so the boss can't let this person go, because the boss doesn't know enough about the requirements of the position to hire a replacement.

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caycep 13y ago

maybe a noob question but usually, the agreement to do an accelerator program is usually overseen by an attorney? or is it just a handshake between accelerator and acceleratees?

jedc 13y ago
The 'agreement' between them is meaningless (in a legal/financial sense) until they both sign the docs to officially transfer money for an equity stake.

api 13y ago

I had an awful experience years ago that reminds me of some of these stories. I'd have to tone it down to make it believable. Short short version: a guy with no money pretended to be a deep-pocketed investor, talked me into leaving my day job. At least that's how the story begins. Then it gets progressively more insane.

amorphid 13y ago
I met a one of these faux investor, charlatan, stone soup types a few years ago. When he talked about making investments, it took a while to figure out he'd invest time and no cash. When he talked about how was was affiliated with some impressive named and organizations, he really meant he'd done a shitty website for a semi well known author and he'd visited the Harvard campus once. At every turn when I asked him for a hard commitment of something I could use, actionable advice or hard cash, he never produced. I recommend demanding excellence from your investors and expect them to demand excellence from you. Strong relationships improve when tested, others buckle and fade away. That's been my experience anyway.

jedc 13y ago

I'd just like to say that the reason I created Seed-DB (http://www.seed-db.com http://www.seed-db.com) is because the world of seed accelerators should be more transparent. I've currently got a list of 170+ accelerators around the world, and the list makes it pretty clear which ones get results and which don't. (Or don't care enough about publicizing results). If you have any feedback for me as to what would be useful to you when choosing between accelerators, please let me know. Email is in profile.

accelanon 13y ago
Oh, this is great. I'm going to look through it more deeply through the lens of my experience and give some feedback via email. Thanks for sharing!
brayton 13y ago
This is an amazing resource! Working at an accelerator, I know it is very important that both sides are transparent with each other to make sure the program/session is effective and enjoyable.
aziari 13y ago
Very cool. Have you thought about adding a feature for people to review their accelerators?
- jedc 13y ago
  I'd like to make it easier for founders to "claim" their startup on Seed-DB, which would lead to the ability for them to privately rate their accelerator and their VCs/Angels if they've received funding. I'm not sure how many startups would do that, though... it's surprising to me how many startups from accelerators don't even have a Crunchbase or an Angellist page. Seed-DB is a nights/weekends project for me and I've already got a backlog of stuff I want to add. :)
arbuge 13y ago
How do you update that list? I'm familiar with a few of the lesser known accelerators on it and I'm aware of some pretty nice exits they've had, but their exit column is listed as $0 on your list. This is probably complicated by the fact that many of the smaller acquisitions (<$100m) are for undisclosed sums. Not sure how you can ever account for that unless you make wild guesses. Also it looks like companies which are very valuable but not formally exited yet (AirBNB, Dropbox etc.) aren't accounted for here... a column for "current portfolio valuation" might be more valuable. Again, if it were ever possible to put such a thing together accurately, which I doubt.

taroth 13y ago

Site down. Not cached by google. Anyone have a link?

deleted 13y ago

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angelhacksucks 13y ago

This is a throwaway account because I want to publicly expose AngelHack (or HACKcelerator): After we "won" a local hackaton -that had an entry fee- they didn't help us with the housing, zero, no cash for any of the 20 "winner" teams and only gave $1000 (per team, not person) for fly expenses (hint: not enough) then suggested us to stay in one of the worst hostels in San Francisco (European Hostel). Later on I also found out that they are already searching volunteers around the world to help them out organizing the 2014 competition... in my opinion all this is pretty shady but we the teams are holding up just in case the demo day brings something good (a.k.a. investors and new contacts).

photorized 13y ago

It's stuff like that that just made me launch my own accelerator on the East Coast (in addition to running a few startups): http://www.colodesk.com/ http://www.colodesk.com/ We don't trick people, but we do "force" them into success or failure quickly.

zabramow 13y ago

Was just having the discussion of whether or not to accelerate your company with one of the leaders of Bizdom accelerator in Cleveland. http://www.replyall.me/zach-talks/to-accelerate-or-not-to-accelerate/ http://www.replyall.me/zach-talks/to-accelerate-or-not-to-ac... One issue I haven't brought up yet (but will) is whether a young company wants that kind of "access" or whether having to crawl before you walk makes companies iterate and get it right and get the "access" the old fashioned way. Sometimes think accelerators give companies access a little too quickly for the company's own good.

aioprisan 13y ago

what is the real recourse here? you can't out them because of their connections in the community and needing to do business with their business partners in the future? I wish someone like David Cohen or PG would out them publicly and let the court of public opinion do the rest.

aioprisan 13y ago

is there a glassdoor for startup accelerators?

arbuge 13y ago

Just as there are horrifying VC stories, so there are bound to be horrifying accelerator stories. With VCs it's really the top tier firms that are the ones you want to work with; many of the others are under pressure at all times to make up for mediocre returns, which is not a formula for a happy working relationship with them. It's going to be the same with their earlier stage cousins...

FridayWithJohn 13y ago

Error establishing a database connection... that is all I get.

jbjohns 13y ago

Site is down for me: "Error establishing a database connection"

astrodust 13y ago
That's one hell of a horror story.

wiradikusuma 13y ago

I actually received an email from "Pre-Accelerator", submitted just now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301565 which seems to be in the same theme with this topic.

marchra 13y ago

cache?

jnty 13y ago

Obviously their webhost only accounted for people reading it once.

6d0debc071 13y ago

The accelerator went back on their word fairly early on in the arrangement. When someone does that, that's basically the time to start looking at walking away IME - dishonesty is a matter of habit, chances are they're not going to turn over a new leaf and everything else is going to be fine from there on in.

buncle 13y ago

I've become very wary of accelerators that make bold promises, although my experience is nowhere near as bad this story. Having been approached by 3 different accelerators, the story is always the same: 1. They offer a very nice chunk of funding 2. Declare how fantastic their team of mentors and legal connections are 3. They say they have some very low equity requirements ... fast forward ... about to sign an agreement ... 4. Funding is suddenly limited, or is now a range, with the upper figure as what they originaly offered... but with additional caveats 5. The equity requirements are now greater, since they 'forgot' to mention that additional equity is required at the end of the program 6. There is also suddenly an 'entry fee' to cover various expences that they also conveniently 'forgot' to mention 7. Many of their so called mentors/connections have not even agreed to be part of the program There are certainly many good accelerators out there, but there are many more two-bit players out there willing to screw over early stage startups just to get themselves some funding (and equity, on the off-chance one of the startups actually become successful despite their 'help').

jmartens 13y ago

I had the displeasure of meeting this MD earlier this month. She was one of the most offensive people I've ever met. Treated the employee she had with her like shit. Was a total bitch. I knew nothing about her, the accelerator, or this story when meeting her, and I still knew instantly that I never wanted to talk to the women again. How did the founders of companies in her accelerator not see the same thing I did in our first meeting?