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Incubators are Bullshit
- jbverschoor 13y agoI've seen two incubators, and both were very much a waste. One of them had nice presentations / talks, but that's about it
- joshfraser 13y agoI'm guessing everyone here knows Sendgrid and Digital Ocean. Both are TechStars companies that weren't mentioned but are doing quite well. Focus and learning how to say "no" is a critical skill for any founder to master, whether they're a part of an incubator or not.
- pushkargaikwad 13y agoIncubators are Bullshit, Startup Accelerators are Scams Barring few in US and India, you can put the rest in the above two categories. Most of the people running these incubators/accelerators are there for Kicks, Greed, Ego and Entertainment only and themselves don't understand the challenges of building a business. Unfortunately most of the startup founders are too naive and in hyper state of mind so get sucked into these.
- wise_young_man 13y agoCraftsman founder reminds me of Ninja programmer and Rockstar developer.
- billspreston 13y agoInteresting post, but I would recommend not missing out on the birthing classes.
- lauradhamilton 13y agoAgree! Thought it was pretty funny when he said, birthing classes are a waste of time, "the baby is coming out anyway."
- grillermo 13y agoAnd... its gone
- batoure 13y agoSite seems to be responding with 503 here is the cache http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmRMKPIJ:www.craftsmanfounder.com/incubators-are-bullshit/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmR...
- _kulte 13y agoUptime is bullshit... just kidding, I'm excited to read it eventually because I tend to agree.
- dariusmonsef 13y agoGood luck with your book.
- angersock 13y agoIn a turn of events which should surprise no-one, the tech side of things destroyed the incubator.
- vyala 13y agoI do personally analyzed 50+ companies in Indian startup scene who gone through incubators. Not many of them had success. I asked one of the founder of the company who had gone to MS Accelerator, he mentioned as 4 months of office space without rent. I serious doubt mentor contribution in the startups. Every problem is unique, I exactly don't know what mentors brings to the team and table in such a short meeting (1-2 hrs) on weekly basis.
- bruceb 13y agoThe one in Bangalore right? I don't think they take equity though, so not a bad deal.
- vyala 13y agoYes, no equity for MS Accelerator.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sumedh 13y ago> Not many of them had success. Can give some more details, why did most of them fail?
- vyala 13y agoGo to their site, find the list of startup listed. you see, there is no relevant improvement on the site, no apps as they promised to build. Just plain html pages on few sites.
- primitivesuave 13y agoHere's the Google cache for anyone who wants to read it: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmRMKPIJ:www.craftsmanfounder.com/incubators-are-bullshit/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmR...
- cardmagic 13y agoSorry for the downtime, just upgraded my server for the load
- wise_young_man 13y agoA tad bit ironic as you founded AppFog.
- rschmitty 13y agoTo be fair AppFog doesnt make claims of auto scaling like AWS :P
- eru 13y agoInteresting how YC is excluded from his comments.
- infocollector 13y agoIts an advertisement for YC !-)
- eru 13y agoYC's PR submarine.
- chiachun 13y agoI totally agree with the article and am looking forward to see another one titled "Incubators are Bullshit, but YC is not. Here's why."
- newhouseb 13y ago> We have not yet seen a single “incubated” startup go public yet. Yelp was technically incubated by Max Levchin's incubator (although I'm blanking on what they called it).
- Aaronontheweb 13y agoWell if you don't count Overture from IdeaLab in Pasadena, but that was .com era 1
- uniclaude 13y agoMoreover, considering the average time it takes to IPO, it might be way too early to make this type of statement. 500 startups, YC, and Techstars started less than 10 years ago.
- 001sky 13y agoThere is so much private liquidity that "IPO" is nearly irrelevant to the conversation, tho. Public liquidity pools were considered the touchstone before the advent of hedgefunds. Alot has changed since 1999 in this regards.
- jmpeax 13y agoI don't know what an incubator is, so I looked it up on Wikipedia where it says that "Successful completion of a business incubation program increases the likelihood that a startup company will stay in business for the long term: older studies found 87% of incubator graduates stayed in business, in contrast to 44% of all firms." I saw lots of "bullshit" words and other emotional words spewed around Carlson's post, so I think I'll go with the Wikipedia article on this one.
- cardmagic 13y agoThe study referenced in Wikipedia is from 1997, 8 years before Y-combinator which is the first of the class of incubators I talk about in my blog post. I also think the studies are about a different kind of business than the startups discussed in my blog. More along the lines of McDonalds franchises than Facebooks. However you do bring up a valid point: my blog is just my opinion and worth just about as much as you pay for it. :)
- webmaven 13y agoIf your rant is specific to a particular type of program, why not use the specific term ('accelerator')?
- pg 13y agoI don't know about the others, but this is not a description of YC. The whole point of YC is to focus on real work. The first thing we tell the startups we accept is that they should build stuff and talk to users (and exercise and spend time with their families) and nothing else. When the Airbnbs came to speak at the last dinner, Brian Chesky said that the 3 months of YC had been the most productive time in their lives.
- cardmagic 13y agoI agree Paul: YC is the only incubator I would explicitly exclude from this tirade. In fact, I call out YC in section 4 as having incubated companies I would love to be like.
- ixmatus 13y agoI would exclude Techstars too, I went through the Austin program and it was also one of the best things I ever did. I learned so much. TS does have a slightly different focus than YC - first month they tell you to not build a whole lot of stuff but to talk to 90+ mentors (that they curate), then second and third months are balls-to-the-wall build, talk to customers, etc... with the third month having a focus on pitch practice for the CEO.
- solve 13y agoAm I the only one who doesn't much like the word "mentor"? It makes me imagine kind of a superior/inferior relation, as if the best people aren't the ones who starting the startups. Shouldn't the very best people be the ones in the startups? mentor: - an experienced person in a company, college, or school who trains and counsels new employees or students. - advise or train (someone, esp. a younger colleague). The word has very clear, strong connotations. So what is being said here? That founders can't be experienced serial entrepreneurs? That older people should be training younger people? It's a very strange word to choose, and I think it impacts how people perceive their roles.
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- andrewflnr 13y agoWorking from the general atmosphere of bandied-about numbers, I think "big startup successes" are closer to 1 in 100 than 1 in 10, if not 1 in 1000. If YC is anywhere near 1 in 10, that is pretty amazing. At the same time, I don't think it's fair to hold incubators to this 1 in 10 standard.
- borski 13y agoThis is not indicative, at least, of 500 Startups. Look, you can fuck up your time with any incubator by not focusing on things important to your startup. Dave McClure and the other partners there will yell at you for doing this, and the common theme is "Get back to fucking work" and "Don't waste your time with bullshit meetings." The overall feeling is: build, get customers, experiment and verify, and build. The problem is that most accelerators (500 included) have a TON of opportunity for distraction, and undisciplined founders get distracted. For us, 500 was immensely useful because it gave us a network of people to reach out to that didn't exist in our world before 500. For finding customers, verifying assumptions, user testing, raising funding, and all that other stuff that startups have to do, this was incredibly important. tl;dr: incubators are what you make of them. you can waste your time, or it can be the most productive time you'll ever have, and it all depends on your discipline. you'll have more opportunity than you would otherwise, but you have to be disciplined about what avenues you pursue and which you don't. the same is true of college, incidentally. EDIT: It's important to note that I made this mistake freshman year at MIT, and learned from it. There was so much opportunity for learning, initially, that I squandered it and tried to do too much. I was incredibly busy, but never really got anything done. I learned to focus on what's important, but the resources I had at MIT meant that focus was better utilized than it would have been at a smaller school with fewer opportunities. The same is true for incubators/accelerators; we saw undisciplined founders have this problem, but we took full advantage of all the resources 500s gave us, and ignored the meetings/events we didn't care about and that weren't useful to us.
- rachellaw 13y agoCarlson is looking at things from a very narrow perspective. If the industry has high barriers to entry, an incubator can help because it just gives that extra lead time you need to get a product to launch. Not all products are apps that you can churn out in the basement to profitability. What if you have additional inventory? What if you need to purchase forwarding commodity price? What if your idea is simply new enough that you don't have any precedents? Incubators can help with that, especially if they have a lawyer and accountant at hand. There's also a third factor, which is that if you're an international/immigrant or someone from a state unfamiliar with tech industry, then the connections are helpful. The idea of low fidelity networks being worse off is absolute bullshit though, it's been proven over and over again that a large network of weak ties generates a stronger overall response than a small network of strong ties. Weak ties is what builds communities and gives people jobs (which tbh, is exactly what Linkedin managed to do so well technologically)
- janson0 13y agoI think this article is really short-sighted, in that he is just making a blanket statement that doesn't apply to all incubators and doesn't apply to all companies. We are applying for incubators now, because it will give us the opportunity to continue doing business and will help us grow our business. We think it will be a good fit, because we are heavy on the engineering side and are looking for some investors to get on board and back our passion with real dollars. Runway + opportunity to focus is the reason you want to get investment or into an incubator. Anyway, nice work on getting people to your site through a clever title.
- marcus_holmes 13y agoI think you're confusing investment and incubation. They're two different things. Investment is when someone with money and experience is enthusiastic about your idea and wants to help you succeed with it. Incubation is when someone with money and experience is enthusiastic about their incubator and wants you to help them succeed with it. Not the same, see? *Yes I'm being a little facetious
- djyaz1200 13y agoAgreed. People with no clue how to create and scale a business have copied a formula developed by people who actually do understand this. This isn't just not helpful, it's actively harmful. By anointing themselves as the local "conveyor belt" for interesting companies and talented entrepreneurs incubators have created confusion in the market that harms perfectly good founders who do not participate. People say... "you should apply for XYZ accelerator" and my reply is... "why?" Is there any reason to other than that other people do? It has become a sort of tax or validation stamp that we are all expected to seek out... and after that go on Shark Tank?! Then at some point we get acquired by Yahoo? Successful startup outcomes and solvency in the incubator world are not correlated well. The companies that are selected are carefully directed through a maze of expensive professional services controlled by the program directors. The bargain becomes... if you use this lawyer, this PR consultant and this accounting firm we will support you. What this means is that every failed startup isn't really a failure because in the end that company spends all their money paying off the incubator's network. It's an engine of corruption that takes advantage of people and companies that can least afford it. Whether they create any real startup success is not especially relevant to their continued survival, it's just a bonus. Many incubator programs also tends to select for people who are very well behaved, polite and have simple A to B ideas. True disruptive innovation is usually created by disruptive people who have very big ideas. I don't think incubators really intend to hurt founders or the market, but they do.
- cardmagic 13y agoYES! YES YES YES! You talk like a true craftsman founder. So many founders seem to think they have to do incubators because it is what is done. They treat it like traction. And they are completely indiscriminate. "I just got into the podunk incubator! #win #retire #done"
- djyaz1200 13y ago"They treat it like traction." Agreed! Just got an email tonight from a guy who is so pumped to get into an incubator and I was like... ummmm... You are being pimped. I sent him your post.
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- midas007 13y agoIf you're gonna start an incubator, you've got to have serious media creds, founder relationships, have other founders on-board and soft launch. Basically Om's other possible career option. It's inevitable that folks would try to copy a model tactically without understanding the strategy. However I've seen European old money enchanted by people that are adept at playing the valley game. For example, one promising approach might be to solve some timely pain-points: what arent startups usually good at? global localized replication post-traction, customer service and backoffice. This is shit that usually gets built "organically" and falls (or fails) over, until real professionals are brought in to make it look more like a real business. That could work since it reduces risk on the investor side (by funding things later) at the risk of accepting higher valuations. They seem to have the ca$h but don't know what else to do with it. But coming at founders with only a wooly wish and demanding equity is only going to rope in people too desperate to know the difference. Wantrepreneur incubator : not gonna try to portmanteau that. Thankfully, there's an app for that: http://portmanteaur.com/?words=Wantrepreneur+incubator http://portmanteaur.com/?words=Wantrepreneur+incubator
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- doczoidberg 13y agoI think there are good and bad incubators. As a founder you always should _rate everything you do on facts_. Inform you about failure/success ratio and asks former participants what they think about it. I for myself have never participated in an incubator because I want to focus on the product and customers first. But this is just my 2pence.
- vyala 13y ago@cardmagic, let us know how much viewcount you had end the end of the day to crash the DB.
- seanccox 13y agoYour excerpt from the manifesto raises an interesting point, about "deadly" consequences of mistaking ambition for greed. At the same time, you call out specific people and imply they killed themselves because of their own greed. Can you clarify whether you actually know that, or is that just, like, your opinion, man?
- king_magic 13y agoI stopped reading, closed the page and never looked back as soon as the "Are You a Craftsman Founder?" popup blocked my view of the article. Honestly, when will sites like this learn?
- hfourm 13y agoMeh, It popped up after you scroll and its easily close-able. I've seen much worse
- king_magic 13y agoIt truly doesn't matter when it pops up or if there are worse offenders out there. It interrupted me, I was annoyed, I left. Did not read the content, did not click on ads, I just left. End of story.
- nemesisj 13y agoI feel like any "X is bullshit" post that doesn't start out with a definition of X or Y or Z is just a glorified troll. Half this thread is going to be people either identifying with or attacking the straw man that's posed but isn't really defined well. Even among people who run accelerators, incubators, and other types of programs, there is a lot of debate over where the lines begin, end, etc. Instead of saying "incubators are bullshit" why not just saying "Doing bullshit is bullshit" since that seems to be the actual point of this post. Don't do unproductive stuff that doesn't actually advance your startup. Great. That advice is just as appropriate for outside of incubator people as those within an incubator. For example, while reading this article I just kept getting distracted from the actual main point - many incubators just provide low cost office space. Is that bullshit? Many incubators aren't actually accelerators like the author seems to confuse the term with. Is that bullshit? I remember reading an article from the New Yorker where they talked about making fun of wannabe authors who just sit around and do everything that authors are supposed to do except write. They called this "writering" and it seems like the author is trying to say the same thing about "startuping". Good. But that problem will always exist, regardless of whatever incubator you're in or not in. So maybe we should focus on the actual problem instead of just blasting a straw man, hoping for clicks?
- Jgrubb 13y agoI'd personally be happy with a blanket ban on "X is bullshit" posts on here. I don't think I've ever read one that wasn't pointless linkbait. Also, on the topic of getting distracted - they might work some of the time, but I think pop ups that nag you for your email address are bullshit.
- acjohnson55 13y agoI actually found the article to be thought-provoking. I think there actually is a problem of inexperienced founders setting their sights on just getting into an accelerator, distracting them from the bigger picture.
- cardmagic 13y agoThe point of the post was that many incubators are actively encouraging first time startup founders who don't know any better to do bullshit. The point is that in many cases, first time founders are better off spending their time NOT applying for incubators or doing incubators because then at least they won't be encouraged to do bullshit. There are obviously exceptions (YC is one of them), however the point of this article is to point out the rampant bait-and-switch that has emerged from me-too incubators.
- morgante 13y agoI feel like one of the reasons YC isn't bullshit is that they do less. Companies don't work out of YC, there isn't the strange emphasis on "networking" that you see in most incubators. Put simply, by offering less shit they exclude opportunities for bullshit.
- michaelochurch 13y agoIf a company is in an incubator (except for YC), it is because they weren’t good enough companies to raise money the regular way. I have heard this from various industry veterans including VCs and angels. It is a stigma, not a badge of honor. This is it. And what matters. The people I meet at incubators are, in general, not impressive. YC is somewhat of an exception. About half of YC founders impress me (some highly) and half are in that "really?" category. For other incubators, it's closer to 10/90. It's not that they're young and inexperienced; there are plenty of young people with potential whom I'd hire and mentor in a heartbeat. It's the talent level. Most incubators have a "no one good would be, or stay, here" feel. They're not the big leagues. The "cool" startup scene is a halfway house for immature 22-32 year-olds that looks sorta like college, enough to prevent the reality shock of becoming an adult and having to show up somewhere in a single-digit morning hour. At some point, you start to realize that you don't give a shit about "free dinner" (you'd rather eat with family or friends) or nerf guns. What matters are personal success, interesting work, reputation and compensation. These are all highly correlated with joining a good company, not a "fun" one staffed and run by boys.
- unclebucknasty 13y agoOr "how I sell books by writing blog posts that make faux controversial statements".
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mamcx 13y agoConsider the state-of-art on my country: https://apps.co/inscripciones/convocatoria/ideacion-prototipaje-y-validacion-iteracion-vi-con/ https://apps.co/inscripciones/convocatoria/ideacion-prototip... To be there, the contract say the founder MUST spend 50%/week of the time in the incubator (hearing lectures, have somebody tell him how make a business plan, "networking", etc). I have been there, and get out. I have talked with the people that manage that asking "why not copy y-combinator" (with specific points, btw). But the problem is that that "50%" is billable. The get money for each startup wasting time there...
- canthonytucci 13y agovisually offensive; didn't read.
- rdl 13y agoFrom firsthand observation of YC since 2011, YC doesn't suffer from most of the (legitimate) gripes you point out. I also have a pretty high opinion of 500 Startups as an outsider. It seems like 500 goes for singles and doubles more than YC does, and ranges farther afield in trying to get new applicants from underserved areas (although YC has stepped up on this in the past 9 months). I don't have as much data about 500 Startups, but I'd probably say it's a net-accretive thing for participants and a solid #2. Every other choice I would very closely judge before participating. The problem is most of the people entering are in the least capable position to judge the value of a specific program. Apply to YC -- Summer 2014 apps close in a couple weeks.