I believe that the founders of EF have not set out with the idea of it being a ‘pre-accelerator,' leeching talent before YC or banks can get their hands on it.

I believe that the founders of EF have not set out with the idea of it being a ‘pre-accelerator,' leeching talent before YC or banks can get their hands on it. I do think they solving a genuine problem in the supporting startup ecosystem, particularly in the UK. I spent a year at MIT and it was hard to avoid people that were working on cool ideas and starting up. Students chose most of their classes, and each class generally had a culture of creating something in a project. As a result, a lot of students would experience working on building something cool with a variety of people. That, combined with a very supportive environment, meant that it was much more accessible to startup if you wanted to. In the UK (or at least Cambridge) there are fewer people considering creating a startup. The UK university system also places more focus on end-of-year exams rather than project work. It's harder to come across finding the right combination of people, ideas and motivations that is needed to create a startup. Most ‘entrepreneurial’ societies tend to be full of the bullshitty types and smartest people default to jobs in finance or consulting. So it's partly bringing together smart people, partly the legitimacy of not feeling the need to go into a corporate job ourselves, that I think make ideas like EF broadly work. That being said, the model still has its problems. Forming teams with people you've no prior experience of only works in a handful of cases. Thankfully the programme is long enough to try several combinations of teams. Even so, I believe all the people that have gone through it but haven't ended up continuing with a company (like me) still value the contacts and learning experience thoroughly. Disclaimer: I've just finished EF as part of their 2013 cohort.