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There's no way any accelerator can be competitive against YC if Peter Thiel is going to be doing office hours

by kkhire 12y ago

plainOldText 12y ago
I think Peter Thiel would disagree.
logicallee 12y ago
this is not true. an accelerator can do earlier (before team or product or idea); wider (fund literally anyone who can write five pages in English in a timed setting about their idea); lower (take 0.075% for $2k); faster (an SaaS app that wires you a check within 24 hours, after a human lawyer verifies your details and contract); riskier (billion dollar ideas that don't even have the research paper worked out - like a thesis proposal to a professor, only you're a company); insaner (fund things that are literally insane and would make any investor blush to mention it to another investor), and so forth. It's not hard to be competitive with YC. The thing is, nobody is even trying to be.
- api 12y ago
  All those are valid. One you forgot: YC, like nearly all other accelerators, is implicitly age-ist. Note that I said implicitly. There is no explicit age discrimination that I am aware of, but the entire program is structured in a way that makes it horribly impractical for anyone who isn't a bachelor/bachelorette and childless. You must move to the Bay Area, put in family-unfriendly hours, and live on a quantity of money that would make it impossible to live in the Bay Area with a family (assuming you don't have a lot of savings, a trust, or a high-earning spouse). It just won't work for a huge majority of older people or people with families. The implicit assumption is that all the best talent and ideas can be found among those who pass this implicit filter function. Anyone over 25-30 or who has children is "washed up." ... which creates room for an accelerator to test that assumption. What if -- gasp -- people who have been doing this stuff for a long time are actually better at it? But as you say, nobody is even really trying to compete with YC within their own segment let alone exploring alternative modalities. Edit: another one would be to question the assumption that sole founders are intrinsically doomed. They are certainly at a disadvantage, but that'd create an interesting niche for an accelerator that helped them to compensate for their disadvantages if they otherwise had really great skills and ideas.
  - vasco_ 12y ago
    I disagree. I have 4 kids, I have been married for 15 and my co-founder had a 3 months old when we did YC. And we are from Portugal, so we were away from our families when we went through YC. It was hard and it required sacrifice, but it was certainly worth it and YC was super supportive. Our lives, and the lives of our kids are much better for it.
    - api 12y ago
      I didn't mean to imply that nobody with a family could do this, but that it's structured in such a way as to be strongly biased against people with families/kids. How many others did you see in YC with children?
      - MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
        We're in the current batch, and two of our founders have children. Children aren't the normal topic of conversation when we're meeting other founders, so it's not always obvious.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - vasco_ 12y ago
        In our batch there were at least three teams with founders that had kids. I think that what you mean that is that doing a startup in general is biased against people with kids/families. I agree, but that is mostly because living on a smaller budget with kids is harder. The beautiful thing of a startup is that in most cases you work really hard and at the same take breaks in moments where it is important to be there for your kids. YC is structured in a way where during those three months you kind of take a break with your regular life and focus relentlessly on your company, but I believe that doing that is one of the most brilliant things from YC, it makes all the difference in the world for your chances of success.
    - bbcbasic 12y ago
      I am interested in your story then? Did you incorporate in US and move your family to the US? Did the pressure to do long hours cease once you finished the YC programme and got funding? > Our lives, and the lives of our kids are much better for it. This implies some level of financial success from your participation :-)
larrys 12y ago
I think you are getting blinded by to much of a "halo". After all that's a bit like thinking that someone has to go to an Ivy League school (let's say Harvard) or "game over". We all know that there are many successful people that didn't, and that additionally aren't even college graduates (and didn't drop out of an Ivy School either). And by the way, YC is not the entire entrepreneurial world either.

There's no way any accelerator can be competitive against YC if Peter Thiel is going to be doing office hours

by kkhire 12y ago

There's no way any accelerator can be competitive against YC if Peter Thiel is going to be doing office hours

plainOldText 12y ago

I think Peter Thiel would disagree.

logicallee 12y ago

this is not true. an accelerator can do earlier (before team or product or idea); wider (fund literally anyone who can write five pages in English in a timed setting about their idea); lower (take 0.075% for $2k); faster (an SaaS app that wires you a check within 24 hours, after a human lawyer verifies your details and contract); riskier (billion dollar ideas that don't even have the research paper worked out - like a thesis proposal to a professor, only you're a company); insaner (fund things that are literally insane and would make any investor blush to mention it to another investor), and so forth. It's not hard to be competitive with YC. The thing is, nobody is even trying to be.

api 12y ago
All those are valid. One you forgot: YC, like nearly all other accelerators, is implicitly age-ist. Note that I said implicitly. There is no explicit age discrimination that I am aware of, but the entire program is structured in a way that makes it horribly impractical for anyone who isn't a bachelor/bachelorette and childless. You must move to the Bay Area, put in family-unfriendly hours, and live on a quantity of money that would make it impossible to live in the Bay Area with a family (assuming you don't have a lot of savings, a trust, or a high-earning spouse). It just won't work for a huge majority of older people or people with families. The implicit assumption is that all the best talent and ideas can be found among those who pass this implicit filter function. Anyone over 25-30 or who has children is "washed up." ... which creates room for an accelerator to test that assumption. What if -- gasp -- people who have been doing this stuff for a long time are actually better at it? But as you say, nobody is even really trying to compete with YC within their own segment let alone exploring alternative modalities. Edit: another one would be to question the assumption that sole founders are intrinsically doomed. They are certainly at a disadvantage, but that'd create an interesting niche for an accelerator that helped them to compensate for their disadvantages if they otherwise had really great skills and ideas.
- vasco_ 12y ago
  I disagree. I have 4 kids, I have been married for 15 and my co-founder had a 3 months old when we did YC. And we are from Portugal, so we were away from our families when we went through YC. It was hard and it required sacrifice, but it was certainly worth it and YC was super supportive. Our lives, and the lives of our kids are much better for it.
  - api 12y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that nobody with a family could do this, but that it's structured in such a way as to be strongly biased against people with families/kids. How many others did you see in YC with children?
    - MatthewMcDonald 12y ago
      We're in the current batch, and two of our founders have children. Children aren't the normal topic of conversation when we're meeting other founders, so it's not always obvious.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - vasco_ 12y ago
      In our batch there were at least three teams with founders that had kids. I think that what you mean that is that doing a startup in general is biased against people with kids/families. I agree, but that is mostly because living on a smaller budget with kids is harder. The beautiful thing of a startup is that in most cases you work really hard and at the same take breaks in moments where it is important to be there for your kids. YC is structured in a way where during those three months you kind of take a break with your regular life and focus relentlessly on your company, but I believe that doing that is one of the most brilliant things from YC, it makes all the difference in the world for your chances of success.
  - bbcbasic 12y ago
    I am interested in your story then? Did you incorporate in US and move your family to the US? Did the pressure to do long hours cease once you finished the YC programme and got funding? > Our lives, and the lives of our kids are much better for it. This implies some level of financial success from your participation :-)

larrys 12y ago

I think you are getting blinded by to much of a "halo". After all that's a bit like thinking that someone has to go to an Ivy League school (let's say Harvard) or "game over". We all know that there are many successful people that didn't, and that additionally aren't even college graduates (and didn't drop out of an Ivy School either). And by the way, YC is not the entire entrepreneurial world either.