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Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

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Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#11

Post by yeldarb »

danial wrote: post #8

> The accelerator won’t give them cash but will help founders incorporate their startups, give them guidance via a network of experts, and toss some other substantial perks like $100K worth of cloud credits and a roundtrip ticket to San Francisco to inject a bit of face-to-face time into the process. Question to those of you who are in the program: what Pioneer perk is most valuable to you? Is it access to the Pionee…

For us it’s actually the weekly updates, voting system, and leaderboard itself. It gamifies productivity.

The peer group is awesome too.

I’ll add the caveat that we “won” relatively recently so haven’t participated in many of the formalized programs yet (eg summit in SF, livestream).

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#12

Post by zcanann »

I'm also backed. I'm working on Squally, a PC game to teach low-level comp sci.

My two cents:

Other accelerators are under pressure to only fund companies that will be "top of their batch" come demo day.

This often means rejecting small projects, solo founders, and pre-traction companies.

However, Pioneer welcomes these companies with open arms. Make no mistake, it's still hard to get in. It took me ~8 months of sustained effort before I was accepted.

But once you're in, you're in the company of helpful people who are just as hard working and talented, and have access to valuable mentorship.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#14

Post by adamonkey »

I'm shocked by the lack of diversity of those who win Pioneer, given that this is supposed to democratize funding for anyone across the globe.

Right now, it's mostly peer recognition which is prone to favor projects the dominant demographic finds cool. But I could see the competition based on revenue be more democratizing.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#15

Post by 666_howitzer »

I got into the program, like a week ago. Still learning the ropes, I'm having a great time with them so far. Their internal slack group is really fun and their team is also quite responsive when it comes to resolving your queries.

On a deeper level, I really appreciate the strategic approach they have chosen when it comes to supporting and nurturing the entrepreneurs that they have backed, where the default approach is not writing a check to make the problems go away. But, actually listening to the myriad problems that crop up over the course of your startups journey and actually making a concerted effort to solve said problems.

Related: https://nadiaeghbal.com/microgrants#designing-for-impact

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#16

Post by 666_howitzer »

adamonkey wrote: post #14

I'm shocked by the lack of diversity of those who win Pioneer, given that this is supposed to democratize funding for anyone across the globe. Right now, it's mostly peer recognition which is prone to favor projects the dominant demographic finds cool. But I could see the competition based on revenue be more democratizing.

I think this problem has more to do with the pipeline than their selection process.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#17

Post by hengelpao »

danial wrote: post #8

> The accelerator won’t give them cash but will help founders incorporate their startups, give them guidance via a network of experts, and toss some other substantial perks like $100K worth of cloud credits and a roundtrip ticket to San Francisco to inject a bit of face-to-face time into the process. Question to those of you who are in the program: what Pioneer perk is most valuable to you? Is it access to the Pionee…

For us, the community and the weekly updates. We got feedbacks from all over the world and it is awesome.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#18

Post by danial »

isaacaderogba wrote: post #10
danial wrote: post #8

> The accelerator won’t give them cash but will help founders incorporate their startups, give them guidance via a network of experts, and toss some other substantial perks like $100K worth of cloud credits and a roundtrip ticket to San Francisco to inject a bit of face-to-face time into the process. Question to those of you who are in the program: what Pioneer perk is most valuable to you? Is it access to the Pionee…

I'm not sure the perks are what encouraged me to apply in the first place. They always sort of felt like a nice add-on. Rather, it was for validation that what I was building seemed valuable. Perhaps this ties in to your status signalling point. Also, it was refreshing to be able to compete on weekly progress as opposed to writing some lengthy business application.

Validation of product is useful. Makes sense, thanks.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#19

Post by alexgunnarson »

Pioneer made all the difference for us! It really gives you an amazing amount of focus and energy to do the best thing for your startup, which is what should be obvious but isn't: to make actual progress (i.e. make something users want, not e.g. do startup competitions or get featured in the press). That's the one metric you're evaluated on — progress — which is the only one that matters to the life of your startup anyway.

Thanks so much to Daniel and everyone else for making Pioneer a great experience!

P.S. — My cofounder and I are building Deft (shopdeft.com), which is product search for humans, not robots. You can type how you speak, search by image, and search over every product site!

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#20

Post by adamonkey »

666_howitzer wrote: post #16
adamonkey wrote: post #14

I'm shocked by the lack of diversity of those who win Pioneer, given that this is supposed to democratize funding for anyone across the globe. Right now, it's mostly peer recognition which is prone to favor projects the dominant demographic finds cool. But I could see the competition based on revenue be more democratizing.

I think this problem has more to do with the pipeline than their selection process.

YC has better diversity stats though? And I don't think it's because its pipeline is too different.
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