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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

#41

Post by pyankoff »

textread wrote: post #31

Is this kinda similar to 'Entrepreneurs First'?

I would say not really, apart from the fact that they both fund individuals or projects at the earliest possible stage.

EF is in-person and more focused on matching co-founders and forming teams. You need to have a project for Pioneer, while EF accepts people based on their profile/interviews.

You can say that all accelerators are pretty similar: you get investment, listen to some speakers, attend office hours, etc. So what matters in the end is the network of people running the program and participating in it.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#42

Post by devmunchies »

alexcnwy wrote: post #39
devmunchies wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I think it has the same problem as IndieHackers (which stripe also invested in / acquired), where it’s mostly for people who don’t have anything going for them. If you already know what you need to do it’s a waste of your attention. It’s becomes social media for founders. And anything social will promote what is popular or trendy to the tribe, and some of the actual better businesses are neglected because they a…

I sort of agree but Indiehackers does have loads of useful content especially the interviews with successful bootstrapped founders (who I agree aren’t really on the forums much)

Yeah I agree. I go on IH several times a week out of habit. The podcast is solid.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#43

Post by kulesh »

djstein wrote: post #9
kulesh wrote: post #2

I'm one of the founders backed by Pioneer and Daniel Gross, we make Karma: peer recognition and appreciation platform ( https://karmabot.chat ). We have passed a 'Python script' phase and actively enjoying the tournament.

just wanted to say, your landing page is awesome

Thanks! team++

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#44

Post by adamonkey »

anonsivalley652 wrote: post #34
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.

How about what it's like to be Asian and apply to Harvard? Insisting on equivalency of outcome leads to collective punishment discrimination of certain groups to pre-ordain a grand social experiment outcome with an agenda. Instead, focus on merits and potential of individuals, not on identifying groups labels or physical attributes. Please stop mindlessly-aping rhetorical, happy-clappy feel-good-isms and abusing word…

Fair point about my misuse of words, :). "democratizing" was a poor word choice.

"Giving opportunity" would be more appropriate, and is the vocabulary Daniel Gross uses. He specifically mentions that he wants to find more female founders. I hope he succeeds; I am just a bit shocked by the state so far. It would be great to know what is causing this imbalance, whether it is its avenues of marketing, the messages it sends through marketing, or something else. Because there is a lot of diversity out there.

Sounds like you are concerned that it would be a move towards a direction that is less fair rather than one that is more. Asians/Harvard is unfair. I think the point is making sure opportunity is given fairly so that individuals can be evaluated based on merit.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#45

Post by juliawu »

Uptrenda wrote: post #22

To best honest I don't see the point of this. I tried Pioneer and all the updates people wrote were vanity updates designed to look impressive and impossible to validate. I used the platform for a while with the hope of perhaps winning some perks in the future. But then I found myself spending all my time on trying to market my project and present my updates to be appealing to the rest of the "contestants" rather tha…

I thought I was going to have the same problem with my blockchain project, and ended up becoming a winner despite the jargon in my updates. The updates pushed me to work on a "wow feature" every week in hopes of winning support from voters, and encouraged me to communicate progress better (helps with storytelling and good practice for product/investor updates). Also, promising applicants get vetted by experts.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#46

Post by baristaGeek »

awb wrote: post #23

> Y Combinator invest $150K in startups for a 7% slice of equity, by comparison, a $20K investment from Pioneer will cost founders 5% of their company plus the 1% they gave up to join the accelerator in the first place. The 1% for advice, status, etc. sounds like a good deal. $20k for 5% though sounds really steep unless you're planning on a very low exit (under $1M).

Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders being backed.

Not really. YC used to invest that amount 10 years ago for 6-7%. Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, etc. were definitely not planned for "very low exits."

These days people get into YC with pretty elaborate stuff. I think that an underrated founder with just an idea or an mvp with little or no traction, wouldn't get into YC today (think Airbnb, Reddit, etc.).

Pioneer is building a model to invest in deals earlier in the pipeline. It will probably give them outsized returns in the future.

Re: Ex-YC partner Daniel Gross rethinks the accelerator

#47

Post by baristaGeek »

Uptrenda wrote: post #22

To best honest I don't see the point of this. I tried Pioneer and all the updates people wrote were vanity updates designed to look impressive and impossible to validate. I used the platform for a while with the hope of perhaps winning some perks in the future. But then I found myself spending all my time on trying to market my project and present my updates to be appealing to the rest of the "contestants" rather tha…

I do agree that some stuff needs to be fixed: For example, your weekly update stands out more if you add emojis.

However, it's flawed to think that you can't win building something highly technical and abstract. We won with a highly technical project. A PCI compliance-as-a-service cloud container. A self-contained Docker distributed through a Kubernetes pod.

Not everybody understood the technical jargon, and it's ok. People liked us because we were trying to solve something important.

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