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Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

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Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#21

Post by ajju »

pg wrote: post #14
transburgh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the assumption that these funds get the talent based on the order in which they were launched?

They only do by default. If one were significantly different, it could do better or worse than that, depending. So far none has though.

Here's an idea for being different:

-$5K to $10K goes much further in many other countries than it does in the valley and most entrepreneurs there don't have the option of moving to the valley because of visa restrictions. Potential investors there should consider this. This is one advantage some locations have over the valley.

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#22

Post by wayt »

I'm one of the Shotput Ventures partners, and I'm looking forward to a great first "class" in Atlanta. We've got an interesting group of partners, with recent business hits in software and web svcs, complementary skills and backgrounds, and good networks. Check out our partners. I think we'll be excellent mentors for our hacker teams, primarily because we love what we're doing and want to help young hackers to build stuff people want and to dare greatly. We appreciate all that YC has done to innovate and evangelize the business model. I'm an especially huge fan of pg's inspirational writing and simple writing style. There are plenty of talented and determined hackers out there who need our mentoring and connections, and it's going to be a ton of fun working with them.

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#23

Post by tbrooks »

lanceweatherby wrote: post #10
jwilliams wrote: post #2

See pg's comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528924 " The root of the problem is that people think seed funding is regional. They think they're starting the YC of St. Louis, or wherever. Then after they get started they realize that in fact the seed firms are all drawing on the same national applicant pool, and that the default fate of the nth seed firm is not to be the YC of St. Louis, as they'd expected, b…

In what may be heresy here on HN I am going to partially disagree with PG. Regional YCs may indeed be of the nth quality bucket, but that does not necessarily doom them to failure anymore then not attending Stanford or MIT dooms a hacker to failure. The proof as they say is in the pudding. TechStars seems to be doing just fine so far. Let's see what Shotput's births before we call their babies ugly.

YC ignores a lot of good ideas because it's really focused on BIG ideas. YC wants to build Paypal, not 37signals. They lean toward ambitious infrastructure ideas which also have a higher failure rate. But there is a huge number of great ideas with lower risk/reward ratios that will still make stellar companies. I say bring it on... it's a great time to be in the HTML writing business. :)

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#25

Post by rjurney »

ajju wrote: post #21
pg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only do by default. If one were significantly different, it could do better or worse than that, depending. So far none has though.

Here's an idea for being different: -$5K to $10K goes much further in many other countries than it does in the valley and most entrepreneurs there don't have the option of moving to the valley because of visa restrictions. Potential investors there should consider this. This is one advantage some locations have over the valley.

Speaking from personal experience, the challenge for doing this in developing nations is that the hard part is being connected enough to a market to know if something can be built in three months that people will pay for. If you're in a developing nation intending to sell to America, you're probably not as close to your users as you need to be because products tend to change rapidly in the early stages of a startup and you need to be interacting directly with potential users and learning from them.

But the money does go 10 times as far, so the idea could have potential. $25K can roll a startup for a year or more on the cheap in Bangalore.

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#26

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

lanceweatherby wrote: post #10
jwilliams wrote: post #2

See pg's comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528924 " The root of the problem is that people think seed funding is regional. They think they're starting the YC of St. Louis, or wherever. Then after they get started they realize that in fact the seed firms are all drawing on the same national applicant pool, and that the default fate of the nth seed firm is not to be the YC of St. Louis, as they'd expected, b…

In what may be heresy here on HN I am going to partially disagree with PG. Regional YCs may indeed be of the nth quality bucket, but that does not necessarily doom them to failure anymore then not attending Stanford or MIT dooms a hacker to failure. The proof as they say is in the pudding. TechStars seems to be doing just fine so far. Let's see what Shotput's births before we call their babies ugly.

Many of us Atlantans have a lot of respect for the people involved in Shotput. As some others here have said, I'll wait to judge until the first class of Shotput companies graduates.

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#27

Post by ajju »

rjurney wrote: post #25
ajju wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an idea for being different: -$5K to $10K goes much further in many other countries than it does in the valley and most entrepreneurs there don't have the option of moving to the valley because of visa restrictions. Potential investors there should consider this. This is one advantage some locations have over the valley.

Speaking from personal experience, the challenge for doing this in developing nations is that the hard part is being connected enough to a market to know if something can be built in three months that people will pay for. If you're in a developing nation intending to sell to America, you're probably not as close to your users as you need to be because products tend to change rapidly in the early stages of a startup a…

Good point. On the other hand countries like India and China are already at a point where there are successful startups serving local customers.

Also, a startup that's doing something like, say Reddit, may not need to be physically close to users to be successful.

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#28

Post by rjurney »

ajju wrote: post #27
rjurney wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from personal experience, the challenge for doing this in developing nations is that the hard part is being connected enough to a market to know if something can be built in three months that people will pay for. If you're in a developing nation intending to sell to America, you're probably not as close to your users as you need to be because products tend to change rapidly in the early stages of a startup a…

Good point. On the other hand countries like India and China are already at a point where there are successful startups serving local customers. Also, a startup that's doing something like, say Reddit, may not need to be physically close to users to be successful.

Serving local customers is key, but even if you're Reddit, I think that ideally you are immersed in a community of people doing similar things. You need that feedback and energy.

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#29

Post by quizbiz »

ajju wrote: post #21
pg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only do by default. If one were significantly different, it could do better or worse than that, depending. So far none has though.

Here's an idea for being different: -$5K to $10K goes much further in many other countries than it does in the valley and most entrepreneurs there don't have the option of moving to the valley because of visa restrictions. Potential investors there should consider this. This is one advantage some locations have over the valley.

reminds me of microloans. It's a growing trend in Africa. I believe there are websites that connect you to farmers in Africa and you actually make good ROI.

Re: Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

#30

Post by ajju »

quizbiz wrote: post #29
ajju wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an idea for being different: -$5K to $10K goes much further in many other countries than it does in the valley and most entrepreneurs there don't have the option of moving to the valley because of visa restrictions. Potential investors there should consider this. This is one advantage some locations have over the valley.

reminds me of microloans. It's a growing trend in Africa. I believe there are websites that connect you to farmers in Africa and you actually make good ROI.

The difference is that I am talking about funding in amounts larger than what microloan sites like Kiva allow (Kiva's top loan amount is ~2K) but more importantly, provide mentoring like YC does. Therefore, it has to be done by experienced entrepreneurs who guide these new entrepreneurs closely.
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