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A horrifying startup accelerator story
131–140 of 146 posts
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#132I'd just like to say that the reason I created Seed-DB ( http://www.seed-db.com ) is because the world of seed accelerators should be more transparent. I've currently got a list of 170+ accelerators around the world, and the list makes it pretty clear which ones get results and which don't. (Or don't care enough about publicizing results). If you have any feedback for me as to what would be useful to you when choosin…
How do you update that list? I'm familiar with a few of the lesser known accelerators on it and I'm aware of some pretty nice exits they've had, but their exit column is listed as $0 on your list. This is probably complicated by the fact that many of the smaller acquisitions ( Also it looks like companies which are very valuable but not formally exited yet (AirBNB, Dropbox etc.) aren't accounted for here... a column…
There are a couple of different lists. The first is the list of accelerators, which I update as soon as I learn about a new accelerator. (Often I add it before they've funded any companies.)
The next list is the list of startups for each accelerator. This is a pretty manual process, though I do give admin permission to accelerators to go in and add their startups themselves. I suspect for the accelerator you're thinking either a) I don't have their full list of startups and/or b) the startups that have exited aren't marked as such on Crunchbase.
You're correct that for many acquisitions I do have to make guesses about exit value; I clearly mark each exit value on Seed-DB with a H/M/L icon to indicate my level of confidence in the value. (Where people have come to me afterward my guesses have been roughly 50/50 over/under.)
I've got some ideas about calculating a valuation, but even if I put that together I would likely not make it public since it's just guesses multiplied by guesses. Plus, there are companies that just buck trends in trying to guess valuation based on funding signals... my favorite example here is Weebly. They went for 4 years on ~$600k of funding before raising a monster $45million round.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#133Site is down for me: "Error establishing a database connection"
That's one hell of a horror story.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> until cash is in the bank I don't change my life. if you're in sales, this is EXTREMELY important, doubly so if you sell for a startup. the deal isn't real until the money shows up. customers will take advantage of your kindness, lie to you, manipulate you, appeal to your vanity, and they can smell desperation from a mile away. "give an inch and they'll take a mile" - these folksy old timey sayings don't come from…
This is an important lesson, but it's not an absolute rule. You need to have a sense for your customers, how much power they have over the money, and how much they'll suffer if you're inflexible. I've spent years working with teachers, who (as patio11 will tell you) are not a great target market for ready cash, but who are very honest. I used to have an informal policy where a teacher would just tell me they were wor…
In your case you have an established business, and you have a class of customers you understand and therefore who you can extend tailored win-win credit policies to. As you note in your edit, that's a different thing than the stuff that changes your life, like all that went in to establishing your companies up front.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#135The accelerator went back on their word fairly early on in the arrangement. When someone does that, that's basically the time to start looking at walking away IME - dishonesty is a matter of habit, chances are they're not going to turn over a new leaf and everything else is going to be fine from there on in.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#136Classic narcissistic personality disorder. Run for the hills. With NPDs, it is always everybody else's fault. Add pathological lying, some bipolar, and maybe just for fun booze/drugs and they'll drive you insane too.
where do you pick bipolar from?
Assuming you're trying to reply to auctiontheory, I read that as borderline personality disorder - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#137This story is really frustrating and sad to hear, but I have to say, in the three years I've been working on my startup, never once has anything good happened from paying for access to any type of person (investors or customers), using any currency (equity or cash). We did YCombinator, which could be described as an "access" play, but apart from that, every time someone has offered us access to something in return fo…
I disagree that no good can come from "paying for access."
First, we must define what is "good". After participating in DreamIt Ventures in 2012, I can say that we extracted immense value by quickly invalidating a B2B software concept. It was taking me months to get one meeting with an enterprise client on my own. With the help of DreamIt's mentors, I secured dozens of meetings in less than six weeks. We learned that the software we were building was ill-fated through those meetings. This was undoubtedly "good" for us, and we paid a mere 6% for that kind of access. In retrospect, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
But your mileage may vary. The value we obtained was highly correlated to the fact that we were pursuing a B2B venture, a sector where DreamIt's mentors could best leverage their networks. In contrast, I saw some consumer-facing companies extract less value from the accelerator program.
In sum, you have to carefully (and honestly) weigh the value that "paid access" can yield. Feelings of frustration in connection to "paid access" likely stem from a miscalculation of the cost/benefits that the access could provide.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://angel.co/socraticlabs seems to fit the bill. Of course, keep in mind that this could very well not be the accelerator.
The MD seems to have confirmed it: https://twitter.com/heatherg/status/373318278833135616 "I've emailed @davidcohen and asked him whether he would be willing to share my response. Awaiting word."
Interesting - tweet is deleted.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we were talking about a young aspiring writer-director moving to Hollywood and similar shenanigans happened, we would not be surprised would we? Based on the OP and your story, I guess tech start ups have truly "arrived".
Funny enough, this all happened in Los Angeles. :)
LOL. That may not be a coincidence.
I hear that the VCs are flummoxed -- they have pots of money but they are not finding good prospects. The latest fad is to sprinkle little amounts of money around and hope they can pluck a promising seedling.
The important point is that there are VCs out there willing to write little 5 and 6 figure checks, for the hope of a real deal in the future. That has attracted professional deal makers, and this career looks especially attractive to people with weak technical chops for this industry but fancy they can make up for it with schmoozing.
Deal makers have a chicken and egg problem. They cannot get non-small checks without eggs in the basket. They cannot show any person with real money the eggs in the basket without promising future non-small checks to the future chicks. And sometimes people with money decide to not write the big checks until they see pretty chicks. Oops.
You were an egg. The deal maker here cajoled you to rolled into their basket with small amounts of money. And you were never given enough money to crack out of your shell.
I would point out that the deal maker is not screwing you over on purpose. But they may be telling you wildly overoptimistic things, while they are scrambling to see if any of a dozen different people will write a real check. When they refuse to explain, it is because they do not want to own up to making promises which they were not sure they could deliver.
As for Los Angeles, I may not have the best ear to the ground, but it does not sound like a top 5 location for recruiting tech talent. (I know you moved there, but the point still stands.) I would guess that those are third string deal makers who happen to believe they can rub elbows with unsophisticated money in the Hollywood area. (If they were really good, they would in SF Bay, Boston, Austin, NY, where the real VC connections can be found.)
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#140My experience was not nearly this bad, but still horrifying for me, my co-founder, and our families. We had been talking off and on with an accelerator for about a month. We had pitched them, had a few calls, but lived on the other side of the country. They wanted to meet in person which was really not feasible for us. We worked at full-time jobs while hacking away on the side and scraping together whatever money we…
I have a horror story to share with regards to my experience within the LA ecosystem, but unfortunately now is not a good time and I don't have an anon account handy right now.;) So accelanon your deal was in LA for $40K. There's only a handful of them. Hmm. My situation was pretty bad and I drove 3200 miles and rented a place for 4 expensive months. It was stressful, fun but not what I thought I was getting myself i…
What about LA as being a good market for startups? We are expanding there soon :D