A horrifying startup accelerator story
davidgcohen.com
A horrifying startup accelerator story
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Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#2I see no problem in naming names. It's for the benefit of everyone here. Otherwise its just another sad story which we've heard the likes of before.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#3Have fun figuring out which one it is: http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#4Seems mostly a story about one problematic manager with some personality disorder(s).
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#5Why anyone thinks we need the details, is strange. You partner up, found things weren't right and continued on. It doesn't become a horror story at the end. The team chose to live in a bad situation and let it develop. Every single sentence of this should have been ended with, "I know I should have bailed out, but I didn't."
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#6"The weird thing is that the MD keeps making intros, speaking highly of us and sending people our way. We think she does it because she doesn’t want us talking about our experiences."
Well that doesn't seem too bad, it even feels like the story had a happy ending as it sounds like they've been able to get investors and the startup is working.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#7Have fun figuring out which one it is: http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators
The numbers are amazing, it really puts in to context the meaning of Venture Capital!. Just a bunch of accelerators are getting exits so far.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#8With that many red flags, why would anyone accept an investment and enter a relationship with such an organization? The things people will do for funding... I'd rather have a day job or a consulting gig in a heartbeat compared to a situation like that.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#9This 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 for something else, we've always politely declined and then just gone and won the business or relationship on our own merits.
Gatekeepers suck, and doing business with gatekeepers leads startups to doing sucky things and pulls them down as well.
The minute I read him deciding to do a second accelerator so he could get access to "his vertical" I started getting a sinking feeling in my stomach.
Re: A horrifying startup accelerator story
#10[deleted]