I do not understand how YC is anything at all like Paypal.
Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#12I assume you plan on raising money? In your case, you would likely get even more than a 6% valuation bump, making YC worth it on that alone. I think there are some key details missing in this post which make it hard to tell why you were in fact rejected. In addition to the accelerator, you've also been going at it for 3+ years, and are only now hitting 1M For B2B, that is unfortunately on the really slow end of thing…
I'm fairly down on Quora, but ~everything https://www.quora.com/profile/Jason-M.-Lemkin has written looks pretty amazing -- I wish he'd write a book or something.
I suspect he's too busy investing and slinging tickets to his annual conference. Conference Money > Book Money.
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm fairly down on Quora, but ~everything https://www.quora.com/profile/Jason-M.-Lemkin has written looks pretty amazing -- I wish he'd write a book or something.
I suspect he's too busy investing and slinging tickets to his annual conference. Conference Money > Book Money.
Nice thing about that conference: they're letting people volunteer and get free entrance.
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#14You missed an opportunity to explain what your startup does, no link in the blog entry, blog only contains that one entry. Also +3 years at it is not a good indicator for getting at YC which as per Sam's post prefers very early startups but good luck anyways.
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#15I do not understand how YC is anything at all like Paypal.
It's like how when PayPal is processing your payments and they connect you with really successful people who take in the same kind of payments so you can learn from them and get their advice, and then connect you with other people who just take in a lot of payments in general for their advice too.
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#16I do not understand how YC is anything at all like Paypal.
This also struck me. It seems as though YC gives you $120K, advice, contacts and exposure. Obviously it's worth $120K plus whatever the other happens to be worth. They take equity from the company in return.
Paypal offers a necessary service to a company (payment). They charge a service fee.
I'm not going to say YC isn't useful or worth the equity for some people. However, you've got think that a $120K loan is pretty damn cheap these days. Also, I pay my accountant a few thousand a year and he gives me incredible business advice. Possibly I'm just lucky, but I suspect that young founders do not really understand the options they have open to them for growing a business.
I view my accountant as a necessary business expense. I even get to write off the money I pay him from my income. That's more like Paypal. Similarly, on a loan, I have to pay interest. That's a cost (and possibly necessary expense). If I need to pay a consultant to help me improve my image or make contacts, that's a cost.
Giving away part of your company for a service? Not at all like Paypal :-) Personally, I'd rather pay an expense than give up part of my company. Obviously depends on the situation, though.
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#17Since he didn't link to it himself, for those curious, Karthik's company is https://welink.com/ - location-based social media monitoring. e.g., sentiment within a sports stadium or shopping mall.
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#18Aside from your confusing logic, it drives me nuts that half my screen is your body shot while I'm supposed to be reading your blog post. Very distracting. Sorry if this is nonconstructive.
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most accelerators are profit generating initiatives that while started to be beneficial are unable to scale and fulfill their purpose.
Accelerators are actually a terrible business because you only make money if you get a big hit (which most won't), and even then it can take 10 years or more to realize the gains. I predict most will disappear in the next 5 years.
What's your advice for a new accelerator (or any investor for that matter) in measuring if they are doing well? The problem is one of retarded measurement of success. It feels like you are doing well because you are deploying money, you are being highly selective, etc. But you can still be slowly dying without noticing. What are some good predictors? You guys at YC have some heuristics for identifying good founders, but I believe it would be hard for new accelerators/investors to use those, because they are highly subjective and I would argue most new accelerators/investors will not know how to assess those founders characteristics when they are getting started. Would you advice people to experiment for a few years (literally being willing to loose all the money invested) just to develop that ability to measure, and be ready to be a good accelerator/investor a few years down the line?
Re: Why we applied to YC despite having gone through another accelerator
#20[deleted]