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Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

tech.mn

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Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#11

Post by rdouble »

caseyallen wrote: post #9
projectileboy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I understand... Do the full-time developers that are provided become partners?

Hey guys, I'm cofounder of Project Skyway. Ownership is a sacred thing -- we don't tinker with that at all. The dev team takes no equity. After all, you're running the company, not us. We just help with the resources and motivation. The dev team in India (which my cofounder Cem has worked with for years) are merely a perk we provide to our companies. It's one benefit of many. If there's already a CTO in the company t…

Do you have to use the offshore dev team?

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#12

Post by jrockway »

Now that the Tevatron is being decommissioned, perhaps we can reuse it as a "tech accelerator". One stream will be VCs at 512GeV, and the other stream will be people with ideas for Facebook clones. Then we just aim them at each other, and suddenly the HN frontpage will have 1TeV less annoyance.

What I meant to say is: "tech accelerator" is a dumb name.

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#13

Post by caseyallen »

rdouble wrote: post #11
caseyallen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey guys, I'm cofounder of Project Skyway. Ownership is a sacred thing -- we don't tinker with that at all. The dev team takes no equity. After all, you're running the company, not us. We just help with the resources and motivation. The dev team in India (which my cofounder Cem has worked with for years) are merely a perk we provide to our companies. It's one benefit of many. If there's already a CTO in the company t…

Do you have to use the offshore dev team?

No. Heck, we might not have any of our companies interested in going that route. But the option's there and we'll have a BA at their disposal. How many business minded entrepreneurs do you know that couldn't manage a contract developer if his life depended on it? We teach them how.

The bigger point here is that for the first time ever guys who are non-coders but have domain expertise and the ability to take the product to market now have an option. Every other accelerator will slam their door in your face.

We're pretty pumped about this. Having a tech cofounder is massively helpful, but we don't feel the lack of one discounts your value to zero.

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#14

Post by SkyMarshal »

caseyallen wrote: post #13
rdouble wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have to use the offshore dev team?

No. Heck, we might not have any of our companies interested in going that route. But the option's there and we'll have a BA at their disposal. How many business minded entrepreneurs do you know that couldn't manage a contract developer if his life depended on it? We teach them how. The bigger point here is that for the first time ever guys who are non-coders but have domain expertise and the ability to take the produ…

Sounds like you guys have identified a problem in the startup incubator business and are attempting to provide a solution for it, though from reading PG it sounds like there are very good reasons for the existence of that problem. Good luck!

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#15

Post by xal »

crawdad1313 wrote: post #4

This is a long time coming. Project Skyway has the coolest selection process ever for an accelerator plus they don't require a technical co-founder because they are providing every single team 2 full-time developers.

Kudos to the launch.

The makeup of the founding team thing will be the make or break. I've barely seen a recent success story of a startup where less then 100% of the founders were technical. It used to be possible but I expect that times have changed in this regard.

Bluntly, this approach sounds wrong to me from an investment portfolio strategy point of view but I'm glad you are taking the risk and try it.

I definitely think that being in Minnesota will be a competitive advantage however. The area is vastly underrated and pretty incredible talents live and work there. Best of luck to your team and project.

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#16

Post by wheels »

xal wrote: post #15
crawdad1313 wrote: post #4

This is a long time coming. Project Skyway has the coolest selection process ever for an accelerator plus they don't require a technical co-founder because they are providing every single team 2 full-time developers.

Kudos to the launch. The makeup of the founding team thing will be the make or break. I've barely seen a recent success story of a startup where less then 100% of the founders were technical. It used to be possible but I expect that times have changed in this regard. Bluntly, this approach sounds wrong to me from an investment portfolio strategy point of view but I'm glad you are taking the risk and try it. I definit…

> I've barely seen a recent success story of a startup where less then 100% of the founders were technical.

Groupon and Zyngas's founders aren't programmers. I'd say they're the two biggest hits of the last 5 years.

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#17

Post by kovar »

xal wrote: post #15
crawdad1313 wrote: post #4

This is a long time coming. Project Skyway has the coolest selection process ever for an accelerator plus they don't require a technical co-founder because they are providing every single team 2 full-time developers.

Kudos to the launch. The makeup of the founding team thing will be the make or break. I've barely seen a recent success story of a startup where less then 100% of the founders were technical. It used to be possible but I expect that times have changed in this regard. Bluntly, this approach sounds wrong to me from an investment portfolio strategy point of view but I'm glad you are taking the risk and try it. I definit…

What is your sample size for your observation about 100% of the founders being technical? a) "startups" doesn't just cover high tech and social networking. b) There are a lot of quiet successes out there.

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#18

Post by caseyallen »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #14
caseyallen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Heck, we might not have any of our companies interested in going that route. But the option's there and we'll have a BA at their disposal. How many business minded entrepreneurs do you know that couldn't manage a contract developer if his life depended on it? We teach them how. The bigger point here is that for the first time ever guys who are non-coders but have domain expertise and the ability to take the produ…

Sounds like you guys have identified a problem in the startup incubator business and are attempting to provide a solution for it, though from reading PG it sounds like there are very good reasons for the existence of that problem. Good luck!

Thanks for the well wishes, SkyMarshal.

We just think it's something worth experimenting with. PG (and David Cohen et al.) are engineers. We think their bias towards developers is natural but until we see empirical data showing otherwise we think there's still potential for non-coders to successfully start and grow a product company.

There's no question there's pros and cons.

The only question is can we address the cons and accentuate the pros. (See Quora: What are the pros and cons of a non-technical founder for a start-up: http://qr.ae/clRm )

The good news is we'll find out fairly quickly!

Re: Minnesota’s First Tech Accelerator Now Taking Applications

#20

Post by projectileboy »

caseyallen wrote: post #9
projectileboy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I understand... Do the full-time developers that are provided become partners?

Hey guys, I'm cofounder of Project Skyway. Ownership is a sacred thing -- we don't tinker with that at all. The dev team takes no equity. After all, you're running the company, not us. We just help with the resources and motivation. The dev team in India (which my cofounder Cem has worked with for years) are merely a perk we provide to our companies. It's one benefit of many. If there's already a CTO in the company t…

It does. Being from MN, I really admire what you're trying to do, so I don't know how to ask this nicely, so I'll just ask it... how do you justify your terms being the same as YC when your value proposition is so much less? You can't possibly argue that your network is as valuable as YC's.
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