Similar to sports agency and drafting young athletes. Will tech hiring become televised events with sideline commentary?
A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
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Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#22I'm at month 3 of the EF process. Happy to answer any questions :-)
Once you get past the headlines, is it more like a course (where you pay tuition) or an incubator (where you commit to a % of your future company in exchange for money)?
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#23> 10% of applicants are accepted after multiple rounds of interviews and even a logics and computing test. It's interesting to note that they are trying to hire entrepreneurs the same way Google was trying to hire programmers 10 years ago.
It's actually moderately appropriate here if they're "drafting" out of school. (Potential versus having real work to show)
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#24So they give you a couple grand. What other value do they provide? Seems like a bad deal for people who actually have good ideas and can execute.
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't YC give 120K for 7%? An incubator/accelerator that isn't as good as YC (and therefore has less to offer) should have a better deal than that to make up for the difference. Given YC as a baseline, an investment of 10K GBP == 15488 USD should be taking less than 0.9% of the company.
>An incubator/accelerator that isn't as good as YC should have a better deal than that to make up for the difference Only from the perspective of someone being recruited by both YC and the alternative. If YC isn't an option (as it isn't for most people), then it doesn't much matter whether or not YC is offering a better deal to someone else.
And at some point your only option is Vinny, who hangs out all day at the bar over on 4th. His deals can be...problematic, but he'll give them to anyone.
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#26EF solves a real problem in the UK.
Our universities don't exhibit anywhere near the same 'entrepreneurial culture' vs the US equivalents (although this is slowly improving - thankfully). We also don't have the big tech companies (google/fb etc) with the means to compete with banks/hedge-funds for the highest quality engineers/PMs. In the US, these institutions serve as natural breeding grounds for startups. Without these environments, it becomes much more difficult to find like-minded people to develop ideas and raises the time/cost associated with doing so.
I joined EF on the current cohort for this reason and have been surprised (to the upside) with my fellow cohort members. They have managed to recruit some exceptionally talented and motivated people who would be difficult to find otherwise. Also, apart from the cash investment (which just serves to pay your living costs), they have a great network of industry contacts, alumni and investors.
The jury is out on whether the EF model will succeed in producing valuable companies. However, given the level of technical talent it is attracting, they are definitely solving a real problem and I believe it will outperform the YC-style accelerators who have been struggling in Europe. Hopefully they will open the investment fund up to alumni in the near future :)
Message me if you have any questions - would be happy to answer.
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#27I'm at month 3 of the EF process. Happy to answer any questions :-)
>pre-idea, pre-team
Assuming this was true for you? do you have an idea & team now? How long were you funded/hired without these two in place? Theoretically how long can one last in the program if you dont find these 2?
How long have you been burning their cash, have you raised other funds? You could be considered an even Riskier (debatable) investment than the alternate of an actual startup with an MVP actively looking for funding, so does their percentage reflect that? Did you pay an entrance fee as well?
Thanks!
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#28The 30-year-old with a PhD in neuroscience from Cambridge University plans to set his “media-truth-detector” loose on what he calls Russian propaganda, mostly against his native Ukraine.
Unfeasible and uninvestable, but good if you want to get an EU grant I guess. Who is even the target market? Meanwhile just follow all russian, ukrainian and western media sources and compare them.
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#29£10k for an 8% equity stake, how does this compare to other funding in London? The article mentions the "Founder Institute" provides £1k for 3.5%.
Just as afraid to invest as any other VC/acc/angels in London. This is why it's not a Silicon Valley. I mean how are you even supposed to rent a fancy office in the center of London?
Re: A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”
#30EF solves a real problem in the UK. Our universities don't exhibit anywhere near the same 'entrepreneurial culture' vs the US equivalents (although this is slowly improving - thankfully). We also don't have the big tech companies (google/fb etc) with the means to compete with banks/hedge-funds for the highest quality engineers/PMs. In the US, these institutions serve as natural breeding grounds for startups. Without…
So, in a nutshell, EF is trying to recruit people from different areas who wants to be entrepreneurs, but doesn't have an idea/team, and EF will create suitable teams out of these people and give them money to build some product?
I have a question. Who exactly will decide what the product would be?Is this something those people would decide among themselves, or the EF would put them on a particular project idea they think is suitable for that team?