A venture capital firm says it invests in people “pre-idea, pre-team”

Michael, what you've just written is a gratuitously negative comment[1] that adds nothing. Guess what, 99.999% of getting funded happened in Earth's prehistory of 4.5 billion years, at any point during which things could have gone differently and precluded humanity and culture. Out of the remaining 0.001% - 45,000 years - scarcely ten thousand consisted of the establishment of western civilization and only the scant past few decades have established an Internet and a culture where literally anyone in the western world with an idea can start making it a reality, on a physical (if not cultural) level - i.e. physically nothing is required that the average person cannot access. Physically you do not need access to anything except knowledge and culture, which are actively working to take away. You are stealing.

The way to expand this opportunity is not to focus on the first 99.99999% of history, but the next ten years. You add nothing and take significant amounts away from that. I'm sick of your negativity. Here's a fact: I'm not asian, but asians are far more likely to get funded. SO WHAT! How does that change whether I'm taking the time to build something?

Michael go build something. Anyone can call people names. People should downvote your negative comments on sight. Besides being policy here, anyone who is downvoting you is literally creating good in the world. Because you are actively preventing the expansion of a culture of building. We might not have the power to get a sixty year old who had to go work early in life and received no formal education funded, regardless of this person's merits or ideas. But we can - and should, are required to - downvote you, and contribute to a positive culture where in five years, when that person is sixty-five, and has spent the past five years building something, he can be.

[1] the definition of which is that it is not new, not useful, not insightful, and adds absolutely nothing while being negative. Similar to if you said to a commenter: "by the way YOU SUCK at every skill, when compared to Mozart at music". This is undeniably true, he started at the age of four and specialized very hard. It is a comment nobody would disagree with on a literal level. It is also an absolutely worthless comment that adds nothing: the only reason anyone would write it is so that they could say the word "YOU SUCK" and then weasel out of it. Of course you should get downvoted, so hard you delete your comments which add nothing. Go build something, Michael.

I've never been through the programme, but I've worked with several people who have.

Most young entrepreneurs who "go it alone" tend to pick up a network of useful contacts - advisors, introducers, investors, corporate buyers, talented potential co-founders/employees etc - over a period of a few years. EF are very good at speeding up that process, so when you're starting your first company you've already got a base of people around you who can provide you with the support and connection you need, without you devoting large portions of your time to it.

It's easy for young entrepreneurs to downplay the importance of that network because there's a selection bias towards confident naivety amongst people who've decided to set up their own company rather than following a safer, more established path (I know I did when I first started), but looking back on it, objectively I'd say joining them is a good idea for almost any graduate entrepreneur.

Having someone who, without any real effort from you, can represent you to a VC from a position of power, make warm introductions to large numbers of angels in your domain, find you really good candidates for early-stage roles in your company, or introduce you to people in big companies who're actively looking to buy products from startups is a blessing you can almost overlook if you've got it but helps you avoid some serious pitfalls.

They fund individuals for a fixed, three month period, during which you are free to work on whatever and with whomever you want.

After three months, they invest £10000 (in exchange for 8% equity) in all teams that are settled on an idea and seem promising.

There are no fees of any kind.

(disclosure: I'm on the current cohort)

Using a throwaway account to attack someone is not cool. If you have the balls (or the equivalent for the other gender), stand up and make the comment in your own name.

Until you're a successful founder from a bad family background and no history of founding startups, no ivy league education, and no nest egg to fall back in your 20s, you shouldn't make such aggressive rants.