Coding bootcamp Fullstack Academy (YC S12) will fund alumni-founded startups | Hacker News Reader

Coding bootcamp Fullstack Academy (YC S12) will fund alumni-founded startups

techcrunch.com

58 pointsdangerman16 comments

This is not as good as it sounds. First these are inexperienced devs that will not have a chance to work with other developers and learn things.

Secondly, this is then financed with their own money :)?!

I think they do this so they place all this graduates somewhere and give them some work, instead of finding them promised well paid jobs.

If I sound negative, I am losing faith in ability of these schools to produce quality.

I have met some good bootcamp devs, and many bad ones, but I can say for sure that good ones do exist. That being said, I wouldn't give a fresh MIT grad a dime for a new startup. Some people will (I've met them) but it's just too risky. You need to learn from senior devs, I learned the most from grey beards.

Same here, which is why I say this, for bootcamp grads to enter profession, they really need to work side by side with other devs.

Hey Hacker News! I'm Mark Davis...the product hacker at Fullstack Academy, and the guy behind Fullstack Fund.

We're really psyched to start investing in our graduates, so they can create their own startups and make a dent in the universe.

AMA!

"Smart people should build things"

Intrigued to see where this goes. It would be great if you could post status of the companies funded every 6 months or so.

That's a cool idea.

We're big on transparency...e.g. soon we'll be publishing aggregate data about the outcomes for our students. We could apply the same approach to the startups that we fund.

Thanks for a great suggestion...we'll do that!

Is this funding for new grads or for experienced grads?

It's for both. Anyone who graduated from Fullstack or Grace Hopper Academy (our tuition-deferred, all-female school) can apply.

Each startup has to have at least one Fullstack/Grace Hopper grad on their founding team.

We're also opening it up to alumni from Starter League in Chicago (which we acquired earlier this year) and our YC partner school, the Recurse Center.

What's your opinion on investing in your new graduates immediately rather than letting them get some "real world" experience?

Hi Mark! Fullstack seems to be focusing on MEAN stack, is there a requirement for the startups to be based on that technology or do projects using e.g. Golang have a chance as well?

Awesome. I love it when these bootcamps put their money where their mouth is. It shows that they believe in themselves enough to risk money on it.

similar to an example from "Das Kapital" :) - an incubator takes position in another incubator thus indirectly taking positions in the companies funded by that child incubator.

Somehow reminds me of Buffet's corp structure before the SEC forced him to simplify things.

I brought up this idea to my employers at a coding bootcamp in 2014. It was met with mostly blank stares. Glad to see someone else doing it.

hey Mark! how transparent do you want Fullstack to be? do you plan on disclosing graduation rates/standards and placement information?

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