Stanford Students Build Their Own Y Combinator | Hacker News Reader

Stanford Students Build Their Own Y Combinator

techcrunch.com

49 pointsmoolave17 comments

Open articleView on HN

So I'm guessing their thinking is something along the following lines:

1) Stanford student has idea.

2) We help Stanford student bring idea to market.

3) Stanford student get mega-rich.

4) Stanford student pays for new wing/department/scholarship/professorship.

Is that basically the idea here? I know it's founded by undergrads and the business school has disowned it, but there has to be some reason they would do this, right?

Their site says "This is an educational initiative and not a profit-making venture." Sounds like a great way to get some experience in startups. They get to meet with a lot of well-connected VCs and put them in touch with some smart Stanford students. Not bad for some kids who haven't graduated from college.

I see... so the incentive is that they will have a resume booster. Makes sense I suppose, but where are they getting the stipends with which to pay the founders?

It sounds like the group is not part of the official Stanford bureaucracy -- as shown by the fact that the B-school allegedly banned students from joining (that's unclear to me, other than as evidence that it's not official).

Maybe they are hoping for IP rights.

Most of the feedback here is focused on what are the ends of this program. The important part is the means. The world has unlimited space for great innovators. Ycombinator is a great program but no program has unlimited resources. These students are codifying activity that would be happening on their campus anyway, and cutting through the bureaucratic steps that are usually inherent in anything that happens on a university campus.

I expect to see more collaboration in the future. Right now most of the 'seed accelerator' programs don't collaborate with each other. However, many of these programs will eventually become friendly with each other just like rival fraternities and universities literally play ball with each other. At this level of investment I believe the higher wisdom is that the rising tide lift all ships vs a zero sum game.

There's about a dozen grammar and spelling mistakes in this short article.

Ironically, the organization recognizes the importance of presentation because it offers speaker training to CS majors. Can they get some PR training too? The document reflects very poorly on them.

Oh, you know how TC is. A better example of a classy article could be from one of their writers, Jeff Carr.

Nonetheless, they have a great team and are still one of the best sources of up-to-the-minute tech news.

"There're about a dozen...", or "There are about a dozen...".

"... modeled after the incubator Y Combinator, except it take zero equity"

It will be interesting to see how this affects the other YC-alikes. Will they feel pressured to compete on "price", or is demand for funding so great that they can keep taking the same equity they used to?

Except Y Combinator is not an incubator. From the FAQs:

"Is Y Combinator an incubator?

No. The defining quality of incubators seems to be that companies work out of the investor's space. We think that's a bad idea; it makes founders feel like employees. "

I doubt this will directly do too much, since the requirement that a team member be a Stanford undergard will prevent most from applying.

They probably really need to compete on prestige. Owning 94% of a company that's worth millions is way better than owning 98% of a company that fails, or even one that's worth fewer millions, so founders really should go with whichever accelerator they think will give them best chance of success

So the main thing that Techstars et al will probably need to do is convince entrepreneurs that they're a really good, rather than enticing them by offering a few thousand dollars more for a couple percentage points less equity.

Why did the Graduate School of Business disown this program?

1. Are the heads of the program shady? Personal beef with the dean?

2. Is it pure "Not Invented Here" thinking?

3. Is there an unnamed hitch in the deal that makes it unattractive?

It seems like a "Win-Win" Engineers get to work with some really bright, value add (competent) MBAs. MBA's get access to strong engineering contacts. This is a no brainer along the lines of combining peanut butter and chocolate.

I'm just really surprised as all the Stanford MBA's I've met are super bright and action oriented, far from the standard blue shirt "Business" guy stereotype. Hopefully they will join in the second round.

Taking zero equity seems like an awful idea. What's the incentive for this to continue existing in the long-term?

The same incentive for Stanford University itself to exist.

TC seems to be down? I don't see an article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com