Seed Camp - A YC style startup bootcamp for Europe
seedcamp.com
seedcamp.com
There is a one-week intensive learning experience, a week long Startup Camp. At the end, they pick 5 teams to invest E50,000 for a 10% stake. One week will give them enough time to really get a sense for the team members. The rejected applicants still get the benefits of the one week program.
edit: Seems to add extra characters in front when I use the character
1) it is a collective rather than an individual initiative by members of the VC community, serial entrepreneurs, mentors, and angel investors and 2) it incorporates the challenges specific to European entrepreneurs in starting up businesses.
Number 1 is not an advantage. We're entrepreneurs, mentors, and angel investors. The only thing we're not is VCs. But including VCs in a seed funding operation is a bad idea. It means any startup that doesn't get a follow-on funding offer from those VCs will be marked as a loser to all other VCs. Techstars has the same problem.
I'm not sure what number 2 means exactly, but it is unfortunately worded. "Incorporating challenges" sounds like they mean it will be more difficult for a startup to succeed in London than in the US. That's probably not what they mean, but it's probably true.
Is he worried they will crowd the marketplace and diminish the success rate of YC companies? Does he think they are so poorly constructed that they will harm the young people who get involved? Or is it just a spirit of competetiveness?
But you have to admit that, e.g. YEurope is just a cut and paste from YCombinator: from the name, to the website (same Heysan rolling stuff!), the amount they offer, the percentage they take, the application form, etc.
Seriously, who would want to be funded by guys who just copy and can't create even their own ideas and thoughts? It may explain why european startups are just copying US startup concepts to adapt them to european markets...
If they aren't hackers... well, I suppose that just leaves space in the market for someone to go them one better, no?
Basically my point is: as good as the original? Probably not. Good enough, and better than nothing for some people? Probably.
One thing I've learned from being around technology for so long is never to bet against the possibility of scaling things.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29072
As far as I'm concerned, "it's all good" as they say. YC seems like a cool idea, so if you guys manage to scale it, great! If other people do something similar, that's good too from my point of view.
I'll defer to your longer involvement with technology, but YC is inherently a people operation, rather than a technology operation. I think technology scales more than people in some ways, but like I said, you guys are doing something good, so it's all icing on the cake, I guess.
But that's just my guess.
Sounds like a reasonable guess, and it might work, although it must be said that PG took something like 10 years to go from viaweb to YC, which is probably healthy in terms of gaining experience.
Oh well... should be interesting to watch in any case!
Plus, they'd have a financial stake in the applicants. One reason the YC teams would be composed of successful startup founders is because successful founders have money to invest, and $15k is pocket change. With that kind of self-sustaining cycle, there is no upper limit! Before you know it, they'll be creating a thousand companies a year. Ten thousand! Imagine that for a moment. Sure, most of them may fail, but if just one in ten succeed with returns of more than ten times their investment then it's a net win. My god.. This might turn into a viable alternate life path for the average Joe. It's hard not to be excited.
But I shouldn't count chickens before they hatch.