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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

Do people here think TechStars is somewhat to blame in this? they are the ones who are running the incubator and hosting the companies. Why would they bring in this sort of outside factor into an already challenging environment. If they were unaware of how the show would turn out, I suspect all they needed to do was speak to reality tv producers (other than those who produced this show), and they would have been told about the story writers, story developers, etc. etc.

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I'm sure YC has been asked to participate in this kind of thing and they've declined. After watching this show, it's clear that they showed good judgment.

I do think there's room to do a quality documentary on YC or TechStars, but the dramatic reality show format is inherently crap.

This wouldn't work in the YC environment since people don't actually work at YC's offices. The startups just meet every Tuesday for a group dinner then outside of that will only appear at the YC office if they have office hours booked with one of the partners.

I think that YC would be better for something about Startups and less about drama and entertainment. I always liked the importance of space that YC has, and that people don't work in an incubator environment. I would think you could make a quality documentary that doesn't have that reality show flare.

I agree that a documentary would be cool, but I'd be hesitant to say that it would need to be produced under the guise of a network or other professional organization. If anything, I'd love to see a glued together collection of videos from the founders, pg, and the rest of the team (sort of like pg's post not too long ago of pictures of the early days of YC). It doesn't have to be produced to be entertaining and the story wouldn't need to be written (it would simply be the YC companies going through the experience).

I'd blame TechStars for involving their companies in a reality show, absolutely. At some point, companies are probably able to manage press on their own (and would be smart to decline to participate in a reality show), but part of the purpose of an incubator/accelerator is educational and to keep you out of really stupid situations like this. They failed to do their job, proving something about the zero indexing of startup accelerators.

No, I actually don't blame TechStars. We were ALL told the same thing - it was constantly referred to as a documentary while filming. Go look at TS post and mine when the show was announced.

Trust me, Bloomberg wanted to do far worse, but TS fought hard to make sure they didn't. We're all fairly upset at how it was cut.

I've been a big fan of TechStars... until this show. I thought the entire tone of the show was just horrific for their brand. It played off the worse stereotypes and came off as very patronizing toward entrepreneurs. Tisch seems to really reflect the character of Techstars New York and thats unfortunate.

As I stated below, I largely believe Bloomberg did its job and techstars owes a big fat apology to their cos for putting them in this situation without covering all bases.

I don't know the exact details, but you'll notice that there are only 6 companies being profiled in the show. Ten companies went through the NY program in that cycle. My understanding is that each team was given the option of participating in the show, along with appropriate caveats. I doubt anyone from TechStars pressured them to participate, although the folks from BloombergTV may have. In theory, TechStars founders are supposed to be smart people: they surely knew the risks to perception and weighted it against the rewards of exposure.

EDIT: Melanie says I'm wrong. Color me surprised.

Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars. Bloomberg followed all 11 (not 10) companies throughout the entire program, but focused only on 6 companies because it was impossible to follow 11 different story lines in 6, 22-minute episodes.

> Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars.

Required by whom?

Sounds like TechStars signed up for a 'documentary' PR push and prioritized the filming over the founders. If it didn't work out, sorry, but I don't think TS can play the victim card here.

Whoa, what? Did you know about this before you took investment money from TechStars?

I was told that Bloomberg filmed all of the teams and then chose whom they wanted to include.

Could someone from TechStars clarify if teams were given a chance to opt out?

EDIT: Just saw below that it was required for all teams to participate or drop out of TechStars. Wow.

TechStars benefits from the notoriety of the show, at the expense of the founders.

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