Dandelion Labs
dandelionlabs.com
dandelionlabs.com
Seriously, though, with that setup, isn't there an incentive to only work as had as necessary to get into a class, and then hope one of the other entrants strikes it rich, so I can take my little cut? Is that going too negative?
We've all had projects that we were immensely interested in for a while, but then put had to put on the back burner, and ultimately dropped. How do you ensure you're not selecting 100 back burner-able projects? For an angel, is the draw of casting a wide net bigger than the risk of no one really being that committed to the work?
One other thought, while forming a company/s-corp/llc might not be that hard these days, since you're essentially making a call for 100 "side project startups", you might want to add tools to automate the forming-a-legal-company side of things.
Yes there will definitely be some duds, but why should the entrepreneur be expected to identify a product niche AND risk everything for it AND be able to fully validate the business concept enough to make big life decisions about it?
Dandelion is to remove the stasis that having a good day job creates. We provide vetting, validation, help with proof of concept, find out if the rubber meets the road, etc.
When you're ready to pitch to an angel your pitch will be 100x better, and you'll know what you're getting into, and if you met some people whose ideas didn't pan out, you now have a pool of potential co-founders or early hires who you know are looking for an early stage idea to get behind.
In today's market, having a talented team ready to start is the #1 thing any investor should look for before investing serious money. Dandelion helps exceptional people seriously consider doing a startup, and helps build the early teams that make the company a good angel investment.
And yes, you'll get a cheap/fast way to formalize the company when the time is right.
Seriously though, it's an interesting idea, I'd say the copy on the homepage is a little misleading as it lead me to believe this is something that is already happening.
My only query from a cursory glance is: what is my incentive to give a large steak in my company, seems giving more away benefits everyone but me
nope, i see a site with a black bar at the top and blue buttons and it reminds me of this:
it looks generic and i wish people would use bootstrap as more of a guide than a complete theme.
You may not have any incentive to give up any of your company. The idea is to allow for companies/ideas at various stages to participate in the same class without it being about negotiating percentages, b/c that is not what's important at this point. 100% of $0 is $0.
I see your point regarding percentages, and Dandelion Labs is definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on.
Similarly, there are 99 other companies you will be invested in as well, and you will naturally want them to succeed.
What have you done?
How sure are we this is not a side project for you too?
Care to put a picture up?
The very least would be for people to know who they are dealing with.
With so much great opportunity out there, the most valuable thing we (creators) have is our time, and weekends belong to us. So let's do something amazing with that time that has tremendous upside.
More detail about the team is coming.
The problem is credibility. How are we supposed to share our ideas with you and do business with your organization if we know nothing about who is behind it. Where are your credentials? How does this being a side project for the "founding team" equal your "secret sauce" to recruiting the "best players in the industry" to advise your companies? If we know nothing about you, and neither do your great advisors, what is their incentive to even be involved, let alone companies applying to your class?
Not to mention that with Dandelion taking 50% equity and your being required to give at least 1% equity to your class, you automatically start out owning less than half of your own company—and if you have multiple co-founders you personally know (verses the ones in the class) and share equity between them, you start off owning a pretty dismal share in your own venture.
I know personally I'm not very incentivized to know that if I have an idea for a product and I start a company through your incubator I enter the game already having lost at minimum 51% stake in my own efforts. I understand that you receive equity in other companies in your class, which is great for investment and money purposes if somebody else makes it big, but for would-be founders such as myself (especially early stage) we're more focused on building our own companies. I would rather have a larger stake in my own efforts than a smaller stake plus small stakes in 99 other companies. I don't think that makes me a selfish entrepreneur, either.
Edit: I notice you added your "More detail about the team is coming." in between when I started writing and when I posted. I would suggest that your credibility would have been helped by having the detail available from the beginning. As the cliché goes, you never get a second chance for a first impression. Still, though, I would be interested to read about your team.
Please don't submit the application if you are not comfortable (we'll make some improvements to the site in the near future which ought to help). I talked with a lot of people about Dandelion at startup school and the response was pretty overwhelmingly positive, so I decided to post a link to the home page to HN in its current state of completion and polish.
Obviously full trust and transparency is essential. So feel free to email me and I'll give you a call or something to fill in any details (this applies to anyone who is interested).
Obviously the page of the site relating to the founding team is crucial and so I am (appropriately) reluctant to post it in haste.
Still I would think that credibility and trust is hampered by lack of information about the people behind it. I don't doubt there is more to the plan/idea than is represented on the site, but unfortunately when it's a flat website of "Coming Soon" you can't really find answers to your questions. I probably would have stated on the front page that more information is coming soon. Like someone else said I had the impression that it was already established and operational and I had only just heard about it. The copy is definitely written in this way. Like most people I clicked through the tabs for more information and was disappointed seven times in a row.
Anyway, </whine>. Good luck with it! I'll keep an eye on it to see the details that come out. :)
The concept has a few chicken/egg issues with ramp up, but why let that get in the way :)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3212674
I thought it might help spur the imagination of the reader to show the nav.
So there would be 100 teams in a class (a team can be single person). Calculating from validation, say a classmate is giving up 10% (ceiling value suggested by YC) for $5000, that is 50000 in valuation. I wonder what pg would think on this.
How long do you expect the process from application->funding to be? If its longer than 8 weeks I would rather raise my 5k elsewhere(like with a credit card). Maybe set a time limit on how long a class can exist before it is considered full(even if its less than 100 companies).
Why 100 companies? Is it just a nice, round number or is there thought behind it?
The number 100 is intended to be large enough to make the investment truly diverse, large enough to attract a wide variety of talent and experience in each class, but small enough to be filled relatively easily. There is also no harm in applying multiple times or in scrapping a project and joining someone else's or submitting another idea. From the standpoint of the investor, it's an investment in people, and the specifics of the structure address the realities of risk aversion, talent acquisition, etc.
Dandelion is for people who have a great job, an idea they think has potential, and would like to create the best possible pitch to angels and convince themselves it's worth doing full time (not always easy if you have a great job). We also offer a superb way to find co-founders, designers, etc.
And it's fun.