Some Fear a Glut in Tech 'Incubators'

From the article:

"Incubators are "no more a waste of resources than going to business school," said Paul Graham.

I laughed when I read that. Was that a joke?

Business schools are a waste for many, if not most students. However, for the right person at the right school it's a golden opportunity. I have an MBA and it was the right thing for me, but for a lot of MBA students it's just not useful. They're better served by gaining experience on the job or ad hoc training like seminars and the occasional evening class.

Comparing incubators to business schools is not very flattering to incubators. There's definitely a glut of business schools and way too many MBAs.

Overall, I think incubators (tech or not) have a looooong way to go before there's truly a glut. My guess is there are for more smart people couped up in non-entrepreneurial ventures than is socially optimal.

Certainly some are higher quality than others, but I still think the incubator business model has a lot of in roads to make.

Ideally, they'd start to form in areas besides tech.

We are safe for now since no incubator has yet deigned to incubate incubators.

EDIT: Do you guys realize that "rebuttal" link is April Fools?

There's certainly not a glut of incubators when you consider geography. Not everyone is a 22-year-old with no roots and willing to move to SF or NY for 3 months.

I don't get all these tech bubble articles. If you could prevent a bubble by blogging about it, there would be no bubbles.

Seriously, if you are making a programmer's salary and tomorrow the bottom falls out of the jobs market and you find yourself with no savings or backup plan, you're doing it wrong (I know this because that's exactly what I did in the last bubble :).

Is it me or have there been at least three relatively fact-free, anecdote-based articles recently (2 WSJ, 1 NYT IIRC) talking about the angel/startup bubble and generally trying to spread FUD about silicon valley? Where is this coming from?

i like the notion of 'increasing risk'. maybe this would lead to less fast websites prototypes, and to more projects that are not just small innovative features, but projects that are making some big innovative things (like the one i used to have :)