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Comment by comatose_kid | Hacker News Reader

A few problems:

1) Not sure about the quality of advisors - doesn't mean they're bad, I've never really heard of them.

edit: It seems that although Carolyn may be well connected, she hasn't run a startup herself. Not promising.

2) I don't really see a lot of conviction in their ability to pick winners, else they would be more interested in equity.

3) "we don’t invest capital; we train entrepreneurs to get things done without it" - It seems kind of funny that they expect entrepreneurs to pay to learn how to conserve capital :)

If I were YC, I'd be annoyed that they claim to be similar.

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1) The name recognition of advisors is part of the joy of the Portland technology scene. Which hopefully this program will help fix. Portland has astounding things happening, but no one ever hears of them or the people doing the work.

2. The equity question is something that I asked about... basically the thought was that its your work, you should get to profit from it. Just like when you buy a server from dell, dell doesn't get a slice of equity from your company.

3. This program as being run as a low cost high impact bootstrapped startup itself. That said the costs are a LOT lower than just about anything like it. Tech Stars for example is six percent of your company for office space, and coaching for 120 days. This is just $1500, for just the coaching. (And there are quite a few coffee shops in Portland that will let you work from them if you so choose.)

It seems to me that it's a question of aligning incentives. In this case, they've made their money no matter how you do (although if everyone fails, they probably won't do it again, so they probably hope it's not a disaster). In YC's case, though, they're very directly interested in your success because their money is riding on it too.

That said, it's good to see something happening in Portland.

In response to 3. Techstars has a good reputation. They have been one of the most successful incubators for their 2008 programs. They don't just coach you but they connect you with potential capital/funding or companies that might acquire or partner with you. That is much bigger then getting coached.

1) I don't doubt that. But if I were to pay for mentoring , I'd rather have access to people that have built profitable companies, or sold companies.

2) I'm not sure the analogy makes sense. Dell doesn't judge a company's business plan before it decides to sell you a server.

One of the important considerations with Portland 10 isn't whether or not I should get 100% of the ownership/profit, it's whether or not their advice helps me grow my business enough that I don't care that they get a cut of the equity.

3) That's fine - I don't agree that the trade-off (upfront capital with relatively unproven advisors vs. giving up equity with more proven investors who have a track record of investing in strong companies)is optimal.

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