YC originally gave something like 10K for roughly 6%, giving a rough valuation in the 180K range. HackFWD is giving, for two people, 110K for 30% which implies a value of roughly 370K. On the numbers alone the deal isn't as bad as it sounds.
I think a top FB/Google tech lead who knows investors who leaves to go do a related startup probably doesn't see as much of a bump in valuation from YC as someone who just dropped out of U of Michigan and is living in Ann Arbor, but there are plenty of other reasons why giving up 2-10% to YC is more than worthwhile.
I suspect there's a strong selection bias in YC and other incubators (take dropbox, for which Drew is an MIT grad), which probably makes my request for numbers somewhat foolhardy.
YC has gotten pretty big now relative to a certain part of the startup ecosystem, but look back in 2005-2008 for when YC was smaller, and the success rate of YC companies vs. non-YC companies of that time. It seems pretty good, which warrants the valuations.
- Just entering YC will generate promo for your product, it will put you in-front of the eyes of thousand of tech focused people.
- Free job postings on HN
- Incredible alumni network of actually successful founders
- Demo day will be covered by major news outlets and attended by lots of investors
- 150k of convertible credit [1]
- Only 10 percent don't raise any money after graduating [1]
- 90% raise an average of 700k USD [1]
- "The average valuation of Y Combinator-backed companies, according to co-founder Paul Graham, is $45.2 million." [2]
Looks way more valuable then 170k of dumb money to me.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/02/01/y-combinators...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator_(company)
EDIT: I'm not saying HackFWD is dumb money, with regards to money smartness they are definitely better then most other European accelerators. My original (GP) statement is not about HackFWD but accelerators in general.
I'm not saying there isn't a value-add to YC, but rather that its bad to assume other programs don't have value.
YC arguably made a mistake for many companies by going from 20k to 20+150k, because with 170k you can waste a lot of time and also there's a lot left to fight over if it fails early. This is mostly why YC went to 20+80k now.
I think the right thing is probably 50-100k plus a low-hassle way to get another 250-300k, and then 1-2mm. So, something like YC plus non-stupid early investors and something like a raise shortly after Demo Day. (If I had a 10-20mm fund, I'd love to fill in the 250-300k gap)
To put it different, you can throw billions of dollars at a company, but they'll still operate in stress mode if you tell them a demo is due in a few months.
What they should have done is extended the program length while giving more money.
There is a strong bias toward "having launched at Demo Day". If I had two things to work on, and got into YC, I'd absolutely pick the one I could get launched before Demo Day.
There are some companies which think they're type 2 but really have elements of type 1, and should do those elements first. (which is kind of what my company did; we wanted to do generalized secure/trustworthy cloud computing, and should have focused on specific applications of that technology, which is what we're doing now)
It's probably a net win for society and for an accelerator if they push some of the "fake type 2" into type 1 even at the cost of excluding some genuine type 2.
An easy hack for YC would be to have companies accepted into YC but let them choose to defer until the following Demo Day. You do need the initial 20-50k ASAP to get corp formation and other things done on a good foundation, but most of the "genuine type 2" companies are founded by people who can float their own living expenses for a year or two (or do very low time commitment consulting to do so), so it doesn't need to be more money.
YC is basically 6-7% now, and bumps your valuation by (what appears to be) >100%, so it's a no-brainer for that reason.