AngelHack Launches A Startup Accelerator, Bringing Its Hackathon To 30+ Cities
m.techcrunch.com
m.techcrunch.com
I would give a warning to anybody who reads this thread in the future and is seriously considering giving these guys shares. In a word: don't.
Their team has no history of successful exits and no members with technical talent that can be taken seriously; they are not going to help you build a company. Their "connections" are limited to the B-list of Silicon Valley. It's not clear that their founder can even write code.
Contrast this with the team at Y-Combinator.
Quality of accelerators are a power law that skews so far in the direction of YC that even attending the incubator in second place is a signal that you didn't get YC; Peter Thiel mentioned this in one of his lectures. It's not to say that you won't be successful if you don't do YC, it's to say that it's difficult to the value added by their "Accelerator" is greater than what you give up in exchange.
Once again, make your own decision by talking to them. They may change in the future, but you may also find them equally unimpressive.
You are correct, I can't code (yet!). But all my best friends are coders and I think on the same wave-length. Starting this year we'll be building out a network of code schools, which I hope to participate in. In the meantime, I'm happy adding value to your community wherever I can.
Greg from AngelHack here. The equity stake we take is 2%. This allows us to be sustainable and continue building this program. This accelerator (should be called a pre-accelerator), is designed to get people connected to the Valley from around the world and get them pre-pared for entering legit programs like Y-Combinator. We'll never be better than them, nor are we trying to be. We're only trying to assist you get to the glory land.
If you can get ready for these programs without our help, then you're on the right track. Most of the companies that come out from our hackathons are 2-3 days old and need A LOT of guidance. Technically they're very strong, but they need support with legal issues, founder issues, idea validation, product/market fit, viral engagement loops, guerrilla warfare marketing tactics, networking and pitch help, and help raising funding. We help them get through all that.
* Inconsistent WiFi for duration of competition (in our home city)
* Aggressive event staff (also in our home city)
* No write-ups about our team, or mention of us anywhere at all, even though we were finalists -- remember that this competition is for us too guys! We wanted some recognition.
* Slowness in getting paid back for plane tickets (required reminders)
* A "mentor" who forgot about meetings (completely stood us up), and was difficult to set up meetings with in the first place
* The overall feeling that we were being taken advantage of...just a feeling mind you, but if I felt this way in a contest, I wouldn't be surprised to feel that way if I took their money
Take it with a grain of salt. One man's experience. They could be great for all I know.
This is Greg from AngelHack. Everything you said is valid and I thank you for your feedback. We'll organize over 100 hackathons this year and while we work with venues for 8 weeks to ensure they're up to speed, train organizers on weekly calls, and oversee that everything is A-grade, we still have some problems. We've scaled fast, re-placed organizers that weren't top notch, and cut ties with venues that couldn't handle Wi-Fi caps that they promised us they could. We're a startup, and like any startup, we move fast and cut the shit out of the way as soon as it forms.
What you went through last summer was the first iteration of our pre-accelerator. We knew there would be holes and we knew the only way to truly understand it was to do it. We took no equity from your class because we wanted to make sure we added enough value first. At this point we're confident that we are.
We've built a new system for identifying good mentors, following up with them, and have hired 2 new members to oversee things for you. Sorry you had to be a guinea pig, but you lost nothing in the process and got a free trip out to Silicon Valley and the chance to show top VC's your work...
This is Greg from AngelHack. We have nothing to do with said "shell" accounts, nor did we give anyone incentive to make shell accounts. We offered our community free tickets to our next event if they helped us with up-votes (our definition of a successful product launch).
There was no incentive to vote more than once. But like with any community, we have our more passionate users that go above and beyond to try and help us succeed. It looks like that is what's happening here.
Cognitive dissonance much?
Although they do provide a chance for the startups to pitch in the final two weeks in SF, it seems that this accelerator, even if not formed with this intention, will be more of a feeder to the bigger and more established ones like YC, TechStars, 500 Startups, etc.
For 12 weeks of mentorship, 2 weeks in SF, all our connections, help getting into "legit" programs, tickets to Disrupt, and potentially a booth at Disrupt, we take 2%. That makes us sustainable, which is all we're trying to do. We pay for everything out of our own pocket. AngelHack is a bootstrapped company that has scrappily built out our communities around the world without the help of organizations like Kauffman, that could give us the funding to allow us to pay for everyone to stay longer.
No doubt, there is a better way things can be done. But with our current resources, our goals are to do what we can to provide the most value to the community in a sustainable way.
A+++ Accelerator, would accelerate again!
AngelHack is a totally legit thing and would never stoop to astroturfing Hacker News!
Contrary to other people's experiences, the logistics were pretty awesome - for example, despite the fact there were more people at a hackathon than I'd ever seen before, the WiFi held up.
It's worth commenting that I'm not a startup/business guy - I went along to play with cool technology and we ended up building an augmented reality app. Out of 50+ teams, we got an honorable mention (after the 3 top teams).
Probably due to the startup focus, it generally felt as though the teams were more looking at solving business problems with creative uses of existing technology than building new technology.
The only disappointing part of the weekend for me was that the presentations went on WAY too long. There was supposed to be a 2 minute limit, but some people spoke for 10+! Multiply that by 50+ teams and I was almost falling asleep by the end (having not slept the rest of the weekend).
But I'd definitely recommend it, and will go again.
Primary reason to attend, working with sponsors. In the past AngleHack has been good at bringing good sponsors/api vendors so its a good opportunity to engage with SAAS, PAAS and APIs.
Its about hacking in a short period of time, so overall a fun environment. Also a good opportunity to connect with others, but don't expect to build a team for your idea, bring a team with developers if you expect to get something done.
Too early to say about their just launched accelerator.
(Their "Upvote us..." is lame, and not in the spirit of quality comments)
Here is hoping they are not lying about giving free tickets to the first 200 upvotes.
It's an opportunity that keeps giving. I don't think I would have been able to get a tour at Facebook and network with a lot of people had it not been for winning/attending AngelHack.
Being from the bay area it's easy to forget how much opportunities there are here in respect to other cities. I can't really think of many opportunities that enable builders from around the world to come to the bay area and pitch their ideas to VCs and see what life is like here (they get flown out here for free if they win their city hackathon).
AngelHack++
Greg and everyone on his team are great people
Ash
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419344
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419584
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419949
but I was going for the angelhack tickets
Even if you don't work for them and had positive intentions, their ticket giveaway promise is (IMO) a pretty cheap stunty way to turk sock puppets on sites that would otherwise automatically detect sock-puppeting based on IPs or similar.
Pro-Tip for AngelHack -- not really a good call on this one. Next time you should just approach a Hacker News poster used to the ins and outs of the site to craft a quality astroturf post for you. Quantity over quality doesn't really fly here. If tptacek isn't available, I can be bought at very discounted rates.
So then, if I didn't have a green color on my account name, I'm not a sock-puppet?
Or are you saying that you disapprove of upvoting for a ticket?
Just asking, since I don't know the ins and outs of this site. I just read the headlines and jump to the articles. I don't read the comments or make posts.
In this case, things weren't quite so clear cut, it seems like it was actually a bunch of individual users all trying to take advantage of a lottery that a third party had slyly set up so they didn't have to do their own sock puppeting, but the end result is basically the same -- a bunch of useless fluff posts.
Greg from AngelHack here. Thanks for the pro-tip. HN is still a black box to us and I appreciate your tips on successful protocols for using it. We didn't incentive people to create "sock puppets," only to vote once from their personal accounts in return for a free tick. Myself, like everyone else, is looking for ways to hack the system (HN is now a big part of that system and how we distribute information to the community).
It sounds like you understand things much better than us. If you'd ever like to chat I can be reached at greg@angelhack.com