When the Airbnbs came to speak at the last dinner, Brian Chesky said that the 3 months of YC had been the most productive time in their lives.
TS does have a slightly different focus than YC - first month they tell you to not build a whole lot of stuff but to talk to 90+ mentors (that they curate), then second and third months are balls-to-the-wall build, talk to customers, etc... with the third month having a focus on pitch practice for the CEO.
mentor:
- an experienced person in a company, college, or school who trains and counsels new employees or students.
- advise or train (someone, esp. a younger colleague).
The word has very clear, strong connotations.
So what is being said here? That founders can't be experienced serial entrepreneurs? That older people should be training younger people? It's a very strange word to choose, and I think it impacts how people perceive their roles.
Some were my age, a few were younger, some were old, and others in their 30's.
Some "mentors" were more like peers - current founders that had grown beyond the "we are trying to make it" phase. Others were aloof. Some only cared about "being a mentor for Techstars" and not actually helping the companies. Others had little to provide except for enormous enthusiasm for what everyone was doing and hung out all the time.
I learned a select few things from our mentors that was really important (mostly about leadership and fundraising) and most of the other mentors were more of a sounding board that allowed me to hone in on a consistent, concise, and powerful story about my company and our product (which we really didn't have prior).
In one meeting you'll get lots of support for direction X and then the next meeting you could be met with a lot of skepticism for that same direction X. I learned quickly that absorbing the mentor's personal experience and then training a better story by telling it and observing how much of it they understand or don't understand or is picked apart by them.
What is being said here is that founding a company is hard. Having a sounding board is extremely important as an indirect heuristic and there are some things you can directly learn from some of the mentors.
I see, so these accelerators are talking more about "specialized experts" (the mentors) vs "generalists" (the startup founders)?
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In reality I got more helpful advice from my peers. That's why I recently started a club for developers. The idea is to meet weekly online and talk to each other about the progress of our projects and startups. If any developers feel like they have no network at all (like me), then you should join my club. The link is in my profile.
There are a lot of incubators out there. For startup founders I suggest you do your homework.
It is really easy to let meetings distract you from building.
There comes a time when you've done this startup thing more than once, as a founder, to realize that everything - even day-to-day operations - is a distraction from the core intention of building a product. What do you do about it? Get really good at time boxing, delegating, and prioritizing.
Programmers are typically not very good at handling multi-faceted schedules and being ruthless about that schedule.
As a graduate of the Jumpstart Foundry in Nashville, TN, I can't say how useful a summer of paid entrepreneurial focus and education changed my life.
Also, the alumni support is fantastic. I know YC takes care of it's grads well, and JSF is definitely the same way.