TechStars Investor Day Hits a Home Run | Hacker News Reader

TechStars Investor Day Hits a Home Run

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21 pointsterpua21 comments

The ideas from TechStars seem a lot more innovative than the YC ideas. YC companies all seem to be so 2007-2008, and the founders who make the news or ever get my attention all seem to be the same : 20-35 year old guys from somewhere in the U.S or U.K who went to some name brand college and already have something web 2.0 under their belt. There seems to be no promiment female founder, for example, or some guy from japan or some 50 year old jewish guy who has always been a baker or something like that.

That TechStars list far surpases anything that has come out of YC in terms of creativity or "newness".

I was astonished to see Vanilla on the list. Vanilla's kind of been a secret name among big forum people since it launched; it's got some astoundingly innovative features. I love it, but haven't been able to use it in a project before to give it support.

Considering I've always had this mindset of TechStars churning out inferior YC products, it surprised me not that Mark would apply but that TechStars would accept something like that. Color me pleasantly surprised.

ReTel is genius, if it actually works. I'm a little skeptical of something that comes out of three getting their MBAs (I don't know if they can code, but I assume someone there can if they got into TechStars), but it's a genuine business process issue.

It is a great site, glad you like it!

The founders are coders, and MBA's. Smart guys, not their first startup.

I was reading this and thinking ... I wish someone had submitted some of these companies to HN. Some of those apps are very interesting and I think the discussion would have been too. Why haven't I heard about these apps before?

Because getting anything TechStars related to the front page of Hacker News is an uphill battle (which most of the Boulder HN folk realize and simply not submit TC material) here are some examples:

* FiltrBox 7 pts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=246634

* TC 09 Graduation discussion 29 pts, 6 comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746347

* OneFourty 1pt: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=849893

Majority never even make it past 1 point, they ether are set to dead for some reason or just have no support to ever make it out to the front page and if they do, community at large are simply not receptive to the story so it dies quickly. The confrontation goes back to when TechStars first started in 07 because they were the 2nd tech start up "incubator" (even though more correct term is accelerator) and YC community felt ether threatened or uninterested by the proposition and simply ignored those submissions. Solution is simple, just get your TechStars fix somewhere else, perhaps a filtrbox keyword search for techstars is a great start :)

Edit: would love to hear the reason for the downvotes.

My reason: I really don't think there's a conspiracy to keep TechStars stuff off the front page here. If the community doesn't vote it up, it doesn't vote it up. If there are all those HN people in Boulder, then y'all can vote it up. But there have been lots of positive comments and congrats for TechStars portfolio companies here on HN.

Fair point, I was trying very hard not to come out sounding like a guy with a tinfoil hat. To sum it up: I believe there is simply not enough interest towards TechStars posts due to the reasons I outlined. It's certainly not a targeted backlash as some feel toward TechCrunch or clear affinity towards a subject, i.e YC-related startups.

We could form a gang and get enough upvotes to make the front page, but once its there, community has to be interested enough to keep it on the home page for any useful period of time, and as many experiences in the past indicate, thats just hasn't been the case.

My reason for the downvote, snark aimed at HN

e.g: " they either are set to dead for some reason "

For the one example I looked at (from the links you provided) PG explained that the reason it was set to dead was that it was a duplicate. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746980. That isn't "some reason". That is a very clear reason.

"YC community felt either threatened or uninterested"

The first guess is stupid.

What basis do you have for this? Just state the facts ("These didn't get many upvotes") and leave the amateur psychoanalysis where it belongs.

Imagining conspiracy theories where there aren't any is worth a downvote.

As sachinag points out above, if the community didn't up vote the submission, it didn't upvote the submission. That's all.

Now if something you submitted didn't get any upvotes there is no need to whine about it or imagine a conspiracy. It happens to all of us.

Thank you for your feedback, trying to come up with a concrete answer to OP's question before this post runs its course is tough, as is finding good examples of past submissions. Perhaps searchyc.com doesn't include dead articles, maybe I'm missing a great opportunity to submit techstars related content, but examples I gave are indeed quite shitty and rest of the argument totally breaks down.

I do present you with 1 interesting discussion on a few similarities between techstars and ycominator startups (Loopt/Brightkite, Foodzie/Foodoro and IntenseDebate/Disqus) which of course brings up great points for both sides of the argument: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547991

"great points for both sides of the argument"

What argument?

No one here is arguing there aren't similarities between YC startups or TS startups (which is what the discussion you pointed to seems to be about. One fellow seemed to make nebulous accusations and PG responded strongly http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=548102).

I don't see the "similarity" argument in the comments above anywhere. I am not sure why you provided this link as supporting "both sides of the argument".

so again, what argument is this new link supporting? Your "argument" (such as it was) was that the YC community is threatened by TS and so doesn't upvote or flags content about them. And when asked for supporting rationale you don't have any.

Fwiw I don't have a startup, have no plans of starting one in the near future and YC doesn't operate where I live. I hang out here because it is a great forum full of interesting people, contributing great comments and topics. That is it.

Ok. You asked why you were downvoted and I said why I downvoted. I am done with this thread. Onward!

Interesting discussion here. I don't buy into the conspiracy theory at all. We all have a deep respect for YC and HN, and I don't usually try to press stories here (it is their sandbox after all, and I don't think it would be too respectful to jump up and down to press the startups).

If there is something we can share, teach or learn, we are here.

Wow I've actually just started working on something quite similar to the very first app listed here. It's somewhat discouraging to say the least. The travel social network market is rather large - there are a few existing sites that do an okay job at it and get fairly decent traffic numbers but none of them are clearly great. At least none were until I clicked on that link.

Edit: It's actually kind of odd for how nice the site is, it's virtually unfindable on Google. Even if it takes time to gain PageRank you could at least start advertising it with AdWords...

Funny you should mention it but the guy who is in charge of SEO just took a month off flying courtesy of JetBlue all over the country :) Needless to say you're absolutely correct in your conclusion, visibility is something a lot of TC teams struggle with early on.

I've flown this month with Ryan on the JetBlue deal, he is working, and traveling a ton.

You should reach out to Natty and Nate (the founders). They are really nice and smart guys.

Travel space is crowded, you are right. They are in bootstrap and listen to their passionate users mode right now, with the site improving at an impressive rate.

I'll ask them about AdWords!

It's true, we have no SEO at this point and are just starting to work on it. Would love to know what search terms you expect Everlater to show up under...

I've been using Sensobi for awhile and it works great. Once it's installed, you don't have to do anything but check it every few days.

Glad you like it, I'm stoked for it to get to other phones (so I can use it). On their roadmap, just will take some time.

I think the best one is the one that allows hourly workers to trade their time slots.

Yeah, it's pretty neat. What's astonishing is the uptake at the Starbucks locations here in Chicago. I haven't randomly asked baristas if they use it, but I believe it.

My prediction: Paychex and ADP fight tooth and nail to acquire it. It's just way too valuable and too easily integrated; it could be a huge competitive for one company over the other when bidding to process paychecks for 10,000s of hourly workers nationwide.

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