:face_with_monocle: Would you pay to join a startu...
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Andrew Rosen
12/15/2022, 10:51 AM🧐 Would you pay to join a startup incubator that did not require an application?
💥 Think Y combinator or tech stars with access to Tier 1 mentors, curated education, an engaged community, and access to participate in a demo day.
🚀 No applications are required. Build the way you want and get resources to grow.
🥸 Answers will help us build our MVP.
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Gwen Shapira
12/15/2022, 4:24 PM@Andrew Rosen In general, startups have more equity and less cash. Which is why the Y Combinator model where we give them equity and get some money is a good model.
If I pay for mentors, education, community and access to VCs... it really depends on the quality of your offer.
A friend of mine went through such program (@Natty, if you are around?) and I believe was generally positive about the value.
Do keep in mind that you are competing with pretty high quality free things out there: Lots of free startup communities, content and many angel syndicates that are very friendly to early founders.
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Gwen Shapira
12/15/2022, 4:27 PMAlso worth keeping in mind that people join Y Combinator among other reason for the prestige, and like a good university, the application adds to the prestige.
You'll need your own method of building prestige. A successful startup that you incubated will do the trick, but is obviously a long-term play.
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Gwen Shapira
12/15/2022, 4:27 PMI'm super curious how you'll pull it off. I hope you will stick around here and keep us posted!!!
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Neeraj Swarnkar
12/15/2022, 4:32 PM@Gwen Shapira Great reply.
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Natty
12/15/2022, 4:32 PMI’m still here! I participated in one of the On Deck founder cohorts. Ended up realizing that I didn’t want to found a company, which was the value I got out of it :)
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Gwen Shapira
12/15/2022, 4:33 PMIt is huge value! As Eric Vishria said: "Employees can quit, founders can't un-found a company"
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Andrew Rosen
12/15/2022, 5:19 PM@Gwen Shapira wow I really appreciate your response. It’s interesting when you talk about all the free available resources. Because I’ve found that it requires soooo much curation and90% is generic noise. Whether it’s the Y combinator school, or tech stars toolkit, hundreds of notion templates and going through founder book clubs and newsletter channels on medium.
I’ve even built a list of 200 long form interviews of unicorn CEOs.
What communities have you found?
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Natty
12/15/2022, 5:28 PM@Andrew Rosen it sounds like you’re describing On Deck to a tee, honestly. How would this be different?
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Andrew Rosen
12/15/2022, 5:42 PMNo application, no invite only
Andrew Rosen
12/15/2022, 5:43 PMAlso not 2999 a year
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Gwen Shapira
12/15/2022, 5:50 PM@Andrew Rosen This community 🙂 But I'm also a member of an Israeli startup community and Women Founders community. All are awesome.
I guess your milage varies. I agree that there is a lot of generic noise, but you learn to pattern match quickly.
As a founder you need to have a great process for curating information and following the news anyway - market information, relevant technology, etc.
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Andrew Rosen
12/15/2022, 5:53 PMWhich Israeli one? I live in Jerusalem
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Gwen Shapira
12/15/2022, 8:21 PM@Andrew Rosen Seriously? In this case, do you know Shimon Tolz, from Datree? He's running the PLG startup group (and I think a few more).