

Launchbox, a YC clone, is now ready to take applications - alaskamiller
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/21/launchboxdigital-startup-incubator-raises-seed-round-taking-applications/

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iamelgringo
DC! Why would a startup want to relocate to DC unless they were going to do
something related to governement contracts?

I just don't get it. If people are going to make YC clones, why don't they do
it in the Valley? There's a large enough market here, that I think it could
handle 4 or 5 YC clones and still not saturate the market. The only
competition that YC has in the early, early stage funding market are angel
investors and credit card companies/savings accounts. Charles River Ventures
program doesn't really count because it's a loan with strings attached based
on Series A funding.

Granted, there's a lot more angel capital floating around in the Valley, but
you have to be here, and know people before you can have access to Angel
funding. It's hard for people hoping to move here and start a business right
away. That's one of the things that YC has going for it. It attracts
applicants from all over because of PG's writings and this here site, and it
helps them hit the ground running.

Paul and Jessica are always saying how they regret that they have to turn down
so many great groups of founders. They get roughly 600 applications per round,
and they are only able to fund 10-20 every 6 months. If another YC clone came
around, and tried to sort through the 580 applicants left out of each batch, I
still think that they'd probably do pretty well.

And, if it was based here, they could run groups twice a year here in the
Valley and they wouldn't have to be Bi-Coastal. YC's roots on the East Coast
has got to complicate things a bit for them.

So, there you have it. Someone take the idea and run with it, but if someone
picks the idea up they owe me a few shares of common stock.

~~~
pg
_Paul and Jessica are always saying how they regret that they have to turn
down so many great groups of founders._

Where do we say this? We often turn down groups with good founders for some
other reason (they can't quit their jobs; there's only one of them; their idea
isn't quite there yet) but we've never turned down a group that had everything
right because of lack of space.

 _they are only able to fund 10-20 every 6 months_

At current rates we fund 42 startups a year. But that number has been
increasing by about 50% a year.

~~~
iamelgringo
My bad. I didn't mean to put words in your mouths, and re-reading my post...
it does sound pretty snarky. Sorry about that. I certainly didn't intend for
the post to be a criticism of YC or imply that you're not funding enough
people. I'm actually impressed by how well the process seems to be scaling.

If anything I was referring to the first part of this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70062>

_Please don't take it personally, because most of the proposals we rejected,
we rejected for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the
applicants._

And this post: [http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2007/10/what-no-
means.h...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2007/10/what-no-means.html)

specifically, this part:

 _Please don’t take a “no” from us to mean anything more than there happened
to be other applications that interested us more. We get a lot of applications
and it’s always difficult to choose who we’d like to interview in person. We
admit that our review process is “fraught with error.” I’m sure there are many
people that we’ve passed over for funding that went on to start promising
companies—and there will be many more._

I wasn't aware that space was not a limiting factor. I'm actually shocked that
it isn't with as much press as YC has been getting. I figure you'd be
overwhelmed with applicants by now.

I was primarily trying to make an observation that the market for would be
founders seems to be heavy on the supply side these days. And, while YC is
certainly the alpha dog in early, stage funding, it seems like the supply side
of the founder equation is rather large, and getting larger. I could be wrong.

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aneesh
There are a bunch of these coming up. In addition to the ones in the article,
a couple on angels in Philly put together DreamIt Ventures.

Hats off to YC for starting it all.

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kradic
They even copied _the orange square_.

