

Dandelion Labs - grandalf
http://www.dandelionlabs.com

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jordan0day
An interesting idea -- although this bit: "So every company in the class is
co-owned by every other company." had me instantly picturing someone
sputtering, "but, but, but, SOCIALISM!"

Seriously, though, with that setup, isn't there an incentive to only work as
had as necessary to get _into_ a class, and then hope one of the other
entrants strikes it rich, so I can take my little cut? Is that going too
negative?

We've all had projects that we were immensely interested in for a while, but
then put had to put on the back burner, and ultimately dropped. How do you
ensure you're not selecting 100 back burner-able projects? For an angel, is
the draw of casting a wide net bigger than the risk of no one really being
_that_ committed to the work?

One other thought, while forming a company/s-corp/llc might not be _that_ hard
these days, since you're essentially making a call for 100 "side project
startups", you might want to add tools to automate the forming-a-legal-company
side of things.

~~~
grandalf
Insightful comments:

Yes there will definitely be some duds, but why should the entrepreneur be
expected to identify a product niche AND risk everything for it AND be able to
fully validate the business concept enough to make big life decisions about
it?

Dandelion is to remove the stasis that having a good day job creates. We
provide vetting, validation, help with proof of concept, find out if the
rubber meets the road, etc.

When you're ready to pitch to an angel your pitch will be 100x better, and
you'll know what you're getting into, and if you met some people whose ideas
didn't pan out, you now have a pool of potential co-founders or early hires
who you know are looking for an early stage idea to get behind.

In today's market, having a talented team ready to start is the #1 thing any
investor should look for before investing serious money. Dandelion helps
exceptional people seriously consider doing a startup, and helps build the
early teams that make the company a good angel investment.

And yes, you'll get a cheap/fast way to formalize the company when the time is
right.

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MattBearman
Is it wrong that the first thing I though when I saw that page was 'Twitter
Bootstrap'? Think I need to get out more...

Seriously though, it's an interesting idea, I'd say the copy on the homepage
is a little misleading as it lead me to believe this is something that is
already happening.

My only query from a cursory glance is: what is my incentive to give a large
steak in my company, seems giving more away benefits everyone _but_ me

~~~
there
_Is it wrong that the first thing I though when I saw that page was 'Twitter
Bootstrap'? Think I need to get out more..._

nope, i see a site with a black bar at the top and blue buttons and it reminds
me of this:

<http://i.imgur.com/31kwM.png>

it looks generic and i wish people would use bootstrap as more of a guide than
a complete theme.

~~~
grandalf
Are you a designer? Care to suggest some specific improvements?

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3am
Everything important on the site is 'TBA' or 'Coming soon' - is this serious?

~~~
grandalf
Yes, not all the details are final yet, as would be expected for the buildup
to the first class.

~~~
wilder
Who I'd be submitting my business idea to in confidence is not a detail.

~~~
grandalf
At this point it will just be me (grandalf) reading them. I'll get your
permission before showing them to any of our board members or investors.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
Who are you, Grandalf?

What have you done?

How sure are we this is not a side project for you too?

Care to put a picture up?

The very least would be for people to know who they are dealing with.

~~~
grandalf
It's absolutely a side project for the founding team at this point. That's the
secret sauce that lets us recruit from the best players in the industry to
help advise the class.

With so much great opportunity out there, the most valuable thing we
(creators) have is our time, and weekends belong to us. So let's do something
amazing with that time that has tremendous upside.

More detail about the team is coming.

~~~
zacharytamas
I can't help but notice you side stepped most of his questions. OoTheNigerian
asked about YOU and what YOU'VE done. You hardly said anything about yourself
and keep alluding to this "founding team" which you also don't give any
details about.

The problem is credibility. How are we supposed to share our ideas with you
and do business with your organization if we know nothing about who is behind
it. Where are your credentials? How does this being a side project for the
"founding team" equal your "secret sauce" to recruiting the "best players in
the industry" to advise your companies? If we know nothing about you, and
neither do your great advisors, what is their incentive to even be involved,
let alone companies applying to your class?

Not to mention that with Dandelion taking 50% equity and your being required
to give at least 1% equity to your class, you automatically start out owning
less than half of your own company—and if you have multiple co-founders you
personally know (verses the ones in the class) and share equity between them,
you start off owning a pretty dismal share in your own venture.

I know personally I'm not very incentivized to know that if I have an idea for
a product and I start a company through your incubator I enter the game
already having lost at minimum 51% stake in my own efforts. I understand that
you receive equity in other companies in your class, which is great for
investment and money purposes if somebody else makes it big, but for would-be
founders such as myself (especially early stage) we're more focused on
building our own companies. I would rather have a larger stake in my own
efforts than a smaller stake plus small stakes in 99 other companies. I don't
think that makes me a selfish entrepreneur, either.

Edit: I notice you added your "More detail about the team is coming." in
between when I started writing and when I posted. I would suggest that your
credibility would have been helped by having the detail available from the
beginning. As the cliché goes, you never get a second chance for a first
impression. Still, though, I would be interested to read about your team.

~~~
grandalf
Maybe the wording isn't clear. But Dandelion only gets half of whatever
percentage a founder agrees to give up, which may be as little as 1%.

Please don't submit the application if you are not comfortable (we'll make
some improvements to the site in the near future which ought to help). I
talked with a lot of people about Dandelion at startup school and the response
was pretty overwhelmingly positive, so I decided to post a link to the home
page to HN in its current state of completion and polish.

Obviously full trust and transparency is essential. So feel free to email me
and I'll give you a call or something to fill in any details (this applies to
anyone who is interested).

Obviously the page of the site relating to the founding team is crucial and so
I am (appropriately) reluctant to post it in haste.

~~~
zacharytamas
Ah, I see. Maybe I did read it wrong. Sorry about that.

Still I would think that credibility and trust is hampered by lack of
information about the people behind it. I don't doubt there is more to the
plan/idea than is represented on the site, but unfortunately when it's a flat
website of "Coming Soon" you can't really find answers to your questions. I
probably would have stated on the front page that more information is coming
soon. Like someone else said I had the impression that it was already
established and operational and I had only just heard about it. The copy is
definitely written in this way. Like most people I clicked through the tabs
for more information and was disappointed seven times in a row.

Anyway, </whine>. Good luck with it! I'll keep an eye on it to see the details
that come out. :)

~~~
grandalf
OK thanks for the constructive feedback. I consider the overall feedback from
HN to have been extremely positive and will incorporate all of the
suggestions.

The concept has a few chicken/egg issues with ramp up, but why let that get in
the way :)

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alexwolfe
Just a basic comment. If you dont' have content for a page, don't put it in
your navigation until it is ready. No one will be disappointed about a page
they don't know exists. Coming Soon... is very 90's

~~~
grandalf
You may be right. My thoughts here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3212674>

I thought it might help spur the imagination of the reader to show the nav.

~~~
alexwolfe
It could have but the message didn't tie into spurring someone's imagination.
Perhaps if you had something interesting such a picture, illustration, or even
brief write up of what you expect this section to become it would have allowed
for the user to imagine the potential. However, most of these pages just show
"coming soon" or "tba". In many cases this leaves the user slightly annoyed by
feeling tricked into clicking a link that had no content.

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itsnotvalid
_An initial round for the class is typically between $250K and $500K, so
between $2500 and $5000 per company._

So there would be 100 teams in a class (a team can be single person).
Calculating from validation, say a classmate is giving up 10% (ceiling value
suggested by YC) for $5000, that is 50000 in valuation. I wonder what pg would
think on this.

~~~
grandalf
If we are doing things as intended, the value add by Dandelion will more than
justify the overall valuation being close to PG's recommended ceiling. And a
founder can always request slightly different terms. It's not about the terms
at this phase, one just wants to avoid doing anything that will hinder future
investment.

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djb_hackernews
I'm sure future investors will love to get involved with a headache of a
company that already has 99 investors...

~~~
grandalf
Why do you consider this complicated?

~~~
hornbaker
"Messy" cap tables certainly have the potential to scare off larger investors
(VCs, super angels) in the future. Lots of very small stakeholders (not
counting vested employees) add to legal costs at each round, and VCs sometimes
refer to them as "ankle biters." IMHO $5K is not even close enough capital to
consider adding 100 line items to a cap table.

~~~
grandalf
Well, it could also be set up as an option pool, etc. I don't think it adds
any significant friction.

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zwentz
Okay, so I filled out the apply form on a whim, and there's not response to
tell me that it went through. No confirmation on the site itself, no email,
nothing. And a lot of "Coming Soon" on pages, I feel this may have been a bit
early of a submission.

~~~
grandalf
Hmm, not seeing it. Try resubmitting. It should take you to a page that thanks
you for the submission.

~~~
zwentz
Ah okay, I just tried it again and it worked as you describe.

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guywithabike
Who is running this and how is it in any way a good idea? If you're willing to
give up control of your company for a measly few thousand, why not just take
on some credit card debt?

~~~
BallinBige
Where is this located?

~~~
grandalf
We're in San Francisco, but applicants can be anywhere.

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JoachimSchipper
[EDIT: fixed.] The graph seems to imply that low-risk investment are the way
to go: the blue line is comfortably over the red line in the "low risk"
territory. Of course, the graph is useless anyway, but presumably it should be
useless in a "give us your money" sense.

~~~
grandalf
Good catch. Fixed. Thanks for thinking, someone has to :)

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bricestacey
I just launched an MVP the other day, but at least I removed the tabs which
had blank content!

~~~
grandalf
I thought the nav structure was a reasonably effective way to communicate the
intended breadth/scope of the entity.

~~~
shadowsun7
@grandalf: If so, just remove the links and keep the nav structure. That way
nobody can click the links, but they can see how the nav looks like when it's
done.

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ruethewhirled
The distinct lack of information on the site doesn't instill much confidence

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rev087
I am truly excited with the idea, but can people outside the US apply?

~~~
Voice-of-Reason
Then I'm worried about you... Read Lean Startup and BUILD out an MVP on your
own. That's all this guy is doing -- doing it yourself will mean you don't
have to give up ANYTHING.

~~~
rev087
I'm more than willing to trade a portion of the potential income for a whole
community interested in my project's success. And since I would also own a
fraction of every other project, if my own idea fails down the road I can
simply leave it on hold and help the more promissing ones; it reduces risk not
only for the investors, but also for the small guys.

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grandalf
Looks like we may have had an issue with the form earlier. If you submitted an
application and didn't get redirected to the thank you page, please resubmit
it.

------
aherlambang
Don't really understand on how much potential money you can get from this?
You're saying a max of 250 k per class and each group will just get 2500 -
5000 max?

~~~
grandalf
It's designed to be a very small round. Much like with other incubator
concepts, the money is a formality. The nice thing about Dandelion is that
applicants typically have a great day job that is paying their bills and
living expenses, so 100% of dandelion's investment can go directly into the
product.

~~~
inuhj
How is the money a formality? I don't understand what Dandelion plans to add
beyond the money. The pitch suggests that this is for people looking for
2.5-5k for design, marketing, etc. It makes no mention of mentorship or any
other benefits.

How long do you expect the process from application->funding to be? If its
longer than 8 weeks I would rather raise my 5k elsewhere(like with a credit
card). Maybe set a time limit on how long a class can exist before it is
considered full(even if its less than 100 companies).

Why 100 companies? Is it just a nice, round number or is there thought behind
it?

~~~
grandalf
Those are excellent questions. The best way for us to address them is to
update more of the copy on the site. The biggest thing we help with is
validation, but we also help create winning teams, early hires, etc.

The number 100 is intended to be large enough to make the investment truly
diverse, large enough to attract a wide variety of talent and experience in
each class, but small enough to be filled relatively easily. There is also no
harm in applying multiple times or in scrapping a project and joining someone
else's or submitting another idea. From the standpoint of the investor, it's
an investment in people, and the specifics of the structure address the
realities of risk aversion, talent acquisition, etc.

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synae
You should probably run spellcheck on that page - start with "nubmer" :(

~~~
grandalf
Fixed: I'm the first to admit I'm a lousy speller. Though I won my jr high
spelling bee.

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outside1234
what value do I get out of this? (why don't I just go pitch a Angel directly?)

~~~
grandalf
If you're ready to go to an angel, then you're already sure that you're ready
to drop everything to do your startup, so maybe you should.

Dandelion is for people who have a great job, an idea they think has
potential, and would like to create the best possible pitch to angels and
convince themselves it's worth doing full time (not always easy if you have a
great job). We also offer a superb way to find co-founders, designers, etc.

And it's fun.

~~~
kennystone
This should go on the home page.

~~~
yatendra
I second it. It should be on the home page.

~~~
grandalf
advice taken.

