
YouWeb, Billion-Dollar Incubator? - harscoat
http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2010/11/18/exclusive-youweb-billion-dollar-incubator/
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ciscoriordan
"He founded and led two companies, Webvan Group and Business Signatures, which
were both sold."

Bringing up Webvan and only saying that it sold is like bringing up Ted
Kaczynski and only saying that he went to Harvard.

This is written like the author is trying to play up YouWeb, but I don't know
why he would be motivated to do that.

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samtp
I don't know Peter, but thats a horrible comparison. While the article may be
biased, people here on the Y Combinator board should show some respect. Just
because he has a different model doesn't make it a threat to Y Combinator.

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aristus
The OP was talking about omission, not Peter directly. Webvan was a
_spectacular_ , legendary failure that destroyed almost a billion dollars of
investor wealth, mainly through incompetently aping Amazon's business model
without fully understanding it. Not even bothering to _hint_ at that when
talking about someone who led the company is a huge omission bordering on a
lie.

Wikipedia: "Webvan tried to embrace a total customer satisfaction model
involving a 30 minute window delivery without considering that many working
customers would like their groceries delivered at home at night."

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zx76
"But basically, if you go by YouWeb’s comparison estimates, Relan has turned
$700,000 into around $1 billion in value in just three years, and created
close to 200 jobs in the process. To be sure, the $1 billion isn’t all
YouWeb’s — Relan didn’t disclose the amount of equity the incubator has in
each of its startups."

But basically, he hasn't turned "$700,000 into around $1 billion".

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akozak
_"Whereas an incubator like Y Combinator looks for applicants who already have
a strong startup idea in mind, YouWeb prefers those who don’t. “I’m not
looking for the next Facebook, Microsoft or Google,” he says. Instead, Relan
is decidedly people-focused. He wants “brilliant technical developers” who are
not necessarily passionate about one concept or idea, but about the bigger
industry in general. YouWeb then works with young, unproven entrepreneurs to
target markets that are “interesting” and create the idea and the company."_

I thought YC stresses that it's decisions aren't idea-driven?

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vaksel
i notice that their $1 billion dollar valuation is based entirely on things in
the game sector.

and $100 million dollar valuation for an iPad app seems crazy...ditto for the
$100 million valuation for the sibblingz...I dunno their numbers, but their
alexa rank is close to 2 million, which is like 5 visits a day.

same for the crowdstar and openfeint...sure those are successful, but not $400
million valuation successful.

this article sounds like a puff piece to get people interested in youweb.

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jdp23
They estimate CrowdStar is worth around $400 to $500 million and OpenFeint
around $400 million (using Playfish's and ngmoco's acquistions, each for
$400M, as comparables).

Are there any YC companies that have similar valuation estimates?

