

N Reduce opens up as alternative to ultra-elite startup incubators - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2012/05/14/n-reduce-opens-up-as-alternative-to-ultra-elite-startup-incubators/

======
victork2
Take that in your faces "Elite" startups, you wouldn't be selected, you're not
even "Ultra elite"!

More seriously though, I respect the initiative, but I would love to hear why
this particular vocabulary is employed (from the website and the company's
website): [ "ninja", "ultra", "elite", "brotherhood", "sisterhood" ]. I don't
believe you say that randomly and you want to appeal to a certain population
with these words but don't you think you'll only attract bozos and pretentious
people?

For your website ( given in the comments) please no violent transitions like
that, it's really bad for slow computers like mine. If anything I would have
think that ninjas love discretion...

~~~
railsjedi
Key phrase is "alternative to".

About attracting bozos... maybe we will. We think that instead of trying to
weed out the bozos, let everyone in and see how well they perform. If a "bozo"
can ship and gain traction with their product, then they aren't bozos are
they? But if the bozos flake out, that's ok too. What will be left is the
"elites".

Yeah, we're joking around with marketing on our site. We figure it's better
than being ultra serious. But I'm sure there's a balance that we're going to
need to eventually get to.

~~~
victork2
Thanks for your answers.

I am genuinely interested by what words carry and in your case the kind of
people they are going to attract. I actually write a bit on that. If you
emphasize a lot on ninja/ elite etc... I would guess you will attract a lot of
immature people who have ego probably bigger than their talent.

If you look at the phrasing of Y Combinator or even Facebook ads for
developers you can see that even if they add some words to be fun they are
careful about their use not to send the wrong signals.

Anyhow I wish you the best for your initiative!

~~~
railsjedi
Cool, thanks a ton for your feedback!

Maybe I live in a bubble (downtown SF), but it seems the best devs I've ever
worked with on open source and consulting project tend to have a pretty weird
(maybe immature) sense of humor. In most early stage startup offices here,
it's not weird to see grown men (and brilliant devs) run around the office and
shoot nerf guns at each other.

~~~
zeemonkee
> it's not weird to see grown men (and brilliant devs) run around the office
> and shoot nerf guns at each other

1999 called, it wants its startup cliches back.

~~~
railsjedi
Well, I was in high school in 1999. Very sad to have missed the previous
generation of nerf time fun.

------
johnny99
Kudos, I adore this idea.

You should see if YC will fund η-Reduce during the next cycle. I can imagine
them getting a kick out of funding their own disruption.

------
railsjedi
Can use the following link to sign up: <http://nreduce.com/#signup>

Sorry about the super cute hipster homepage :) We're cleaning it up and making
it a bit better organized.

Thanks for the support!

~~~
pixelcort
What will be the likelihood of NReduce accepting single founders?

~~~
railsjedi
100% likelihood of being accepted. We accept everyone who can ship products.

I'm sort of with PG on this one though. I've tried to do startups alone in the
past. It's such an insane amount of work, stress, and pressure that doing it
alone is quite a challenge.

But if you think you can do it, we'd love to have you!

------
onions
If your name comes from eta reduction, shouldn't it be "H Reduce", not "N
Reduce"?

~~~
railsjedi
It's true. We messed up the capitalization

η-reduce is the correct name. Ah well, N Reduce looks a bit nicer so we went
with it :)

~~~
SkyMarshal
You should change your logo to η , otherwise you're going to be getting this
question over and over. At least the hint in the logo may forestall some of
it, and if not you can point people to it and give them a little test.

~~~
noneTheHacker
I don't think it will matter. Google misspelled googol. Flickr misspelled
flicker (that one was probably on purpose though). If N Reduce hits it big, no
one will care about that and they will recognize it as a company that works.

Edit: I just noticed Chrome doesn't have googol in it's spell checker
dictionary. I wonder if that is intentional.

------
Jun8
Right in the first paragraph it says "... they’re introducing a new, more open
...". I don't know much about other incubators but can't really understand why
YC would be considered less "open" or "exclusive".

My understanding is that powerful incubators form around influential and
visionary people (with money or good connections) so it may not be a good
aspiration model for startups.

------
DiabloD3
N Reduce? Y Combinator? Sure, why not.

------
rmATinnovafy
Well good luck. This looks like a great opportunity.

May you share an email address?

~~~
railsjedi
Sure, email us anytime at contact@nreduce.com

------
sasha-dv
Do you want to join an ultra elite ninja brotherhood?

Hell yeah! Let me fetch my nunchucks.

I would like to see this project succeed, but the language used (too much
enthusiasm?) makes me skeptical. Anyhow, good luck guys.

------
sebastianavina
great, an startup for building up startups.

It's like the circle has been closed.

