

Ask HN: [YC-Funding] : Will it work? - anujkk

It is beyond doubt that YCombinator model is a successful one but will it still work if we take "funding" out of it? When startups apply to YCombinator what they want most - investment? guidance? or popularity of being a YC company?<p>What if someone creates a similar organization where a team of experts(Technology/Design/Marketing/Finance etc.) guides and helps promising startups to bring out MVP of their product and connects them with investors in return of 5%-10% shares? Will it work?
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patio11
There exist many, many incubators out there which are essentially on the YC
model. Let's charitably describe them as occupying a good bit of a
hypothetical spectrum of value one could provide.

A new incubator which provided no funding is signaling to prospective
companies that it is not as valuable as other incubators. It is less about the
$10k (which is a virtually meaningless amount of money anyhow in business) and
more about "We couldn't actually convince anyone to part with $10k per startup
but don't worry despite that we _do know what we're talking about_ ".

This would likely doom that hypothetical incubator to only getting
applications from people who are probably not ready to make successful
companies, who are _legion_. You know, "great idea for a social network around
filtered mobile pictures of razor blades just needs a tech cofounder to get
their gamification on". That would be the happy end of the inbox for that
hypothetical incubator.

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debacle
You could create something on this model, but you're not going to get 5-10% of
shares without opening your wallet and you'd be hard pressed to put together a
group that is as engaged as YC.

