

My draft Masters dissertation on YC and other "startup accelerators" - jedc
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AUkhSN3vaY4jZG1xenptZ18xM2dzd2syZ2hx&hl=en

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pg
I haven't read it carefully, but I noticed a few mistakes.

It's Y Combinator, not Y combinator. We started it in March 2005, not the
summer. A lot more than 14% of the first 70 companies received follow-on
funding; generally 2/3 or more do.

Also, I think this:

"While Paul Graham was influential through his essays, he is far more
influential now that he runs the most high-profile accelerator programme in
the world."

is actually false. Writing is by its nature a more effective generator of fame
than almost any other kind of work. It's unlikely that switching part of your
time from writing to some other kind of work would increase your fame. And in
fact I have independent corroboration of this. Before I started YC, my site
was often the first Google search result for "graham" and sometimes even for
"paul." It's nothing like that now.

~~~
pg
I read it a little more carefully, though still not completely, and I see
another thing that's misleading: the poll of potential founders. What you end
up measuring that way are what random people _expect_ to get out of something
like YC. You're thus two steps removed from the actual function of a ycomorph.
(Because the people who get accepted aren't randomly selected, and even they
may be surprised by what ends up being the most valuable.)

E.g. I notice that the feature that rated highest in the poll was "connections
to future capital." That's actually pretty far down the list of what we do.
But I've noticed that the worse a startup is, the more they think this is
where our value lies. Their product is perfect, of course; the reason no one
wants to invest in them is simply that they lack that magic intro from
insiders. In fact the most valuable and the hardest thing we do is the low-
rated "product support."

~~~
jedc
I need to edit my wording of that description. It was actually a mix of
potential founders, as well as people that have gone through Y Combinator,
TechStars, etc.

Amongst the founders that have been through Y Combinator, the "connections to
capital" was virtually the same score, "brand and alumni connections" was
higher than the overall average, and the other factors were all lower than the
overall averages.

The non-founders actually rated "connections to capital" marginally lower than
the overall group (YC + others) of funded-founders.

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jlgosse
Hey man,

I don't have time to read it right now, but I'm told that I'm a decent writer
when it comes down to it.

The only thing I'll say right now is you should probably reword your opening
statement:

"The objective of this study is to objectively evaluate ..."

Maybe go with something along the lines of,

"The intent of this study is to objectively evaluate ..."

Or, maybe even something like this,

"The objective of this study is to give an unbiased evaluation of ...".

Basically, what you have right now just doesn't flow correctly, and using the
words objective and objectively in one sentence might actually be repetitive.
I know they have different meanings, but in this case maybe try whipping out
the ol' Thesaurus for some ideas!

Hope this helps, I'll be reading this later today!

~~~
jedc
Doh... and very true. Typically when I have the content 90%+ set I turn it
over to my wife who does free-lance copy-editing, where this stuff gets picked
up. Obviously I haven't done that yet!

The final version should be _much_ more grammatically correct and clear. My
goal today was to see what people thought about the general content.

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josejose50
Dissertation looks good.

Question for you (and you can tell me to shove off if its not pertinent):
Based on what I've read it seems that these seed incubators are mainly setup
via angel or VC support and you mention that some are being started now with
backing of a major firm instead. Two question on this point:

(1) As far as you know, do the setups that are backed by a large firm require
entrepreneurs to make a first offer to the sponsoring firm as part of the exit
process?

(2) It appears that the evolution of these incubators has gone from a few VC
guys backing the incubator to consortiums backing them and now major
corporations. Is there a point where government may step in and setup a
similar program? Or is this what we are kind of already seeing when they do
things like the DARPA challenge?

~~~
jedc
(2) - There are already local governments that have funded these types of
programs, but I haven't seen anything from the federal level. They're
generally doing it to kick-start an ecosystem.

(1) - That's a complicated question, and will try to address it in the
paper...

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vaksel
I'd be wary of posting something like this online.

Someone might take that dissertation, post it in some blog as their own...and
then your thesis gets flagged as plagiarism and you get screwed.

~~~
jlgosse
He could easily fight something like that, though. Not only does Google track
EVERYTHING, but think about the witnesses from Y if he asked for them.

Also it's actually becoming quite popular for academics to post their papers
online for peer-review.

