
Bethnal Green Ventures: a UK accelerator programme for stuff that matters - scraplab
http://bethnalgreenventures.com/
======
ukthrowaway314
This just looks like a typical UK 'jobs for the boys' venture - draw a salary
for three years, wrap it up, move onto the next one. Little surprise to see
NESTA throwing money at it:

 _Bethnal Green Ventures is co-ordinated by Paul Miller. Paul has spent the
last seven years learning how to start new organisations that use technology
to solve social and environmental problems, primarily through School of
Everything and Social Innovation Camp. Before that he worked at the think tank
Demos and the sustainability charity Forum for the Future._

So basically he's a quango man, who's added a few tech names as 'advisors'.

Nothing will come out the other end. But it will keep a few Shoreditch
hipsters gainfully employed.

~~~
rellimluap
Thanks for your support. I've actually worked to get this off the ground -
unpaid - for the last two years but it's a ten year play for us.

Many more Team Advisors to come... just ran out of time in updating the site
I'm afraid.

~~~
DanBC
I wish you the best of luck if it's a real programme and not just grant &
subsidy milking. That sounds really offensive, but it's not meant to be.

Do any of the alumni have a web-presence? Perhaps you could either link to
their websites; or you could host small "about" pages for them?

You're going to get people thinking that this is just another quango product -
something created to use a budget from some government organisation - so how
could you address those concerns? How can you show that you're different?

~~~
rellimluap
I've popped links into our alumni page but with the caveat that the first test
run was very different.

I guess I understand the concern that I'm just a quango/think tank guy but
most of the useful stuff I've learned was as co-founder and CEO of School of
Everything (www.schoolofeverything.com). We built a product, were finalists in
the first round of Seedcamp, raised seed investment from angels including
Esther Dyson and have a whole load of happy customers. We never became Google
but the site does ok. I'm the first to admit I made lots of mistakes along the
way which I hope I can help our teams avoid making again.

Would definitely welcome advice on how to show we're different.

~~~
pmjordan
Putting the info about your startup experience from the above comment on your
part of the 'people' page would help. The reason people trusted YC early on
was because everyone knew pg, rtm and tlb did Viaweb together, so they'd been
through the whole of the startup process themselves.

So if you consider advice and mentoring a major part of the investment into
the startups you fund in exchange for a lower cash valuation, you'll have to
be very convincing that it really will add that much value.

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buro9
6% for £12.5k isn't going to be enticing enough for what they're offering.

6% if you're YCombinator is one thing, there's track record, location, address
book, mentors, who you get to pitch to, etc... and you can easily come to the
conclusion that you've had value-for-equity.

But I read BGV's site carefully as I would consider my startup to be exactly
what they are looking for, and I meet all of their requirements (we're even
London based), but... I couldn't find on their site the value to my startup,
and how the 6% translated into anything of substance to me.

If it's not the people (experienced, with contacts, track record, etc), then
I'm looking at the money, and the money isn't enough to justify the equity
given the weakness of the rest of the offering.

It feels like someone has tried to emulate YC without understand what the
value of YC is.

~~~
citricsquid
I think you make a great point. People like Justin Kan going back through the
YC process with a new startup (when the funding isn't a concern) just shows
how much the people of YC and the YC brand matter, the money is only a part of
it. Although YC didn't start in this position, the brand has built up over
many years and I don't think the lack of people at the start will cause
problems for BGV, but it will give them a hard time when being compared to the
likes of YC.

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andy_boot
I can't help but notice that there are a lot of accelerators being created in
the UK at the minute. I am worried there will soon be more accelerator places
than there are serious startups and I say this as a
<http://oxygenaccelerator.com/> graduate.

~~~
gaius
Also see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2380316>

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andrewmcdonough
I heard great feedback from some of the people who took part in the first run
of this program. It was spun out of "Social Innovation Camp", a series of hack
weekends that I attended and found highly rewarding.

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Tarks
I'm all for more things like this, especially in the UK, heck I'm currently in
London working for a consulting company in a bank and would love to jump into
a startup but I have to say that what they're expecting compared to what
they're willing to put in seems a little...lopsided.

"Once a year, we work with a group of very early stage companies and provide
them with up to £15,000 of investment and a three month programme of support"

"If we’re going to tackle climate change, we need new products and services
that will help people reduce their energy use by a factor of 10 not just by a
few per cent."

I can't see £15,000 getting you anywhere with something of that scale, even if
you're a seriously smart cookie basic operating costs still apply. . .
especially considering London rent etc.

~~~
ig1
I imagine like YC (and other seed accelerators) the idea is to give you enough
funding to build a prototype in three months which you can then use to raise
further financing.

~~~
accountoftheday
Except in SV you actually _can_ raise further funding on reasonable terms.

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tomblomfield
The proliferation of cookie-cutter incubators isn't a good thing for London or
any other city.

The value of Y Combinator is a combination of its brand, connections and the
huge experience of the partners there. Compare the experience of the various
YC partners[1] with those of any other incubator, and it's quickly apparent
there's no competition. UK incubators seemed to be staffed by accountants,
bankers and lawyers who emphasise teaching applications how to "write a
business plan" rather than "make something people want"

1 - pg - Viaweb, pb - friendfeed & gmail, Garry - Posterous & Palantir, Geoff
- RocketMail & Lala, Sam Altman - Loopt, Harj - Auctomatic. Etc.

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petenixey
YC states fairly openly that it's looking for the outliers and that it makes
its real money from the Dropboxes, AirBnBs etc. If the top incubators only
make their money from the top companies in them then it makes me wonder
whether if a market has already been tapped (London by Seedcamp, SF and
further by YC etc) anyone else can make the returns they need.

Multiple VCs and Angels can exist in the same segment because funding at that
stage is polygamous. You get funding from multiple angels or VCs so a number
can compete. The ecosystem may not support many but it can support more than
one.

If an incubator can only make its money from the top companies though and
there is another incubator that already has the top companies in a particular
market then do the economics actually work?

YC, Seedcamp, TechStars etc all arguably cover overlapping but different
markets but I wonder whether the economics literally stop you dead from doing
another incubator in SF or in London.

It strikes me that the only entrance is either to go above or below the
incubator or go to a completely different market.

~~~
ig1
Well what's the bottle-neck ?

It's not as if there's a finite pool of disruptable markets or a limit on
innovation (or at least one that we're anywhere close to).

The limit seems to essentially be on the talent side and PG has commented
before that the best startups they've funded were often the last ones they
decided to fund in a round which suggests that's plenty of talent that YC
isn't getting.

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rokhayakebe
I probably would apply to this programme because the founders seem to want to
tackle real lasting problems: insurance, loneliness, health care prevention,
etc... as opposed to an inbox optimizer. I wish YC had a branch dedicated
solely to startups that have truly ambitious goals and want to actually
improve the world.

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ivoivoivo
BGV is tackling an interesting niche- its the time when social start-ups shift
from becoming a hobbby project to a serious full-time undertaking and the way
I see it is that that 15k would be the start of someone going full-time on
their venture. In terms of knowledge of social needs, and of social ventures,
the team at BGV and the Young Foundation are doing some of the most
interesting work in the UK. This programme could have a big impact on a small
social venture, and a working relationship and ongoing support from them would
be well worth the 6% in many cases.

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JVIDEL
I see some insurmountable contradictions with this program.

They ask for solutions to some very complex problems yet give very little
funds to do so. For that amount the most a startup can do is come up with the
principles for a potentially workable solution for the problem, but not an
actual execution to see if it's effective at all in a real-world basis. Let
alone there are plenty of such theoretical solutions to the problems they
name, there just isn't enough money to implement them.

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shotinthedark
Within a few minutes of reading about Bethnal Green Ventures was about I knew
not to apply. I am currently working on a startup and could use "good" help,
but I got the impression BGV were all about make money for themselves with
little other interests. I wasn't sure what exactly would be in it for me other
than up to £15,000 - but one can always get a lone. Accelerator groups are
more than just the money.

------
rayhano
different interests highlighted: great. But what about the programme itself?
That is the value proposition for founders.

~~~
justincormack
Yes my thoughts exactly. They are not selling themselves at all. Anyone here
been through the programme?

~~~
rellimluap
This is actually the first time we've run the programme properly. We did a
test run about 12 months ago but at that stage didn't have the money to
invest. Even so the teams got a lot out of it I hope. Good Gym
(www.goodgym.org) has probably progressed the most but it was a different set
up then - they're a not-for-profit.

The value for teams will definitely come from our network which we're still
adding to the site to show who's involved. I think maybe we're underselling
ourselves by being a bit British about the whole thing. Any advice gratefully
received.

~~~
mattmanser
So this:

 _Can I apply as an individual?

You can try but it’s very unlikely that we’ll fund you. We’ve found that a
startup is much more likely to succeed when it’s started by a small team
rather than just by one individual._

Is a big load of bollocks then?

You're passing yourself off as experienced when you're anything but.

~~~
rellimluap
To be honest that comes from our experience from Social Innovation Camp. We've
watched a lot of people trying to get ideas of the ground struggle if they
don't have a team around them. It can be a pretty lonely business.

------
DanBC
It is frustrating that their Alumni page lists some groups they worked with,
but does not have links to those people.

A google search for one returns some information, but it's 404 on the
bethnalgreenventures website.

Perhaps some cultural notes about Bethnal Green - an area in the east end of
London - would be useful?

I was born there, but left something like 40 years ago.

~~~
rellimluap
Links added to the alumni page now - sorry, just slipped my mind to update.
Three of the projects are still running.

Bethnal Green is an interesting place. It's got a pretty strong heritage as a
place where social reformers have created new things - the Open University for
example. It also has some very good pubs.

------
andreasklinger
Maybe helpful for the orga of the programme: Most accelerators underestimate
the overhead for a young team to move for several weeks/months to london or
fly back and forth for weeks. You should try to provide help or even space for
that.

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swah
Off-topic: I shall also name my startup after a Tube stop - I really enjoyed
the city.

------
jgamman
they know their target audience: the 2006 Lara Croft model was from BG
<http://www.itsvery.net/laracroft-karima-adebibe.html>

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ktizo
Up to £15,000.

To be absolutely fair, it often seems that in the UK you'd be better off
disguising your startup idea as a work of performance art and making an
application to the Arts Council for a grant.

For an added bonus, you wouldn't have to give any of it back at the end, and
if you can show that you did anything that was in the slightest bit similar to
your original proposal and didn't just drink the money, then they are mightily
impressed and offer you more free cash.

[edit] Just thought of the "Dada Tech Startup Incubator";

We dress startup founders in octopus costumes and teach them about semiotic
forms and stuff, in order to get given money from the kind of well-heeled
philanthropists who spend more on things like opera than they are willing to
lend to small businesses.

We charge a compelling rate of 4% equity and a broken window full of the lost
dreams of a hungry sparrow.

~~~
mcdaid
Brilliant!

~~~
ktizo
Excellent, it looks as though I may have found my first customer.

Step this way McDaid, and we shall immediately start installing the green
rubber flamingos.

