
AngelHack Launches A Startup Accelerator, Bringing Its Hackathon To 30+ Cities - gosuri
http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/angelhack-accelerator
======
r25WCvaR
I don't care that the founder is spamming social media to get this bumped up.
I care about them taking an equity stake in your company.

I would give a warning to anybody who reads this thread in the future and is
seriously considering giving these guys shares. In a word: don't.

Their team has no history of successful exits and no members with technical
talent that can be taken seriously; they are not going to help you build a
company. Their "connections" are limited to the B-list of Silicon Valley. It's
not clear that their founder can even write code.

Contrast this with the team at Y-Combinator.

Quality of accelerators are a power law that skews so far in the direction of
YC that even attending the incubator in second place is a signal that you
didn't get YC; Peter Thiel mentioned this in one of his lectures. It's not to
say that you won't be successful if you don't do YC, it's to say that it's
difficult to the value added by their "Accelerator" is greater than what you
give up in exchange.

Once again, make your own decision by talking to them. They may change in the
future, but you may also find them equally unimpressive.

~~~
scc
The founder of AngelHack can't code. Technical founders should avoid AngelHack
on this basis alone.

~~~
ggopman
Hi SCC!

You are correct, I can't code (yet!). But all my best friends are coders and I
think on the same wave-length. Starting this year we'll be building out a
network of code schools, which I hope to participate in. In the meantime, I'm
happy adding value to your community wherever I can.

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thrown_seaward
I participated in AngelHack 2012, placing in the top two in my city, and
competing in SF. Although it wasn't terrible, and I did have a lot of fun
(turns out I love SF!), I found the competition to be disorganized and it left
a bad taste in my mouth. I won't be competing again. A few things that stick
out:

* Inconsistent WiFi for duration of competition (in our home city)

* Aggressive event staff (also in our home city)

* No write-ups about our team, or mention of us anywhere at all, even though we were finalists -- remember that this competition is for us too guys! We wanted some recognition.

* Slowness in getting paid back for plane tickets (required reminders)

* A "mentor" who forgot about meetings (completely stood us up), and was difficult to set up meetings with in the first place

* The overall feeling that we were being taken advantage of...just a feeling mind you, but if I felt this way in a contest, I wouldn't be surprised to feel that way if I took their money

Take it with a grain of salt. One man's experience. They could be great for
all I know.

~~~
ggopman
Hi Thrown,

This is Greg from AngelHack. Everything you said is valid and I thank you for
your feedback. We'll organize over 100 hackathons this year and while we work
with venues for 8 weeks to ensure they're up to speed, train organizers on
weekly calls, and oversee that everything is A-grade, we still have some
problems. We've scaled fast, re-placed organizers that weren't top notch, and
cut ties with venues that couldn't handle Wi-Fi caps that they promised us
they could. We're a startup, and like any startup, we move fast and cut the
shit out of the way as soon as it forms.

What you went through last summer was the first iteration of our pre-
accelerator. We knew there would be holes and we knew the only way to truly
understand it was to do it. We took no equity from your class because we
wanted to make sure we added enough value first. At this point we're confident
that we are.

We've built a new system for identifying good mentors, following up with them,
and have hired 2 new members to oversee things for you. Sorry you had to be a
guinea pig, but you lost nothing in the process and got a free trip out to
Silicon Valley and the chance to show top VC's your work...

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error54
I haven't really looked into AngelHack and they may have nothing to do with
this, but all these shill accounts really casts them in a negative light.

~~~
ggopman
Hi Error,

This is Greg from AngelHack. We have nothing to do with said "shell" accounts,
nor did we give anyone incentive to make shell accounts. We offered our
community free tickets to our next event if they helped us with up-votes (our
definition of a successful product launch).

There was no incentive to vote more than once. But like with any community, we
have our more passionate users that go above and beyond to try and help us
succeed. It looks like that is what's happening here.

~~~
salsakran
"nor did we give anyone incentive to make shell accounts" vs "We offered our
community free tickets to our next event if they helped us with up-votes"

Cognitive dissonance much?

~~~
ggopman
Salsa, the offer was to receive a free ticket with your upvote. There was no
incentive to vote more than once.

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aashaykumar92
Not to be the pessimist out of this batch of comments, but the accelerator
sounds less promising than I would have expected from AngelHack. I have to
imagine they have enough money to at least provide housing and living expenses
for the teams they choose so the teams can be in one centralized location. The
mentorship will probably have less value when the teams cannot meet in person
and there is of course the lost networking aspect as well.

Although they do provide a chance for the startups to pitch in the final two
weeks in SF, it seems that this accelerator, even if not formed with this
intention, will be more of a feeder to the bigger and more established ones
like YC, TechStars, 500 Startups, etc.

~~~
ggopman
Hi aashay, you are completely correct, we are designed to be a feeder system
into other accelerators! We're not trying to re-invent the wheel here, only
help great teams prepare for getting into them. We should have branded this
more as a pre-accelerator to be honest (any PR people out there looking for a
job?)

For 12 weeks of mentorship, 2 weeks in SF, all our connections, help getting
into "legit" programs, tickets to Disrupt, and potentially a booth at Disrupt,
we take 2%. That makes us sustainable, which is all we're trying to do. We pay
for everything out of our own pocket. AngelHack is a bootstrapped company that
has scrappily built out our communities around the world without the help of
organizations like Kauffman, that could give us the funding to allow us to pay
for everyone to stay longer.

No doubt, there is a better way things can be done. But with our current
resources, our goals are to do what we can to provide the most value to the
community in a sustainable way.

~~~
aashaykumar92
Sounds good, thanks for the clarification! And yep, only suggestion is to
brand your accelerator as a 'warmup'...this way, it will appeal to college
students such as myself; we don't necessarily have to leave school but we can
still work on it and have a better idea of what we want to do at the end of
the 14 weeks. Thanks again, though, and all the best!

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georgemcbay
AngelHack is the right thing to do and the tasty way to do it!

A+++ Accelerator, would accelerate again!

AngelHack is a totally legit thing and would never stoop to astroturfing
Hacker News!

~~~
ggopman
Hi this is Greg from AngelHack. I'm not sure if someone posted that or if
that's just your personal comment. If you're interested, we act more as a pre-
accelerator, designed to get people ready for incubators like Y-Combinator,
TechStars, or AngelPad. We've helped teams make connections before and we've
built this out so we can continue to help teams. We're doing our part in the
larger eco-system, should you ever need our help we'll be there for you to.

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maffydub
I went to the AngelHack 2012 London and it was good fun.

Contrary to other people's experiences, the logistics were pretty awesome -
for example, despite the fact there were more people at a hackathon than I'd
ever seen before, the WiFi held up.

It's worth commenting that I'm not a startup/business guy - I went along to
play with cool technology and we ended up building an augmented reality app.
Out of 50+ teams, we got an honorable mention (after the 3 top teams).

Probably due to the startup focus, it generally felt as though the teams were
more looking at solving business problems with creative uses of existing
technology than building new technology.

The only disappointing part of the weekend for me was that the presentations
went on WAY too long. There was supposed to be a 2 minute limit, but some
people spoke for 10+! Multiply that by 50+ teams and I was almost falling
asleep by the end (having not slept the rest of the weekend).

But I'd definitely recommend it, and will go again.

~~~
ggopman
Hi Maffy, glad you had a great time. We're working on the 2 minute limit rule
and some creative ways to speed up demos. We hate ushering people off-stage
when they've worked so hard and yammer about on the demo... alas it is
something we need to do though.

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markerickson
I've participated in many hackathons, AngelHack has been one of the better
ones, that said don't be surprised if there is disorganization and confusion.
They have been getting better and providing better food.

Primary reason to attend, working with sponsors. In the past AngleHack has
been good at bringing good sponsors/api vendors so its a good opportunity to
engage with SAAS, PAAS and APIs.

Its about hacking in a short period of time, so overall a fun environment.
Also a good opportunity to connect with others, but don't expect to build a
team for your idea, bring a team with developers if you expect to get
something done.

Too early to say about their just launched accelerator.

(Their "Upvote us..." is lame, and not in the spirit of quality comments)

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nanoscopic
I participated in AngelHack 2012 DC. It was at the Microsoft building. It was
a fun time. The projects were mostly complete crap, but it was fun.

Here is hoping they are not lying about giving free tickets to the first 200
upvotes.

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rohanpai
I was one of the 4 finalists from AngelHack Silicon Valley in fall 2012 and I
just gotta say, it was awesome! The AngelHack hackathon had a great focus on
building (not as much biz/dev/designer)

It's an opportunity that keeps giving. I don't think I would have been able to
get a tour at Facebook and network with a lot of people had it not been for
winning/attending AngelHack.

Being from the bay area it's easy to forget how much opportunities there are
here in respect to other cities. I can't really think of many opportunities
that enable builders from around the world to come to the bay area and pitch
their ideas to VCs and see what life is like here (they get flown out here for
free if they win their city hackathon).

AngelHack++

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tomolivier
I did 2nd on AngelHack Paris on last december, really great and inspirational
event! The best hackathon for sure.

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ch4ch4
Angelhacks events are often better-organized than most.

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HighOnLife
AngelHack London Nov 2012 was so inspirational that even if it hadn't produced
two WW Finals Winners (Osper & Testlio)it would still have been the most
important hackathon in London last year

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eliecert
I participated last year on AngelHack in Silicon Valley and it was just a
great experience. There were crazy and amazing ideas, and the startup energy
during the whole event is just inspiring.

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gailees
AngelHack is in such a great position to do this. Can't wait to see the
startups that they churn out!

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jaceperry11
AngelHack was one of the best tech events of the year! Looking forward to the
next one :)

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ashrafi
Very excited about this .... AngelHack is awesome :-)

Greg and everyone on his team are great people

Ash

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jayzalowitz
Go angelhack team!

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Jay, come the the one in Atlanta this year! You can crash in my spare bedroom.
AngelHack Atlanta is going to be awesome (although I'm a bit biased...)

~~~
jayzalowitz
Cannot describe how tempted I am to do this.

~~~
gailees
do it!

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bshahian
we worked with greg + team on the la version of angelhack and greatly support
his new endeavor! really impressive team whos bound to do great things in the
startup space.

------
tshake
Anyone know the promo code for the free ticket to NYC?

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blake9220
Attended Angel Hack last year and had a great time!

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sahlhoff
Incredibly awesome. I have been waiting for this!

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tshake
Great concept. Keep up the good work.

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gigico
Great job

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aceperry
Awesome, can't wait for it!

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iammark
Really Nice!

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plee2013
looking forward to it!

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gbr554
go go

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tkahn6
Protip to whoever is making these sock-puppet accounts and posting on this
thread: the username appears green for 'newbie' accounts.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419344>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419584>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419949>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419882>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419948>

~~~
aceperry
Protip? One of the posts was mine. Actually, might have been two because of a
messed up registration attempt. I don't know what's a sock-puppet account, but
I was going for the angelhack tickets.

~~~
georgemcbay
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)>

    
    
      but I was going for the angelhack tickets 
    

Then you were basically acting as AngelHack's sock puppet.

Even if you don't work for them and had positive intentions, their ticket
giveaway promise is (IMO) a pretty cheap stunty way to turk sock puppets on
sites that would otherwise automatically detect sock-puppeting based on IPs or
similar.

Pro-Tip for AngelHack -- not really a good call on this one. Next time you
should just approach a Hacker News poster used to the ins and outs of the site
to craft a quality astroturf post for you. Quantity over quality doesn't
really fly here. If tptacek isn't available, I can be bought at very
discounted rates.

~~~
aceperry
"Then you were basically acting as AngelHack's sock puppet."

So then, if I didn't have a green color on my account name, I'm not a sock-
puppet?

Or are you saying that you disapprove of upvoting for a ticket?

Just asking, since I don't know the ins and outs of this site. I just read the
headlines and jump to the articles. I don't read the comments or make posts.

~~~
georgemcbay
The fact that you have a green name as an individual means nothing, just that
you have a new account. But a bunch of green name posts to a single thread
here creates a pattern that looks like a single user or group of users
creating throw away accounts in order to spark fake conversation about
something.

In this case, things weren't quite so clear cut, it seems like it was actually
a bunch of individual users all trying to take advantage of a lottery that a
third party had slyly set up so they didn't have to do their own sock
puppeting, but the end result is basically the same -- a bunch of useless
fluff posts.

