
Why All Incubators Should Follow 500 Startups and Use AngelList as a Gateway - salimmadjd
http://blog.selekt.com/post/31566740924/why-all-incubators-should-follow-500-startups-and-use
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barry-cotter
That was interesting. In a post that took less than 5 minutes to read I
learned the author has undergraduateresearch experience, was admitted to an
MD/PhD programme and is an inveterate namedropper. There was alsp something
about some startup he's involved in, how tons of people wanted in and he (and
possibly existent but never mentioned cofounders) have only hired engineers.
That's at least three overt uses of social proof; too overt, like an MBA who
does not inderstand that his attitude will cause many, many nerds to think
he's probably not bearable company.

There was also something about some incubator's application process in there
somewhere.

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salimmadjd
All fair points! BTW, the intention was not to name drop but to show how much
referral capital I had to spend just for one incubator. MD/PhD reference was
to show the solution of referral capital goes back a long time ago. We were
going to do another post about co-founders and our company.

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pg
"The smaller the program the more attention you get."

There's a math mistake here. The amount of attention you get depends not on
the number of startups but on the ratio of full-time advisors to startups.

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salimmadjd
WOW from PG himself! I agree and this was not a jab at YC. But you guys now
are taking like 80 companies and I'm not sure how much of your personal time
is allotted to each company. I'm sure you guys have a ton of great mentors and
we probably apply to you if AngelPad fall through. But you have to appreciate
the perception. You are the face of YC and Thomas is the face of AP and as an
founder you think to yourself how much time I can get from PG vs. Thomas?

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tomasien
OP: consider re-writing to have less of a "this is why my startup is awesome
and well-connected" and more of a "this is what Angel-list is actually going
to be important".

Here's a hint: it's about data.

(Also, your landing page made me want really sad. Confidence is great, but
being a douche is, well, being a douche)

 _I realize this was a negative post and HN is too full of those these days,
but this was needed_

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tomasien
Second hint: 500 is using Angellist not to make things easier for startups to
apply to theirs and other incubators, but to use the most accurate data
available to quickly eliminate 95% of startups from consideration. They're not
worried about losing a few in the process, they're concerned about efficiency
and missing things hidden in plain site. You can quote me on that.

Extrapolate from there.

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salimmadjd
I agree...but the end result is the same that other incubators will follow the
same process and at the end it's all good.

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Altaco
I think it says a lot here that I read that whole thing and still have no idea
what you do or why you're touting it about like this.

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majormajor
FYI, selekt.com is going to a parked domain page for Domains Made Easy. The
logo in the top left of the page goes to "blog." so I stripped that prefix off
to check out the main page, and was very surprised.

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salimmadjd
The change should be going through DNS now...

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friendstock
Just because 500 Startups is using AngelList doesn't mean that you won't need
to use social capital to get their attention.

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salimmadjd
The point is you apply your social capital to building your angel list profile
once and use it over and over again.

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friendstock
Yes, good point! And it will be useful when you fundraise later on.

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salimmadjd
precisely! However, it seems like I didn't do the best job conveying that in
my blog post.

