
YC Clone In Seattle - kirubakaran
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/356131_founders24.html
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henning
Why is everyone who invests small amounts of seed funding a "YC clone"? The
implication is that the people they fund are "YC rejects" (YC people have
explicitly claimed that on this site).

It seems tantamount to wishing to constrain the number of seed-funded startups
to the ones 4 people (PG & co.) can advise at once.

Are more startups a good thing, or not? If it is, don't deride newcomers by
referring to them as a clone of what already exists.

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nikiscevak
I completely agree. Seed financing is inherently unscalable. Investment
partners need to spend a lot of time per investment and that severely limits
their output.

Just like Sequoia are not a 'clone' of Kleiner Perkins, the same is to be said
for competition: because both are unscalable businesses they can successfully
co-exist and it certainly isn't a winner take all market. Indeed, the market
is crying out for more firms, but the contraint is skilled early stage
investors.

Also, Andy and Chris (who this article is about) both rock.

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webwright
Yaw, attacking the same market/problem, but decidedly NOT a clone.

I _really_ like the co-op twist.

I think shared office space, however, is a LOUSY idea. Adding to my list of
things to blog about!

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run4yourlives
It depends on what they mean by "shared office".

If they share a secretary and some meeting rooms it can work well.

If 20 companies are in the same cubicle farm, not so much.

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bfioca
I don't think it's correct to call this a YC clone, but it's cool to see more
startup-investment-related activity coming out of Seattle - there's a lot of
great talent and ideas there.

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tim2
> Five percent of the equity in each company will be distributed in a pool to
> be shared by other Founders Co-op firms.

Smart way to encourage people to help each other.

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bfioca
I dunno how I feel about that - it depends on the size of the pool (# of
companies). Could get distracting in the long run.

~~~
tim2
There's an economic principal on how specialization can increase output for
the same amount of work. Otherwise, clearly some failed startups can tell that
they're doomed before they finally give up and this might give them something
more valuable to do?

Will be interesting to see this strategy tested.

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ALee
They share office space, own stakes in the other's companies. It sounds like
an incubator, no? These solutions are appearing all over the place. Are
incubators now a good idea? (YC is NOT included in that category)

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rms
The major difference this time around is that the incubators are going for
much smaller dollar amounts: they're doing YC magnitude investments. I'm not
sure if it'll end up being a profitable experiment or not, but I understand
why people are trying.

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jakewolf
Don't YC companies also work together or at least use each other's products?
Co-oping sounds great, but only when it actually benefits users.

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utnick
i like this idea, sounds like a great way to build a community

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webframp
calling it a clone is misleading. exciting since personally i'd like to see
some more VC action in the Pacific NW

