
Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/atlanta-gets-its-own-y-combinator-in-shotput-ventures/
======
wayt
I'm one of the Shotput Ventures partners, and I'm looking forward to a great
first "class" in Atlanta. We've got an interesting group of partners, with
recent business hits in software and web svcs, complementary skills and
backgrounds, and good networks. Check out our partners. I think we'll be
excellent mentors for our hacker teams, primarily because we love what we're
doing and want to help young hackers to build stuff people want and to dare
greatly. We appreciate all that YC has done to innovate and evangelize the
business model. I'm an especially huge fan of pg's inspirational writing and
simple writing style. There are plenty of talented and determined hackers out
there who need our mentoring and connections, and it's going to be a ton of
fun working with them.

~~~
unalone
A slight criticism, looking at your application: asking me to fill out a PDF
resume for a founding team is irritating and time-consuming. Is there anything
that a PDF form can give you that you don't get from having applicants fill
out relevant information into a text box? Drafting a PDF means that now I've
got to spend time making my typography look pretty, getting things organized
in a nice way, and generally spending more time on presentation than I'm
putting into just conveying information.

One of the things I _loved_ about the YC application was that it didn't
require external files - excepting the Posterous video, which is a supersimple
email-and-receive-link system.

------
jwilliams
See pg's comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528924>

" _The root of the problem is that people think seed funding is regional. They
think they're starting the YC of St. Louis, or wherever. Then after they get
started they realize that in fact the seed firms are all drawing on the same
national applicant pool, and that the default fate of the nth seed firm is not
to be the YC of St. Louis, as they'd expected, but to be the YC of the nth
quality bucket._ "

Not that I know anything about this venture yet, but the regional-centric
commentary immediately made me think of this comment.

Edit: Seems Michael Arrington concurs:
[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/atlanta-gets-its-
own-y-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/atlanta-gets-its-own-y-
combinator-in-shotput-ventures/#comment-2670076)

~~~
lanceweatherby
In what may be heresy here on HN I am going to partially disagree with PG.
Regional YCs may indeed be of the nth quality bucket, but that does not
necessarily doom them to failure anymore then not attending Stanford or MIT
dooms a hacker to failure.

The proof as they say is in the pudding. TechStars seems to be doing just fine
so far. Let's see what Shotput's births before we call their babies ugly.

~~~
tbrooks
YC ignores a lot of good ideas because it's really focused on BIG ideas. YC
wants to build Paypal, not 37signals. They lean toward ambitious
infrastructure ideas which also have a higher failure rate. But there is a
huge number of great ideas with lower risk/reward ratios that will still make
stellar companies. I say bring it on... it's a great time to be in the HTML
writing business. :)

~~~
pg
We'd be happy to have funded 37 Signals. We funded Wufoo, which is very much
like 37 Signals, and we'd be delighted to fund more companies like that.

~~~
unalone
But Wufoo still deals with a Big Idea: namely, something that's creating a
large infrastructure on the Internet. 37signals is a private, internal
service: they make things that appeal to closed niches. On the other hand,
Wufoo is something that's more public, in a sense.

Maybe it's just a matter of what YC companies get named more than others, but
the ones that immediately come to mind are big-problem companies. Reddit for
finding news online. Disqus for comments. Scribd for document indexing. Wufoo
for forms. There aren't as many niche sites (versus something like TechStars,
which had a cooking site) - or am I just missing lots of niche YC sites?

~~~
pclark
even the smallest niche can be huge.

~~~
unalone
Absolutely. Furthermore, niche users tend to be more fanatic about the sites
they use if they're done well.

------
quizbiz
Got accepted into Georgia Tech just the other day. And this news made my day
today. Is that sad?

~~~
wayt
Congrats. GaTech is a great school with really smart students. But what's most
important is what YOU do at GT. I hope you will take full advantage of this
great opportunity, enjoy learning, and keep an open mind and an open heart.
Don't worry about whether or not others think you are "cool." Have the
confidence to love yourself and to be a beacon of loving-kindness toward
others. Congrats!

~~~
quizbiz
are you kidding me? I have to be cool. :P

------
vaksel
I view all these "regional" YC knock offs as just early stage angels.

~~~
rjurney
I attended their open house, and I didn't get the impression they are just
early stage angels, although if thats all they are that would still be great,
because there are very few of those here. Many in the investment community in
the southeast have been openly hostile towards the need for more early stage
capital, let alone willing to fund seed stage companies.

Anyway, my impression from talking with the Shotput guys was that there was a
lot of value add they were providing. I would suggest actually contacting them
if you are interested, as I think you'll be surprised and impressed. Most of
these guys are active advocates for our region's startups and do everything
they can to mentor and open doors.

------
coglethorpe
Does Shotput Ventures use the "exploding term sheet" we were warned about?

~~~
ajju
They accept applications till April 10 [1], so the answer is no.

[1] <http://www.shotputventures.com/program-timeline-2>

------
rjurney
Dear Paul Graham,

Everyone but you sucks.

Allow me to explain. I either live in the valley or want to live in the
valley. I idolize you and love this site. You are the smartest guy on planet
earth, and anyone that copies you is pathetic because they could never be as
cool as you. Who do they think they are!?

Now that I've impressed you with flattery and have defeated your enemies on
your behalf, I'd like to tell you about Project Tomacco. With your help, we
can caffeinate tomatoes and hook every college kid on a healthy alternative to
coffee. Did you know tomatoes have antioxidants that fight cancer? Thats
right, we're helping to prevent cancer. We're going to change the world, Paul,
one tomato at a time.

Is there a way to attach a spreadsheet to a comment on hacker news? Because my
projections are going to blow you away. If we get one percent of the tomato
market you're going to be a very rich(er) man, Paul.

Signed,

Valley Hater

~~~
ajju
For those who may not be able to pierce @rjurney's smoky satire, this is
indeed satire.

I have to agree with the spirit of what he's trying to convey in this comment:
news.yc would be a more interesting community if a majority of the people
didn't default to PG's opinion on everything in general (this is my anecdotal
observation and might be incorrect) and YC clones outside the valley being of
nth quality bracket in particular (this is a pet peeve since I live outside
the valleY) without giving it some thought for themselves.

In fact PG himself seems to spend quite a bit of time thinking about how the
valley can be recreated elsewhere seeing how he has written about it in more
than one article and says:

"How hard would it be to jumpstart a silicon valley? It's fascinating to think
this prize might be within the reach of so many cities."

Surely trying to recreate YC outside the valley can only help?

~~~
pg
_Surely trying to recreate YC outside the valley can only help?_

Well, no, actually. YC being in the Valley doesn't actually do that much for
the Valley. I explained why here:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/maybe.html>

It's the stage after YC that makes the Valley what it is-- the angel stage. YC
could be anywhere. We contributed as much to Silicon Valley when we were in
Boston.

~~~
ajju
Here's my train of thought about why Shotput, if successful, would help
Atlanta:

\- There is really very little seed stage funding in Atlanta (unlike the
valley)

\- The people who choose to startup in Atlanta AND need seed funding usually
do so because they want to live in Atlanta for the foreseeable future (or have
to, for some reason). If they didn't, they would just move to the valley since
getting seed funding is so much easier there.

\- Therefore, after seed funding, they are likely to stay in Atlanta (The
round 1 funding scene in Atlanta is better than the seed funding
scene..although not optimal)

\- Hence, Atlanta will be one startup ahead because of Shotput Ventures

The gist is that if first time entrepreneurs were going to leave Atlanta after
seed stage, they would likely have done so at seed stage since seed stage
funding is so much harder here.

~~~
pg
Unless they restrict applications to people from Atlanta, they'll get them
from all over the country. Meanwhile, most groups from the Atlanta region
won't apply only to Shotput, but also to the other seed firms.

So unless they restrict applications, there will end up being little local
component, just as with every previous seed firm. Techstars intended to be the
YC of Boulder. But IIRC only 4 of the 20 startups they've funded so far have
been from Colorado. As far as I know, the same thing has happened to everyone
after them as well.

The seed funding business isn't regional. People would like to believe it is,
because it's 20x cheaper to run a YC than to do what you'd actually have to do
to make startups stick to a particular city. But it isn't.

~~~
ajju
OK You've got a point. But let us say only 20% of the applicants stay in
Atlanta. That's 4 more than otherwise would. Also, as I said before, once you
pass the seed stage, it's easier (but not valley easy) to get the $1M you
mention in "Can you Buy a Silicon Valley". It will help long term.

Basically, if we could at least get the ease of raising seed funding in
Atlanta at parity with the ease of raising 1st round for a startup with
revenues, it would be a significant win for us.

I do agree with you that if there were more VCs funding at the $1M level in
Atlanta, we could keep all the Shotput applicants here and maybe a bunch of
startups would move from across the country to Atlanta. But since politicians
are unlikely to be as enlightened as making the $1B investment you mention in
your essay would require, we'll have to attract private investors. If 1 of
those 4 startups has a big successful exit, we'll probably get 1 more large
fund to come to Atlanta.

~~~
pg
_But let us say only 20% of the applicants stay in Atlanta._

This assumption is off by an order of magnitude. YC funded 61 startups in
Boston. Only 3 are still there, and 1 of those is talking about moving to SV.
So the assumption should be more like 2-3%.

~~~
ajju
I was basing it off the 4/20 TechStars number but o.k.

This is getting me depressed. I am off to go write some code to work it off!

