

Spend the Summer at Lightspeed - pushpins
http://lightspeedvp.com/summerfellowships/

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bradly
Fyi... "Each team must include at least one student (graduate or undergraduate
in Engineering or Computer Science) who was a full-time student in the
2010-2011 academic year."

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henryl
Basically, de facto age discrimination.

~~~
rewind
So we're going to say a program that helps women is discrimination against
men, and a program that helps minorities is discrimination against white
people? Why must a program that helps one group of society be viewed as
discrimination against all others? Some people just insist on looking for the
negative side of everything, even when there isn't one.

~~~
waqf
Yes, we're going to say those things, because we like to consider an issue
from _all_ sides, including the negative ones.

After we've done so, we'll make a decision on whether it's good or bad
overall.

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adelevie
This seems like a good incubator but the title is way off.

An incubator's value is much more complex than (dollars) + (office square
feet) - (equity %). Ask almost any successful founder from an incubator such
as YC or DreamIt, and they'll tell you the equity percentage is easily worth
the benefit. In fact, the percentage can easily increase the total value of
the company.

When Paul Graham/Ron Conway/Yuri Milner are financially motivated to see you
do well, the intros and connections these guys make are priceless. Just see
how Paul Graham went to bat for AirBnb when he tried to get Fred Wilson to
invest.

~~~
malandrew
I agree completely. It completely underplays the value of the individual VCs
and overplays the Lightspeed VC brand name.

When you get into YC, you know you are going to be working directly with
people like PG, Harj, Garry, Alexis, Robert M., Paul, Jennifer, and Trevor.

With this Lightspeed VC deal, they just tell you that you get two partners
advising you. You don't know which two. You don't know if they are VCs by
trade. You don't know if they were former entrepreneurs. You don't know if
they happen to be an Entrepreneur in Residence or Designer in Residence. These
details matter and matter a lot.

I think the best incubators and angels are those that emphasize people over
money. People execute. Money just keeps those people fed and housed.

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tkiley
Wow. Lightspeed is investing a huge amount of dollars and energy in creating a
viable alternative to the YC ecosystem.

Seems like this it the type of act that is characteristic of a firm that is
either quite visionary or quite desparate, but I'm not sure which is the case
here ;-)

~~~
ericangel
Lightspeed's been doing this for 5 years, and started before YC and many of
the others...not a promotional firm but those guys are pretty great.

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jlm382
inDinero got $35k from them, and it was everything they advertised: free
office space, no equity, no strings attached.

With that said, I'm very happy to have taken the dilution hit from going
through Y Combinator the summer after :)

~~~
marcomonteiro
If you don't mind, could you elaborate?

~~~
jlm382
Sure. Email ceo@indinero.com and I can answer questions in private.

~~~
marcomonteiro
Thank you.

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pushpins
We participated last summer. Being an east coast startup, it gave us the
chance to get a great feel for startup life in the Valley, prove out our
model, and build a beta version of our iPhone app which we launch in November
(www.bit.ly/IHeartPushpins). Most importantly though, I learned more from
doing the program than any summer internship I ever had.

If you want an honest review of the experience, shoot me an email
jason@pushpinsapp.com.

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andrewmlevy
This is a great program, I did it concurrently with YC s09. They're not really
an incubator - John, who runs the program, wants to give smart grads the
freedom to get a taste of what its like to be an entrepreneur. Several
partners act as mentors but its really about giving you the space and money
for a summer to see if you can make something happen.

What do they get? They get to know really smart entrepreneurs at the beginning
of their career. I _highly_ recommend you apply.

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mlinsey
What's with the editorializing in the title? In any case, taking no equity in
companies is not necessarily a good way to compete with YC; in fact it makes
the two programs complimentary by making it easy to do both programs, as
Indinero did.

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pmichailidis
I participated in the program last year. We collected over 35K from them had
access to their complete network and were able to build out our technology for
free! Amazing opportunity...don't miss the chance to apply!

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znt
Wow this sounds too good to be true. What's in it for them? Are we obliged to
give them our first born son or something?

~~~
rms
You're basically obliged to let them invest in you if they want to and you are
raising an institutional round, and if you do this program and they don't
invest in you that is a strong negative signal that will leave you basically
incapable of raising institutional investment.

But free money is free money, if you get into this, do it in a heartbeat.

~~~
dfield
Not true at all. I was an intern with Indinero when they went through this
program and its purpose is for Lightspeed to get to know young entrepreneurs
and improve university relations.

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pushpins
It's more than just the money and the office space, it's also about
mentorship.

Each team is given a partner who works with them throughout the summer. The
partner helps with intros and getting you in front of the right people,
vetting your pitch deck, etc.

They also bring in incredible founders and mentors for lunch each week.

Last year we had: \- Liam Casey (PCH) \- Dave Lieb (Bump) \- Wences Casares
(Bling Nation) \- Joe Greenstein (Flixster) \- Jedidiah Yueh (Delphix) \- John
Schroeder (MapR) \- Max Simkoff (Evolv)

Plus, they ran the best presentation I've seen on fundraising. It was
basically the stuff that a VC is thinking, but they will never tell you.

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staunch
> _"...each winning team receives $5,000, and each individual fellow receives
> $10,000..."_

That's going to be $25k in most cases, not $45k unless I'm missing something.

~~~
pushpins
You can have up to 4 people on a team.

~~~
staunch
And you can have as few as 1, so the title could just as easily be "$15k".

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decabear
My team did this last year, it was a great experience. While our company chose
not to go forward after the summer, we all learned a lot and I'd recommend
this to anyone. Next time around I'll know a lot more about what to do (and
more importantly what not to do)!

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luvcraft
I guess I should grab one of my student friends and bring him up to speed on
our project so I can apply for this! :)

When you bring in someone older to make your business seem more experienced
it's called a "gray hair". So what's the opposite? "Purple hair"?

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ajaimk
If only they included a dormitory to live in, we could call it the first ever
Startup College

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visualplant
It's a generous program, and John is helpful in every way. The "at least one
member needs to be a student requirement" is a mystery and can lead to glued-
together teams that are truly mismatched.

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gregbayer
Great experience: money for expenses, office space, and excellent mentorship.
Like most incubators, a big part of the value add also comes from the other
teams you'll work along side.

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danlamb
Did this last summer. Fantastic program - was really a great opportunity and
they were very, very helpful.

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hoag
With a headline like that, it's clear to me that Lightspeed misses the point
entirely wrt YC.

