
Incubators are Bullshit - cardmagic
http://www.craftsmanfounder.com/incubators-are-bullshit/
======
nemesisj
I feel like any "X is bullshit" post that doesn't start out with a definition
of X or Y or Z is just a glorified troll. Half this thread is going to be
people either identifying with or attacking the straw man that's posed but
isn't really defined well.

Even among people who run accelerators, incubators, and other types of
programs, there is a lot of debate over where the lines begin, end, etc.

Instead of saying "incubators are bullshit" why not just saying "Doing
bullshit is bullshit" since that seems to be the actual point of this post.
Don't do unproductive stuff that doesn't actually advance your startup. Great.
That advice is just as appropriate for outside of incubator people as those
within an incubator.

For example, while reading this article I just kept getting distracted from
the actual main point - many incubators just provide low cost office space. Is
that bullshit? Many incubators aren't actually accelerators like the author
seems to confuse the term with. Is that bullshit?

I remember reading an article from the New Yorker where they talked about
making fun of wannabe authors who just sit around and do everything that
authors are supposed to do except _write_. They called this "writering" and it
seems like the author is trying to say the same thing about "startuping".
Good. But that problem will always exist, regardless of whatever incubator
you're in or not in.

So maybe we should focus on the actual problem instead of just blasting a
straw man, hoping for clicks?

~~~
Jgrubb
I'd personally be happy with a blanket ban on "X is bullshit" posts on here. I
don't think I've ever read one that wasn't pointless linkbait.

Also, on the topic of getting distracted - they might work some of the time,
but I think pop ups that nag you for your email address are bullshit.

~~~
acjohnson55
I actually found the article to be thought-provoking. I think there actually
is a problem of inexperienced founders setting their sights on just getting
into an accelerator, distracting them from the bigger picture.

------
pg
I don't know about the others, but this is not a description of YC. The whole
point of YC is to focus on real work. The first thing we tell the startups we
accept is that they should build stuff and talk to users (and exercise and
spend time with their families) and nothing else.

When the Airbnbs came to speak at the last dinner, Brian Chesky said that the
3 months of YC had been the most productive time in their lives.

~~~
cardmagic
I agree Paul: YC is the only incubator I would explicitly exclude from this
tirade. In fact, I call out YC in section 4 as having incubated companies I
would love to be like.

~~~
ixmatus
I would exclude Techstars too, I went through the Austin program and it was
also one of the best things I ever did. I learned so much.

TS does have a slightly different focus than YC - first month they tell you to
not build a whole lot of stuff but to talk to 90+ mentors (that they curate),
then second and third months are balls-to-the-wall build, talk to customers,
etc... with the third month having a focus on pitch practice for the CEO.

~~~
solve
Am I the only one who doesn't much like the word "mentor"? It makes me imagine
kind of a superior/inferior relation, as if the best people aren't the ones
who starting the startups. Shouldn't the very best people be the ones in the
startups?

mentor:

\- an experienced person in a company, college, or school who trains and
counsels new employees or students.

\- advise or train (someone, esp. a younger colleague).

The word has very clear, strong connotations.

So what is being said here? That founders can't be experienced serial
entrepreneurs? That older people should be training younger people? It's a
very strange word to choose, and I think it impacts how people perceive their
roles.

~~~
michaelmior
I've never thought of a mentor as being necessarily superior. But if the
"best" people are the ones starting the startups (which isn't always the
case), they should be smart enough to know they can learn from others.

~~~
eru
Wise people can learn from fools. The opposite is not true.

------
djyaz1200
Agreed. People with no clue how to create and scale a business have copied a
formula developed by people who actually do understand this. This isn't just
not helpful, it's actively harmful. By anointing themselves as the local
"conveyor belt" for interesting companies and talented entrepreneurs
incubators have created confusion in the market that harms perfectly good
founders who do not participate. People say... "you should apply for XYZ
accelerator" and my reply is... "why?" Is there any reason to other than that
other people do? It has become a sort of tax or validation stamp that we are
all expected to seek out... and after that go on Shark Tank?! Then at some
point we get acquired by Yahoo?

Successful startup outcomes and solvency in the incubator world are not
correlated well. The companies that are selected are carefully directed
through a maze of expensive professional services controlled by the program
directors. The bargain becomes... if you use this lawyer, this PR consultant
and this accounting firm we will support you. What this means is that every
failed startup isn't really a failure because in the end that company spends
all their money paying off the incubator's network. It's an engine of
corruption that takes advantage of people and companies that can least afford
it. Whether they create any real startup success is not especially relevant to
their continued survival, it's just a bonus.

Many incubator programs also tends to select for people who are very well
behaved, polite and have simple A to B ideas. True disruptive innovation is
usually created by disruptive people who have very big ideas.

I don't think incubators really intend to hurt founders or the market, but
they do.

~~~
cardmagic
YES! YES YES YES! You talk like a true craftsman founder.

So many founders seem to think they have to do incubators because it is what
is done. They treat it like traction. And they are completely indiscriminate.
"I just got into the podunk incubator! #win #retire #done"

~~~
borski
Thinking like this is dumb. I really hope people don't think like this.

Incubators/accelerators are, like anything else, tools. You should do them if
they provide value to you and your business, and create more value than equity
they require. For us, that was decidedly true; we moved to the valley with a
very small network, and I can directly trace many of the early successes we
had (not that we're a success yet) to someone I met through the network at
500s.

Do people really do incubators because they're the 'thing du jour?' I really
hope not. It's a lot of equity to give up for just a name. We went in with the
goal of completely blowing everything out of the water, being smart about what
we used it for, and using it to learn and build our network. In that, I
believe we were successful. Nobody should do it because of the name or because
they think they can't do it on their own.

I know we could have done it on our own, but this...ahem...accelerated us
along that path.

------
borski
This is not indicative, at least, of 500 Startups. Look, you can fuck up your
time with any incubator by not focusing on things important to your startup.
Dave McClure and the other partners there will yell at you for doing this, and
the common theme is "Get back to fucking work" and "Don't waste your time with
bullshit meetings."

The overall feeling is: build, get customers, experiment and verify, and
build.

The problem is that most accelerators (500 included) have a TON of opportunity
for distraction, and undisciplined founders get distracted. For us, 500 was
immensely useful because it gave us a network of people to reach out to that
didn't exist in our world before 500. For finding customers, verifying
assumptions, user testing, raising funding, and all that other stuff that
startups have to do, this was incredibly important.

tl;dr: incubators are what you make of them. you can waste your time, or it
can be the most productive time you'll ever have, and it all depends on your
discipline. you'll have more opportunity than you would otherwise, but you
have to be disciplined about what avenues you pursue and which you don't. the
same is true of college, incidentally.

EDIT: It's important to note that I made this mistake freshman year at MIT,
and learned from it. There was so much opportunity for learning, initially,
that I squandered it and tried to do too much. I was incredibly busy, but
never really got anything done. I learned to focus on what's important, but
the resources I had at MIT meant that focus was better utilized than it would
have been at a smaller school with fewer opportunities. The same is true for
incubators/accelerators; we saw undisciplined founders have this problem, but
we took full advantage of all the resources 500s gave us, and ignored the
meetings/events we didn't care about and that weren't useful to us.

------
midas007
If you're gonna start an incubator, you've got to have serious media creds,
founder relationships, have other founders on-board and soft launch. Basically
Om's other possible career option.

It's inevitable that folks would try to copy a model tactically without
understanding the strategy. However I've seen European old money enchanted by
people that are adept at playing the valley game. For example, one promising
approach might be to solve some timely pain-points: what arent startups
usually good at? global localized replication post-traction, customer service
and backoffice. This is shit that usually gets built "organically" and falls
(or fails) over, until real professionals are brought in to make it look more
like a real business. That could work since it reduces risk on the investor
side (by funding things later) at the risk of accepting higher valuations.
They seem to have the ca$h but don't know what else to do with it.

But coming at founders with only a wooly wish and demanding equity is only
going to rope in people too desperate to know the difference. Wantrepreneur
incubator : not gonna try to portmanteau that. Thankfully, there's an app for
that:
[http://portmanteaur.com/?words=Wantrepreneur+incubator](http://portmanteaur.com/?words=Wantrepreneur+incubator)

------
king_magic
I stopped reading, closed the page and never looked back as soon as the "Are
You a Craftsman Founder?" popup blocked my view of the article.

Honestly, when will sites like this learn?

~~~
hfourm
Meh, It popped up after you scroll and its easily close-able.

I've seen much worse

~~~
king_magic
It truly doesn't matter when it pops up or if there are worse offenders out
there. It interrupted me, I was annoyed, I left. Did not read the content, did
not click on ads, I just left. End of story.

------
joshfraser
I'm guessing everyone here knows Sendgrid and Digital Ocean. Both are
TechStars companies that weren't mentioned but are doing quite well.

Focus and learning how to say "no" is a critical skill for any founder to
master, whether they're a part of an incubator or not.

------
newhouseb
> We have not yet seen a single “incubated” startup go public yet.

Yelp was technically incubated by Max Levchin's incubator (although I'm
blanking on what they called it).

~~~
uniclaude
Moreover, considering the average time it takes to IPO, it might be way too
early to make this type of statement.

500 startups, YC, and Techstars started less than 10 years ago.

~~~
001sky
There is so much private liquidity that "IPO" is nearly irrelevant to the
conversation, tho. Public liquidity pools were considered the touchstone
before the advent of hedgefunds. Alot has changed since 1999 in this regards.

------
_kulte
Uptime is bullshit... just kidding, I'm excited to read it eventually because
I tend to agree.

~~~
ixmatus
You tend to agree from experience? As in you've been through YC, Techstars,
500, etc...?

~~~
_kulte
Sorry for the late reply. I've been through Techstars. If interested, I'd be
happy to elaborate, but the OP hits on things that I can firsthand attest to
be true.

------
billspreston
Interesting post, but I would recommend not missing out on the birthing
classes.

~~~
lauradhamilton
Agree! Thought it was pretty funny when he said, birthing classes are a waste
of time, "the baby is coming out anyway."

------
batoure
Site seems to be responding with 503 here is the cache

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmR...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmRMKPIJ:www.craftsmanfounder.com/incubators-
are-bullshit/&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1)

------
morgante
I feel like one of the reasons YC isn't bullshit is that they do _less_.
Companies don't work out of YC, there isn't the strange emphasis on
"networking" that you see in most incubators. Put simply, by offering less
shit they exclude opportunities for bullshit.

------
vyala
I do personally analyzed 50+ companies in Indian startup scene who gone
through incubators. Not many of them had success. I asked one of the founder
of the company who had gone to MS Accelerator, he mentioned as 4 months of
office space without rent.

I serious doubt mentor contribution in the startups. Every problem is unique,
I exactly don't know what mentors brings to the team and table in such a short
meeting (1-2 hrs) on weekly basis.

~~~
bruceb
The one in Bangalore right? I don't think they take equity though, so not a
bad deal.

~~~
vyala
Yes, no equity for MS Accelerator.

------
rachellaw
Carlson is looking at things from a very narrow perspective. If the industry
has high barriers to entry, an incubator can help because it just gives that
extra lead time you need to get a product to launch. Not all products are apps
that you can churn out in the basement to profitability.

What if you have additional inventory? What if you need to purchase forwarding
commodity price? What if your idea is simply new enough that you don't have
any precedents? Incubators can help with that, especially if they have a
lawyer and accountant at hand.

There's also a third factor, which is that if you're an
international/immigrant or someone from a state unfamiliar with tech industry,
then the connections are helpful. The idea of low fidelity networks being
worse off is absolute bullshit though, it's been proven over and over again
that a large network of weak ties generates a stronger overall response than a
small network of strong ties. Weak ties is what builds communities and gives
people jobs (which tbh, is exactly what Linkedin managed to do so well
technologically)

------
rdl
From firsthand observation of YC since 2011, YC doesn't suffer from most of
the (legitimate) gripes you point out.

I also have a pretty high opinion of 500 Startups as an outsider. It seems
like 500 goes for singles and doubles more than YC does, and ranges farther
afield in trying to get new applicants from underserved areas (although YC has
stepped up on this in the past 9 months). I don't have as much data about 500
Startups, but I'd probably say it's a net-accretive thing for participants and
a solid #2.

Every other choice I would very closely judge before participating. The
problem is most of the people entering are in the least capable position to
judge the value of a specific program.

Apply to YC -- Summer 2014 apps close in a couple weeks.

------
mamcx
Consider the state-of-art on my country:

[https://apps.co/inscripciones/convocatoria/ideacion-
prototip...](https://apps.co/inscripciones/convocatoria/ideacion-prototipaje-
y-validacion-iteracion-vi-con/)

To be there, the contract say the founder MUST spend 50%/week of the time in
the incubator (hearing lectures, have somebody tell him how make a business
plan, "networking", etc).

I have been there, and get out. I have talked with the people that manage that
asking "why not copy y-combinator" (with specific points, btw). But the
problem is that that "50%" is billable. The get money for each startup wasting
time there...

------
janson0
I think this article is really short-sighted, in that he is just making a
blanket statement that doesn't apply to all incubators and doesn't apply to
all companies.

We are applying for incubators now, because it will give us the opportunity to
continue doing business and will help us grow our business. We think it will
be a good fit, because we are heavy on the engineering side and are looking
for some investors to get on board and back our passion with real dollars.
Runway + opportunity to focus is the reason you want to get investment or into
an incubator.

Anyway, nice work on getting people to your site through a clever title.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I think you're confusing investment and incubation. They're two different
things.

Investment is when someone with money and experience is enthusiastic about
your idea and wants to help you succeed with it.

Incubation is when someone with money and experience is enthusiastic about
their incubator and wants you to help them succeed with it.

Not the same, see?

*Yes I'm being a little facetious

------
wise_young_man
Craftsman founder reminds me of Ninja programmer and Rockstar developer.

~~~
Dogamondo
What's the difference between a Ninja Programmer, Rockstar Developer and a
Code Monkey?

~~~
rschmitty
Their age! Or at least the time when the term was coined, code monkey being
the oldest

------
pushkargaikwad
Incubators are Bullshit, Startup Accelerators are Scams

Barring few in US and India, you can put the rest in the above two categories.
Most of the people running these incubators/accelerators are there for Kicks,
Greed, Ego and Entertainment only and themselves don't understand the
challenges of building a business. Unfortunately most of the startup founders
are too naive and in hyper state of mind so get sucked into these.

------
doczoidberg
I think there are good and bad incubators. As a founder you always should
_rate everything you do on facts_. Inform you about failure/success ratio and
asks former participants what they think about it. I for myself have never
participated in an incubator because I want to focus on the product and
customers first. But this is just my 2pence.

------
seanccox
Your excerpt from the manifesto raises an interesting point, about "deadly"
consequences of mistaking ambition for greed. At the same time, you call out
specific people and imply they killed themselves because of their own greed.

Can you clarify whether you actually know that, or is that just, like, your
opinion, man?

------
andrewflnr
Working from the general atmosphere of bandied-about numbers, I think "big
startup successes" are closer to 1 in 100 than 1 in 10, if not 1 in 1000. If
YC is anywhere near 1 in 10, that is pretty amazing. At the same time, I don't
think it's fair to hold incubators to this 1 in 10 standard.

------
primitivesuave
Here's the Google cache for anyone who wants to read it:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmR...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oL0JfmRMKPIJ:www.craftsmanfounder.com/incubators-
are-bullshit/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
cardmagic
Sorry for the downtime, just upgraded my server for the load

~~~
wise_young_man
A tad bit ironic as you founded AppFog.

~~~
rschmitty
To be fair AppFog doesnt make claims of auto scaling like AWS :P

------
vyala
@cardmagic, let us know how much viewcount you had end the end of the day to
crash the DB.

------
jbverschoor
I've seen two incubators, and both were very much a waste. One of them had
nice presentations / talks, but that's about it

------
jmpeax
I don't know what an incubator is, so I looked it up on Wikipedia where it
says that "Successful completion of a business incubation program increases
the likelihood that a startup company will stay in business for the long term:
older studies found 87% of incubator graduates stayed in business, in contrast
to 44% of all firms."

I saw lots of "bullshit" words and other emotional words spewed around
Carlson's post, so I think I'll go with the Wikipedia article on this one.

~~~
cardmagic
The study referenced in Wikipedia is from 1997, 8 years before Y-combinator
which is the first of the class of incubators I talk about in my blog post. I
also think the studies are about a different kind of business than the
startups discussed in my blog. More along the lines of McDonalds franchises
than Facebooks.

However you do bring up a valid point: my blog is just my opinion and worth
just about as much as you pay for it. :)

~~~
webmaven
If your rant is specific to a particular type of program, why not use the
specific term ('accelerator')?

------
eru
Interesting how YC is excluded from his comments.

~~~
infocollector
Its an advertisement for YC !-)

~~~
eru
YC's PR submarine.

------
angersock
In a turn of events which should surprise no-one, the tech side of things
destroyed the incubator.

------
unclebucknasty
Or "how I sell books by writing blog posts that make faux controversial
statements".

------
dariusmonsef
Good luck with your book.

------
grillermo
And... its gone

------
canthonytucci
visually offensive; didn't read.

------
michaelochurch
_If a company is in an incubator (except for YC), it is because they weren’t
good enough companies to raise money the regular way. I have heard this from
various industry veterans including VCs and angels. It is a stigma, not a
badge of honor._

This is it. And what matters. The people I meet at incubators are, in general,
not impressive. YC is somewhat of an exception. About half of YC founders
impress me (some highly) and half are in that "really?" category. For other
incubators, it's closer to 10/90\. It's not that they're young and
inexperienced; there are plenty of young people with potential whom I'd hire
and mentor in a heartbeat. It's the talent level. Most incubators have a "no
one good would be, or stay, here" feel. They're not the big leagues.

The "cool" startup scene is a halfway house for immature 22-32 year-olds that
looks sorta like college, enough to prevent the reality shock of becoming an
adult and having to show up somewhere in a single-digit morning hour.

At some point, you start to realize that you don't give a shit about "free
dinner" (you'd rather eat with family or friends) or nerf guns. What matters
are personal success, interesting work, reputation and compensation. These are
all highly correlated with joining a _good_ company, not a "fun" one staffed
and run by boys.

