This just looks like a typical UK 'jobs for the boys' venture - draw a salary for three years, wrap it up, move onto the next one. Little surprise to see NESTA throwing money at it:
Bethnal Green Ventures is co-ordinated by Paul Miller. Paul has spent the last seven years learning how to start new organisations that use technology to solve social and environmental problems, primarily through School of Everything and Social Innovation Camp. Before that he worked at the think tank Demos and the sustainability charity Forum for the Future.
So basically he's a quango man, who's added a few tech names as 'advisors'.
Nothing will come out the other end. But it will keep a few Shoreditch hipsters gainfully employed.
I wish you the best of luck if it's a real programme and not just grant & subsidy milking. That sounds really offensive, but it's not meant to be.
Do any of the alumni have a web-presence? Perhaps you could either link to their websites; or you could host small "about" pages for them?
You're going to get people thinking that this is just another quango product - something created to use a budget from some government organisation - so how could you address those concerns? How can you show that you're different?
I've popped links into our alumni page but with the caveat that the first test run was very different.
I guess I understand the concern that I'm just a quango/think tank guy but most of the useful stuff I've learned was as co-founder and CEO of School of Everything (www.schoolofeverything.com). We built a product, were finalists in the first round of Seedcamp, raised seed investment from angels including Esther Dyson and have a whole load of happy customers. We never became Google but the site does ok. I'm the first to admit I made lots of mistakes along the way which I hope I can help our teams avoid making again.
Would definitely welcome advice on how to show we're different.
Putting the info about your startup experience from the above comment on your part of the 'people' page would help. The reason people trusted YC early on was because everyone knew pg, rtm and tlb did Viaweb together, so they'd been through the whole of the startup process themselves.
So if you consider advice and mentoring a major part of the investment into the startups you fund in exchange for a lower cash valuation, you'll have to be very convincing that it really will add that much value.
(just hoping you'll take a look at my very-new website which, I hope, will be a great way of getting programmers to help your efforts: http://giving.github.com )
Wow, such a negative comment. Some great organisations have been spun out of this, and it's predecessor, Social Innovation Camp (look up the Good Gym, Enabled by Design, My Police etc). Many of the people working on these social ventures do so for no money, in their spare time, trying to use their skills to change the world. This is absolutely the opposite of 'jobs for the boys', and the small amount of money that NESTA put in is insignificant compared to the time that these highly skilled people are giving up. Just to be clear, I have nothing to do with the programme, but I do know some of the people who have been involved, and they are some of the nicest, and kindest people you will meet.
I don't know Paul beyond following him on Twitter, but SICamp is a respected hackday and School of Everything is an angel funded startup (with funding from Esther Dyson and JP Rangaswami among others).
6% for £12.5k isn't going to be enticing enough for what they're offering.
6% if you're YCombinator is one thing, there's track record, location, address book, mentors, who you get to pitch to, etc... and you can easily come to the conclusion that you've had value-for-equity.
But I read BGV's site carefully as I would consider my startup to be exactly what they are looking for, and I meet all of their requirements (we're even London based), but... I couldn't find on their site the value to my startup, and how the 6% translated into anything of substance to me.
If it's not the people (experienced, with contacts, track record, etc), then I'm looking at the money, and the money isn't enough to justify the equity given the weakness of the rest of the offering.
It feels like someone has tried to emulate YC without understand what the value of YC is.
I think you make a great point. People like Justin Kan going back through the YC process with a new startup (when the funding isn't a concern) just shows how much the people of YC and the YC brand matter, the money is only a part of it. Although YC didn't start in this position, the brand has built up over many years and I don't think the lack of people at the start will cause problems for BGV, but it will give them a hard time when being compared to the likes of YC.
I'm pretty sure I understand the value of YC - I know quite a few people who've been through the programme and I've visited the space and met with Harj who taught me a lot.
We're different though and I think different startups are looking for different things. If you have time, I'd certainly be up for meeting to see if there is a fit. My email is on the site.
This is a Young Foundation initiative, who started the Open University, Which? Magazine, the National Consumer Council... They're dipping their toe into the IT space for the first time, but they've been doing social innovation acceleration in other ways for decades.
I can't help but notice that there are a lot of accelerators being created in the UK at the minute. I am worried there will soon be more accelerator places than there are serious startups and I say this as a http://oxygenaccelerator.com/ graduate.
I heard great feedback from some of the people who took part in the first run of this program. It was spun out of "Social Innovation Camp", a series of hack weekends that I attended and found highly rewarding.
I'm all for more things like this, especially in the UK, heck I'm currently in London working for a consulting company in a bank and would love to jump into a startup but I have to say that what they're expecting compared to what they're willing to put in seems a little...lopsided.
"Once a year, we work with a group of very early stage companies and provide them with up to £15,000 of investment and a three month programme of support"
"If we’re going to tackle climate change, we need new products and services that will help people reduce their energy use by a factor of 10 not just by a few per cent."
I can't see £15,000 getting you anywhere with something of that scale, even if you're a seriously smart cookie basic operating costs still apply. . . especially considering London rent etc.
I imagine like YC (and other seed accelerators) the idea is to give you enough funding to build a prototype in three months which you can then use to raise further financing.
The proliferation of cookie-cutter incubators isn't a good thing for London or any other city.
The value of Y Combinator is a combination of its brand, connections and the huge experience of the partners there. Compare the experience of the various YC partners[1] with those of any other incubator, and it's quickly apparent there's no competition. UK incubators seemed to be staffed by accountants, bankers and lawyers who emphasise teaching applications how to "write a business plan" rather than "make something people want"
YC states fairly openly that it's looking for the outliers and that it makes its real money from the Dropboxes, AirBnBs etc. If the top incubators only make their money from the top companies in them then it makes me wonder whether if a market has already been tapped (London by Seedcamp, SF and further by YC etc) anyone else can make the returns they need.
Multiple VCs and Angels can exist in the same segment because funding at that stage is polygamous. You get funding from multiple angels or VCs so a number can compete. The ecosystem may not support many but it can support more than one.
If an incubator can only make its money from the top companies though and there is another incubator that already has the top companies in a particular market then do the economics actually work?
YC, Seedcamp, TechStars etc all arguably cover overlapping but different markets but I wonder whether the economics literally stop you dead from doing another incubator in SF or in London.
It strikes me that the only entrance is either to go above or below the incubator or go to a completely different market.
It's not as if there's a finite pool of disruptable markets or a limit on innovation (or at least one that we're anywhere close to).
The limit seems to essentially be on the talent side and PG has commented before that the best startups they've funded were often the last ones they decided to fund in a round which suggests that's plenty of talent that YC isn't getting.
I probably would apply to this programme because the founders seem to want to tackle real lasting problems: insurance, loneliness, health care prevention, etc... as opposed to an inbox optimizer. I wish YC had a branch dedicated solely to startups that have truly ambitious goals and want to actually improve the world.
BGV is tackling an interesting niche- its the time when social start-ups shift from becoming a hobbby project to a serious full-time undertaking and the way I see it is that that 15k would be the start of someone going full-time on their venture.
In terms of knowledge of social needs, and of social ventures, the team at BGV and the Young Foundation are doing some of the most interesting work in the UK. This programme could have a big impact on a small social venture, and a working relationship and ongoing support from them would be well worth the 6% in many cases.
I see some insurmountable contradictions with this program.
They ask for solutions to some very complex problems yet give very little funds to do so. For that amount the most a startup can do is come up with the principles for a potentially workable solution for the problem, but not an actual execution to see if it's effective at all in a real-world basis. Let alone there are plenty of such theoretical solutions to the problems they name, there just isn't enough money to implement them.
Within a few minutes of reading about Bethnal Green Ventures was about I knew not to apply. I am currently working on a startup and could use "good" help, but I got the impression BGV were all about make money for themselves with little other interests. I wasn't sure what exactly would be in it for me other than up to £15,000 - but one can always get a lone. Accelerator groups are more than just the money.
This is actually the first time we've run the programme properly. We did a test run about 12 months ago but at that stage didn't have the money to invest. Even so the teams got a lot out of it I hope. Good Gym (www.goodgym.org) has probably progressed the most but it was a different set up then - they're a not-for-profit.
The value for teams will definitely come from our network which we're still adding to the site to show who's involved. I think maybe we're underselling ourselves by being a bit British about the whole thing. Any advice gratefully received.
You can try but it’s very unlikely that we’ll fund you. We’ve found that a startup is much more likely to succeed when it’s started by a small team rather than just by one individual.
Is a big load of bollocks then?
You're passing yourself off as experienced when you're anything but.
To be honest that comes from our experience from Social Innovation Camp. We've watched a lot of people trying to get ideas of the ground struggle if they don't have a team around them. It can be a pretty lonely business.
+1 to this. I accept that the pg-anointed wisdom is that single-founders are less likely to be successful, but I wouldn't take advice like that as dogma. Assuming it's true 'because Paul said so' is a little weak.
Links added to the alumni page now - sorry, just slipped my mind to update. Three of the projects are still running.
Bethnal Green is an interesting place. It's got a pretty strong heritage as a place where social reformers have created new things - the Open University for example. It also has some very good pubs.
Maybe helpful for the orga of the programme:
Most accelerators underestimate the overhead for a young team to move for several weeks/months to london or fly back and forth for weeks. You should try to provide help or even space for that.
To be absolutely fair, it often seems that in the UK you'd be better off disguising your startup idea as a work of performance art and making an application to the Arts Council for a grant.
For an added bonus, you wouldn't have to give any of it back at the end, and if you can show that you did anything that was in the slightest bit similar to your original proposal and didn't just drink the money, then they are mightily impressed and offer you more free cash.
[edit] Just thought of the "Dada Tech Startup Incubator";
We dress startup founders in octopus costumes and teach them about semiotic forms and stuff, in order to get given money from the kind of well-heeled philanthropists who spend more on things like opera than they are willing to lend to small businesses.
We charge a compelling rate of 4% equity and a broken window full of the lost dreams of a hungry sparrow.
Bethnal Green Ventures is co-ordinated by Paul Miller. Paul has spent the last seven years learning how to start new organisations that use technology to solve social and environmental problems, primarily through School of Everything and Social Innovation Camp. Before that he worked at the think tank Demos and the sustainability charity Forum for the Future.
So basically he's a quango man, who's added a few tech names as 'advisors'.
Nothing will come out the other end. But it will keep a few Shoreditch hipsters gainfully employed.