Ownership is a sacred thing -- we don't tinker with that at all. The dev team takes no equity. After all, you're running the company, not us. We just help with the resources and motivation. The dev team in India (which my cofounder Cem has worked with for years) are merely a perk we provide to our companies. It's one benefit of many.
If there's already a CTO in the company then great, he can focus on what's core and have the offshore team work on secondary stuff.
If it's a team of 3 business guys who have the right approach and the right knowledge then here's their chance to get the prototype figured out and raise that first bit of money to plow into a full time developer.
It does. Being from MN, I really admire what you're trying to do, so I don't know how to ask this nicely, so I'll just ask it... how do you justify your terms being the same as YC when your value proposition is so much less? You can't possibly argue that your network is as valuable as YC's.
Your point on network value is an excellent one, one definitely worth challenging us on. I suspect almost no accelerator in the next 5 years will touch YC's network, especially since they're right in the heart of M&A-land.
However every accelerator, except for dopey government-run ones, needs an ROI. The numbers we came up with were our attempt at a happy medium. "Price"-wise, we can be lower than others (TechWildcatters, Shotput Ventures, SproutBox, Momentum) but we also add value and perks that few others do. We also have massive pent up demand in our region.
Value prop is a tough starting point because it means different things to different people. And you know what? Maybe we'll find out our terms aren't right and we'll pivot. Just like almost every entrepreneur does on pricing.
But then again, until you can find another accelerator that is open to single founders, open to non-technical founders, provides a dev team in India to support, and that has a selection process that includes a educational mini-bootcamp...then it's a tough comparison.
No, our network isn't 1/3 as valuable as theirs (although we will have a few mentors from SV). But we've got plenty of tech entrepreneurs banging down our door so I think, for now, we're on the right path to helping them change the world.
No. Heck, we might not have any of our companies interested in going that route. But the option's there and we'll have a BA at their disposal. How many business minded entrepreneurs do you know that couldn't manage a contract developer if his life depended on it? We teach them how.
The bigger point here is that for the first time ever guys who are non-coders but have domain expertise and the ability to take the product to market now have an option. Every other accelerator will slam their door in your face.
We're pretty pumped about this. Having a tech cofounder is massively helpful, but we don't feel the lack of one discounts your value to zero.
Sounds like you guys have identified a problem in the startup incubator business and are attempting to provide a solution for it, though from reading PG it sounds like there are very good reasons for the existence of that problem. Good luck!
We just think it's something worth experimenting with. PG (and David Cohen et al.) are engineers. We think their bias towards developers is natural but until we see empirical data showing otherwise we think there's still potential for non-coders to successfully start and grow a product company.
There's no question there's pros and cons.
The only question is can we address the cons and accentuate the pros. (See Quora: What are the pros and cons of a non-technical founder for a start-up: http://qr.ae/clRm )
