How Philadelphia incubator DreamIt Ventures wants to improve on Y Combinator model

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/06/y-combinator-recombined-talking-with-philadelphia-startup-incubator-dreamit-ventures/

by waderoush • 18 years ago

21 31 18 years ago

xconomy.com

kingkongrevenge5• 18 years ago

The problem with Philadelphia is the City of Philadelphia. The surrounding suburbs have tons of capital and businesses and highly educated people and very nice neighborhoods. The city itself is a hopeless basket-case. It just seems to me that you can't make the leap into being a first tier metro region without desirable urban neighborhoods. I've read that younger people leave Pennsylvania not for lack of jobs or for notably better wages, but because it's boring.

philipcristiano• 18 years ago

As someone who lives just outside Philadelphia I would disagree. At least the people I know who have left the city do so because they only came here for school and take jobs back home.

kingkongrevenge5• 18 years ago

We're not talking about them. We're talking about the net outflow of younger natives.

tyler• 18 years ago

As someone who left Pennsylvania: Dead on.

sjs382• 18 years ago

As a resident of Pittsburgh, I disagree. :)

Jd• 18 years ago

I also left for the same reason.

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

Reminds me of Cleveland, Ohio and to a lesser extent Detroit. Some of the young neighborhoods (The Flats is a prime example) in Cleveland who were thriving ~10 years ago are now dead. It's ridiculous.

Riley2• 18 years ago

Philly has some issues, but it's much better than it used to be. It's a huge city. There's a lot of growth in some great areas. You get a lot for your money here. Many compare the current state of the city to NYC in the 80's. There's lots of potential.

kingkongrevenge5• 18 years ago

> You get a lot for your money here.

Rents are cheap. Taxes, insurance, and any sort of labor the unions control are absurdly expensive. You have to be crazy to start a business downtown rather than just outside the city. If you're a major corporation you can negotiate special terms so it makes sense to locate downtown, but that's more of a bad sign than anything.

shedd• 18 years ago

Good overview of the motivations behind the DreamIt program as it ran this past summer, but it does cover any of the apparent upcoming changes to the DreamIt model which were mentioned (http://www.psustartups.com/content/2008/09/25/ignitephilly-a...) in Steve Welch's (another of the DreamIt founders) ignitePhilly talk, including the so called "Hacker Track".

umjames• 18 years ago

the next DreamIt program will be (or include?) “Hacker Track”, which will address the problem DreamIt noted that was there were a lot of great ideas, without the technical developers to implement them. Steve mentions that this Hacker Track will allow hackers to apply and they’ll be teamed up (I’m assuming) with teams with business skills, but in need of technical assistance.

As someone from the Philly suburbs, I would say this sums up the problem. How is this that different from a consulting gig from the point of view of the hacker? I can already see the nightmares of business-bred founders bombarding the hacker(s) with requirements that reflect their understanding of computers as some sort of magic box. I wonder how often this sort of situation occurs at YC.

That being said, if anyone can bring decent tech entrepreneurship to Philly, I support the idea. God knows Philly needs it in the worst way.

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

Two comments:

1. Philadelphia is a mediocre city for startups, not only because it's sort of boring, but because there's NO INVESTOR MONEY THERE. That's the number one determinant of where startups are and thrive. Hi SF, Boston, NYC.

2. What's up with dreamit's website? http://www.dreamitventures.com/

Live Your Dream! - Do they want me to sell knives or something?

As a founder I'm all for anything that gives entrepreneurs capital to build their own companies and increases the level of competition, but something just seems...off.

EDIT: No idea why I typed Midwest. Reading about my beloved Detroit Lions and writing on HN is not smart. Rich zip codes don't matter much. Investors do. I thought it was obvious I was talking about investor capital, but I updated that as well.

kingkongrevenge5• 18 years ago

Midwest WTF?

There is a serious amount of capital around Philadelphia. It has a couple of the richest zip codes in the country. You just don't know what you're talking about.

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

haha that was my bad, corrected.

Just because the zip code is rich doesn't mean the area is full of startup investors. Maybe I should up & move to Beverly Hills, Palm Beach or New Canaan. Come on.

I didn't say it was awful, it's just not very good.

wheels• 18 years ago

First Round (www.firstround.com) is the one that comes to mind there. At least based on his online presence Josh (who's around here some too, I think) is one of the investors out there that I have a good deal of respect for.

davidw• 18 years ago

> it's in the midwest

Midwest?

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

Corrected - fetching coffee now.

drusenko2• 18 years ago

"So, with the help of the strategists and the professional firms we were able to throw a few more resources at the teams. We got a local marketing firm to donate some strategizing help. We wanted to set up an infrastructure for each team that they could potentially build around. And it worked out really, really well. I know that some of the DreamIt companies ended up getting quite a few people from these partners companies to be on their boards."

Having people on the board of directors of your company from the local accounting and marketing firms? That's just really weird.

A board position is certainly not something to be handed out lightly, should reflect the ownership of the company, and definitely not something you're "lucky to have people on".

hugh• 18 years ago

Perhaps they mean an advisory board rather than a board of directors?

drusenko2• 18 years ago

it's certainly possible, although "board" usually refers to the board of directors.

paulgb2• 18 years ago

Wasn't this the incubator that lifted YC's application form nearly word-for-word?

blakeweb• 18 years ago

Nope, you're thinking of Founder's Coop in portland.

Here's the discussion on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164892

They actually have updated their application to include a thank-you to YC: http://www.founderscoop.com/apply.php

paulgb2• 18 years ago

Cool, it's nice to see credit where it is due.

redorb• 18 years ago

The problem with dreamIT is the name of the companies it founds, all 2.0 :(

scvngr.mobi vuzit.com phrazit.com beanstockd.com anthillz.com trendient.com

* I know you can't just the by their name, but the truth is a lot of people do. (and yes I know about F'ing Google.com)

villanovalaw• 18 years ago

Philadelphia > Anywhere in Jersey

Zev• 18 years ago

I'd take Jersey over Philly, if only because the parts of Jersey that i'd live in are closer to NYC then Philly is. But that's got more to do with my personal biases then any business decision.

cera2• 18 years ago

I love it when people that live in the Philly burbs bash the city. This is a lifestyle choice ... you're either a suburbanite or a city slicker. My opinion is that these likely don't mix well in any city.

There are plenty of neighborhoods in the city that are great places to live and are safe. I live in West Philly (Univ City), I walk 12 blocks to the office of my startup everyday, and I absolutely love it.

I posted other comments about Philly on news.yc a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295277

How Philadelphia incubator DreamIt Ventures wants to improve on Y Combinator model

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