DreamIT Ventures Opens Up Applications For Summer 09 Funding Cycle

http://dreamitventures.com/node/3

by jasonlbaptiste • 18 years ago

33 43 18 years ago

dreamitventures.com

keltecp11• 18 years ago

Calling All 'Hackers': http://dreamitventures.com/node/12

volida• 18 years ago

spelling error "devloper"

mrtron• 18 years ago

Overall the quality of their writing is a bit low. This doesn't mean their program is good or bad, but it just leaves a bad first impression for me.

But I would also like to know more info - perhaps someone needs to whip up a a review site for early investment companies.

Lastly I was wondering why they separate 'innovator' vs 'strategist' vs 'hacker'.

prospero• 18 years ago

Don't worry, once you hit level 20 you can multiclass.

It actually looks like their model is that they find three strangers with different skillsets and put them together in a team. It's an interesting idea, but it seems like interpersonal problems down the line could be a pretty big problem.

medearis• 18 years ago

What/Who is DreamIT? Is anyone familiar with these folks?

brandonkm• 18 years ago

I've never heard of them before today. Looking at the portfolio I couldn't find any startups there that I've heard of before either.

mkull• 18 years ago

Taking a glance at the partners / speakers / advisors, there are some seriously smart and successful people in there http://dreamitventures.com/node/2

I think the YC crowd is hating way too quickly, there is plenty of room for more then one seed stage YC style fund... especially on the east coast now that YC is full-time in Palo Alto.

breck• 18 years ago

I don't understand why the HN community isn't more supportive of these YC clones. It's simple: the more clones the better your odds of getting money and getting your startup off the ground.

Also, it theoretically could be better to be a "big fish" in a small pond than to be a "little fish" in the big YC pond.

omarish2• 18 years ago

... we will offer you a $5,000 DollarshipTM to participate in DreamIt ...

daveambrose2• 18 years ago

So what is the tally of incubator/Y Combinator like programs out there?

1. Y Combinator 2. TechStars 3. DreamIT 4. ?

pmjordan2• 18 years ago

Seedcamp (Europe)

daveambrose2• 18 years ago

Did someone make a spreadsheet of available programs on HN earlier? I thought I saw something along those lines back in the day.

sjs382• 18 years ago

AlphaLab in Pittsburgh

ivey• 18 years ago

Shotput in Atlanta

siong1987• 18 years ago

From UIUC, http://www.iventures10.com/ < IV10.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with them.

anon17764• 18 years ago

Run, don't walk from IllinoisVENTURES. Read up on them at TheFunded.

They're probably even worse than these Dreamit guys, but they are definitely of the same ilk.

rms4• 18 years ago

Launchbox in DC.

One of the founding partners was just appointed head of the FCC.

Dilpil• 18 years ago

There is a difference between them and YC: YC requires you to have an idea, DreamIT just wants ambitious hackers and business people. In a way they have found a way to be even earlier stage than YC.

davidw• 18 years ago

My impression is that PG et al. require an idea as a way of figuring out who can think of reasonable ideas. They don't require you to stick with it, so primarily they're looking for good people. Requiring an idea is just another way to try and sort out the wheat from the chaff, even if the idea in question isn't the final one used for the startup.

Schoenrock• 17 years ago

Interview with Mike Levinson discussing starting DreamIT.

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/06/y-combinator-recomb...

This might answer some of the communities questions regarding similarities and differences between YC and DreamIT.

alain94040• 18 years ago

The quality of a program like YC depends on two intertwined factors:

- who is running it, so they provide real value from real experts

- the reach they have, so that the applicants are top-notch and you benefit from interacting with other rising stars

In the case of DreamIt, it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. If no one has heard of you, no matter how great your coaching will be, you end up with second rate projects and there's not much you can do to make stupid ideas fly. And once you are known for a batch of mediocre projects, none of the smart entrepreneurs want to join your program, and you are stuck.

I hate cronysm, but who you know matters so much and makes such a big difference, it's scary.

pj• 18 years ago

They still have the default Drupal favicon up there! hahaha, no wonder they are begging for hackers...

They need to hire a copy editor "We each founded, built and successfully sold one or more business."

Seriously, the videos on this page are all quotes from very very young kids. http://dreamitventures.com/node/16

All those videos talk about how great everyone is and wow, it's so awesome and look around, this is totally terrific,

EXCEPT! They never say WHY! they never talk about anything quantifiable. Sure, it's fun, and exciting and great, but are they going to help you get your product to market? How much of your equity are they going to take for it? Was it worth it?

No one has talked about any of that. These guys seem like marketing scamsters and I'm highly highly skeptical.

I would suggest any young entrepreneur come here to HN first and get help before going to those guys.

Back during the dot-com boom, I saw lots and lots of incubators like this, idealabs, et all and they were largely a big waste of time. They were fun though!

If you're looking to have "fun" these kinds of shops may be the place to go, but if you are looking to be productive and build something valuable that is going to make a lasting impression on the world, I suspect these guys are a massive waste of time.

It seems from the videos and the marketing mumbo-jumbo that they are preying on the young, passionate, and inexperienced minds that would be better served somewhere else.

All the portfolio companies are Web 2.0 me toos, mostly boring, and short lasting "features" -- not real products that improve the world around us in any substantial way.

I can sense a bit of "anger" in my tone here. I feel a big sense of "these guys are not good" when I browse around their site...

But that's just my intuition and intuition can be wrong, so whatever.

http://dreamitventures.com/node/6 anthillz is trying to get out of technology what human relationships are for. Go meet people in the real world.

Beanstockd? It was a blog and they are trying to build a company?

Drop card? Why would I waste my time putting my personal info into a shady startup just so i can text my contact info to someone when i could jsut hand them a business card?

ugh... these guys are so transparent.

Look at the videos! They just got some kids up there to do a presentation on a screen in front of a no one so they could add these vimeos to their site to make it look legit.

Watch the interview best one, there's only one old guy there and the startup is okay, but is it "worth" anything? probably not. Any motivated person isn't going to need them and i can't see anyone paying for it...

There's nothing new or novel about any of their startups...

They're marketing hope. They are behind the times, you want to work with someone /ahead/ of the times.

Look elsewhere first!!

kwamenum863• 18 years ago

There are not quite as glamorous as the start-ups you may have heard of but they have been around: http://sleep.fm/blog.html

Does that make DreamIt ventures automatically a great option? No. I think everyone who looked at the website noticed the spelling/grammatical errors, nebulous role descriptions, and laughable testimonials. Their 15,000 bucks may not be the same as 15,000 from YC but they seem to be a legitimate option. At the very least they are a "safety" incubator to YC one would think.

apgwoz• 18 years ago

... at least their site looks better than it did last year.

fallentimes2• 18 years ago

This reads like parody.

rms4• 18 years ago

Sleep.fm.

anon17764• 18 years ago

Are these guys for real?

http://sleep.fm/about.html

rms4• 18 years ago

Extremely real. The founder posts here occasionally.

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ryanspahn

icefox• 18 years ago

One of the features is "free Microsoft software". How is that a feature?

omarish2• 18 years ago

I hope someone in their organization sees this thread and ganders over here to provide some insight.

When developing most products, you must know that your audience is not an engineering student or a hacker and probably don't know how to SSH into your server.

But I wonder if they have a separate perception of hackers, and if that could imply that they're looking for a different type of hacker than the type on news.YC?

dangrover2• 18 years ago

I really like the idea of having lots of YC imitators to open up options, but there's ONE thing that makes me want to stay away from DreamIT.

When you apply, you have to be an "innovator", "strategist", or "hacker."

The implication is you can't be, for instance, both an innovator and a hacker. Either you're calling the shots and designing products, or you're just some code monkey that's hooked up with some people who are.

For me, part of the reason I'm an entrepreneur in the first place is the rejection of this kind of dichotomy.

helveticaman2• 18 years ago

Agreed. Sounds like they're almost trying to hire douchebags. Innovator? Really? No innovator calls himself an innovator. Nobody who matters uses that word. With the exception of patent law, where it actually is very convenient and legitimate to use this word.

fallentimes2• 17 years ago

You're right, it's like a creative person calling themselves creative. Or the glaring problem with the everyone is special mentality.

"If you define your personality as creative, it only means you understand what is perceived to be creative by the world at large, so you're really just following a rote creative template. That's the opposite of creativity. Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time." - Chuck Klosterman

DreamIT Ventures Opens Up Applications For Summer 09 Funding Cycle

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