TechStars Fills Void Left By Y Combinator With New Incubator In Boston

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/16/techstars-fills-void-left-by-y-combinator-with-new-incubator-in-boston/

by vaksel • 17 years ago

54 44 17 years ago

vaksel2• 17 years ago

I don't really believe that this is just a coincidence. If they were planning a second location they wouldn't have gone to Boston where there was YC. They would have tried to go some place w/o much competition, like New York.

And if they were indeed planning to take YC on, why Boston and not Silicon Valley?

unalone2• 17 years ago

Because there's a gap in Boston that needs filling? A lot of start-ups want to go to Boston, or can't make it to California.

vaksel2• 17 years ago

Yeah but according to them, they were planning to go to Boston when YC was already filling that gap.

So if you wanted to fill a gap, why not go somewhere that doesn't have an incubator program in the first place?

andrewhyde• 17 years ago

Strong ties to Boston with the founders of TC. Brad Feld went to MIT and still has a strong and love for the area. David Cohen sold one of his startups there.

jfarmer2• 17 years ago

Because YC is supply-constrained. If you believe there are more fundable opportunities than YC can handle then it makes perfect sense to "compete" in Boston.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were all just a story, though.

jfarmer2• 17 years ago

pg commented above, so that can't be their reason. Maybe they just like Boston?

nabeel• 17 years ago

As someone else mentioned, both David Cohen and Brad Feld have a history in Boston, it's where they got their start (as it has been for many others thanks to MIT and Harvard). There was also a strong push for quite a while from the Boston and Cambridge entrepreneurial community.

kbrower• 17 years ago

Is there any competition at all in NYC?

rms• 17 years ago

Great. The more funding opportunities out there the better it is for all of us.

medearis• 17 years ago

I think that most people's interest (including mine) in doing YCombinator or TechStars is not really the funding. It seems that you'd be much better off in this case just saving the 6 or 8k yourself. Rather, the network and guidance in getting your idea off the ground seems to be the real value.

jedc• 17 years ago

Exactly. The value of each of these programs is directly related to the guidance, advice, and networking involved. Having a good selection process is also a good validation of teams/ideas.

mattmaroon6• 17 years ago

These people set a new record for me-too-ness every month.

phoreo• 17 years ago

Call it me-too if you like, Matt, but there's some great stuff coming out of Techstars. I don't care where innovative companies come from - just that they get off the ground.

Sorry to hear you're not into that.

mattmaroon6• 17 years ago

That's just silly. I didn't say a word about any of the startups. Just the organization itself.

indiekid• 17 years ago

Personally, having been in TechStars (founder of SocialThing), I think the programs are very different. Both have their merits, one is not necessarily better than the other, just different.

Why the TS vs. YC animosity? We're (startup founders) all in this game together. Of course there will be competition and such, but we're all at the same stage at one time or another, so why not help? Why not be happy that there are 10 more companies that will get funded than last year?

mattmaroon6• 17 years ago

I wouldn't say it's animosity. I just think they're sort of lame copycats. For fuck's sake man, they stole YC's application word for word. I think that gives lifetime exemptions to those of us calling them a me-too act.

rantfoil• 17 years ago

I don't think there is any animosity between founders for TS vs YC. I've intro'ed TS startups to our investors before, and if/when we need to go back and raise another round, they'll do the same.

rustartup3• 17 years ago

Nothing matters less to me than mee-too-ness about startup programs. I'm desperate for 100 absolutely same programs to be available to me in absolutely same time in absolutely same places.

Be serious man, copying a application form cann't be seen as a brutal act of uncreative vandalism.

mattmaroon6• 17 years ago

The problem is that it's not the funding or the batch concept that makes Y Combinator. It's something that can't be replicated once, let alone 100 times.

pg6• 17 years ago

We didn't leave a void when we left Boston, because we weren't filling one when we were there. No one seems to get this, but seed funding is not a regional business. Startups at that stage can move.

Most of the startups we funded in our Boston cycles didn't come from Boston, and practically all left Boston afterward. We could have been anywhere. Anywhere with decent coffee at least.

Honestly, they'd have done better to just fund 20 startups in Boulder rather than 10 in one place and 10 in another.

jfornear• 17 years ago

I think teams would apply to YC no matter the location, but not likewise for TechStars.

ajkirwin• 17 years ago

"Startups at that stage can move."

What if they don't want to? What if they don't want to be in California. This gives them options.

pg6• 17 years ago

It happens that I have a lot of data about the number of startups that need to be in Boston to participate in something like YC, because they were the ones who waited for summer cycles to apply when we had the summer cycles in Boston. Of those we accepted I don't think the number was ever more than 3 a year.

spoiledtechie• 17 years ago

So Jealous,

Why not come down to Sunny Florida. The Space Coast is an amazing place and their is a lot of innovation down here. Its also extremely warm.

webwright• 17 years ago

Startups at this stage can certain move, but it's expensive (in time and money) to do so. Some startups at this stage have spouses and kids, which makes this a bigger decision. If the spouse has a lucrative job, this makes it more expensive (especially in this market, where there aren't big piles of jobs sitting around in the valley).

In our case, YC was worth it. We left working wives behind and they visited us occasionally to remind us that we were married.

But if there was a similar quality program locally, we would've considered it. (For the record, I don't think TechStars is good enough that we would've punted YC for it if it were local, but it seems to be getting better).

Geography is less of a factor for YC applicants, I'd assume, because YC is far enough above the competition that it's worth it to move.

alabut3• 17 years ago

"Honestly, they'd have done better to just fund 20 startups in Boulder"

I've heard they might do that as well.

I'm guessing the difference between techstars and YC is less about going regional to source applicants than it is about spreading around the mentor pool, sort of like franchising the "learn from elders" experience rather than concentrating it. YC's a bet in the other direction, sure, but I'm also interested to see how this plays out because I just can't imagine the bay area has a complete lock on all of the previously successful entrepreneurs willing to advise the next generation of hackers. At the very least, there's a certain amount of mentors and potential investors that like being away from the echo chamber and prefer to talk in Boston about Derrida rather than in SF/SV about virality, or in the case of Techstars and Brad Feld, about Lance Armstrong, beer and whatever else people like in Boulder.

pg6• 17 years ago

The difference isn't in that dimension. The mentor pool in Silicon Valley is massive; probably several times the rest of the country combined.

thaumaturgy• 17 years ago

| Startups at that stage can move.

Not all can, or are willing, whatever their reasons. While it might be smart business in your case to have picked your location and make the startups come to you, I think it's disingenuous to say that seed funding is not a regional business [because] startups at that stage can move.

I won't bore you with the specifics of my location or what's possible here, but I do think there's a good business opportunity for anybody that's willing to come up with a VC/incubator model similar to yours, but that can be deployed in lots of different locations.

Oh well. Bootstrapping isn't as much fun, but it'll get me there. :-)

tom• 17 years ago

I can't figure out why there is such a protective attitude about YC around here. Sure, the board is a service (experiment) of pg and YC, but seriously folks, they don't have a mentoring/seed investment patent on this kind of an operation. Why can't folks be happy there are more opportunities out there? Are you claiming that only YC startups can benefit from such a program or that only YC can be beneficial the young company?

jacquesm• 17 years ago

I think YC and any other incubator are operating in the same space, but not necessarily in competition. That sounds like a contradiction, but the way I see it that funding startups (and I only have limited experience in this field so be gentle in your rebukes :) )is more about getting the right mix of people, ideas and money than it is about just the money.

A vc should - at that stage - bring a lot more to the table than just cash, and if the chemistry isn't working out well then that can be because of the team, but it could also very well be the vc that doesn't work well with a specific party. So, more vc's in a certain region will make it easier to find the right 'mix' without any competition taking place.

One startup I'm involved in is now in its third year, they have raised about 200K in funding from 8 different parties, mostly angel investors but also one corporate investor, the team is working out quite well after some initial shake-out.

I can fully imagine that the past would have looked different if we had not 'clicked' on a personal level with the founders, but if we had not and they would have found traction with other investors I would not have seen that as competitor running away with our business, simply a mismatch of characters.

I think most vc presentations that bomb will do so on a personal level rather than on the ideas presented, in fact I would be surprised if there were not several teams pitching roughly the same idea to a number of vcs at the same time (and sometimes even to the same vc...).

The short version of all this, first of all it is about you and the vc getting on the same page, second there is the quality of the idea and your plans for executing that idea, third there is the money.

The last two are 'fixable', the first is not.

rustartup3• 17 years ago

What I like about techstars - they don't pretend to be unique. Instead of going to some bizzare place like NY or whatever (they seem don't like SF) just to generate buzz they go to Boston, the most logical place for them to go to to attract more healthy attention. But people still generate buzz :)

apstuff• 17 years ago

I'm in Chicago. Here the politicians sell the voids.

TechStars Fills Void Left By Y Combinator With New Incubator In Boston

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