AngelHack Launches A Startup Accelerator, Bringing Its Hackathon To 30+ Cities

http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/angelhack-accelerator

by gosuri • 13 years ago

47 50 13 years ago

m.techcrunch.com

jayzalowitz2• 13 years ago

Go angelhack team!

OkGoDoIt• 13 years ago

Jay, come the the one in Atlanta this year! You can crash in my spare bedroom. AngelHack Atlanta is going to be awesome (although I'm a bit biased...)

jayzalowitz2• 13 years ago

Cannot describe how tempted I am to do this.

gigico• 13 years ago

Great job

aashaykumar922• 13 years ago

Not to be the pessimist out of this batch of comments, but the accelerator sounds less promising than I would have expected from AngelHack. I have to imagine they have enough money to at least provide housing and living expenses for the teams they choose so the teams can be in one centralized location. The mentorship will probably have less value when the teams cannot meet in person and there is of course the lost networking aspect as well.

Although they do provide a chance for the startups to pitch in the final two weeks in SF, it seems that this accelerator, even if not formed with this intention, will be more of a feeder to the bigger and more established ones like YC, TechStars, 500 Startups, etc.

ggopman9• 13 years ago

Hi aashay, you are completely correct, we are designed to be a feeder system into other accelerators! We're not trying to re-invent the wheel here, only help great teams prepare for getting into them. We should have branded this more as a pre-accelerator to be honest (any PR people out there looking for a job?)

For 12 weeks of mentorship, 2 weeks in SF, all our connections, help getting into "legit" programs, tickets to Disrupt, and potentially a booth at Disrupt, we take 2%. That makes us sustainable, which is all we're trying to do. We pay for everything out of our own pocket. AngelHack is a bootstrapped company that has scrappily built out our communities around the world without the help of organizations like Kauffman, that could give us the funding to allow us to pay for everyone to stay longer.

No doubt, there is a better way things can be done. But with our current resources, our goals are to do what we can to provide the most value to the community in a sustainable way.

aashaykumar922• 13 years ago

Sounds good, thanks for the clarification! And yep, only suggestion is to brand your accelerator as a 'warmup'...this way, it will appeal to college students such as myself; we don't necessarily have to leave school but we can still work on it and have a better idea of what we want to do at the end of the 14 weeks. Thanks again, though, and all the best!

bshahian• 13 years ago

we worked with greg + team on the la version of angelhack and greatly support his new endeavor! really impressive team whos bound to do great things in the startup space.

rohanpai• 13 years ago

I was one of the 4 finalists from AngelHack Silicon Valley in fall 2012 and I just gotta say, it was awesome! The AngelHack hackathon had a great focus on building (not as much biz/dev/designer)

It's an opportunity that keeps giving. I don't think I would have been able to get a tour at Facebook and network with a lot of people had it not been for winning/attending AngelHack.

Being from the bay area it's easy to forget how much opportunities there are here in respect to other cities. I can't really think of many opportunities that enable builders from around the world to come to the bay area and pitch their ideas to VCs and see what life is like here (they get flown out here for free if they win their city hackathon).

AngelHack++

blake9220• 13 years ago

Attended Angel Hack last year and had a great time!

HighOnLife2• 13 years ago

AngelHack London Nov 2012 was so inspirational that even if it hadn't produced two WW Finals Winners (Osper & Testlio)it would still have been the most important hackathon in London last year

iammark• 13 years ago

Really Nice!

aceperry3• 13 years ago

Awesome, can't wait for it!

jaceperry11• 13 years ago

AngelHack was one of the best tech events of the year! Looking forward to the next one :)

gailees2• 13 years ago

AngelHack is in such a great position to do this. Can't wait to see the startups that they churn out!

ashrafi• 13 years ago

Very excited about this .... AngelHack is awesome :-)

Greg and everyone on his team are great people

Ash

tkahn6• 13 years ago

Protip to whoever is making these sock-puppet accounts and posting on this thread: the username appears green for 'newbie' accounts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419344

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419584

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419949

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419882

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419948

negrit• 13 years ago

I bet they are real people. AngelHack sent an email and promised "free AngelHack tickets to the first 200 upvotes!"

aceperry3• 13 years ago

Protip? One of the posts was mine. Actually, might have been two because of a messed up registration attempt. I don't know what's a sock-puppet account, but I was going for the angelhack tickets.

georgemcbay3• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)

  but I was going for the angelhack tickets

Then you were basically acting as AngelHack's sock puppet.

Even if you don't work for them and had positive intentions, their ticket giveaway promise is (IMO) a pretty cheap stunty way to turk sock puppets on sites that would otherwise automatically detect sock-puppeting based on IPs or similar.

Pro-Tip for AngelHack -- not really a good call on this one. Next time you should just approach a Hacker News poster used to the ins and outs of the site to craft a quality astroturf post for you. Quantity over quality doesn't really fly here. If tptacek isn't available, I can be bought at very discounted rates.

plee2013• 13 years ago

looking forward to it!

georgemcbay3• 13 years ago

AngelHack is the right thing to do and the tasty way to do it!

A+++ Accelerator, would accelerate again!

AngelHack is a totally legit thing and would never stoop to astroturfing Hacker News!

ggopman9• 13 years ago

Hi this is Greg from AngelHack. I'm not sure if someone posted that or if that's just your personal comment. If you're interested, we act more as a pre-accelerator, designed to get people ready for incubators like Y-Combinator, TechStars, or AngelPad. We've helped teams make connections before and we've built this out so we can continue to help teams. We're doing our part in the larger eco-system, should you ever need our help we'll be there for you to.

thrown_seaward• 13 years ago

I participated in AngelHack 2012, placing in the top two in my city, and competing in SF. Although it wasn't terrible, and I did have a lot of fun (turns out I love SF!), I found the competition to be disorganized and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I won't be competing again. A few things that stick out:

* Inconsistent WiFi for duration of competition (in our home city)

* Aggressive event staff (also in our home city)

* No write-ups about our team, or mention of us anywhere at all, even though we were finalists -- remember that this competition is for us too guys! We wanted some recognition.

* Slowness in getting paid back for plane tickets (required reminders)

* A "mentor" who forgot about meetings (completely stood us up), and was difficult to set up meetings with in the first place

* The overall feeling that we were being taken advantage of...just a feeling mind you, but if I felt this way in a contest, I wouldn't be surprised to feel that way if I took their money

Take it with a grain of salt. One man's experience. They could be great for all I know.

HighOnLife2• 13 years ago

Wow that's a list of negatives - which city was this? In London I didn't win, so cant comment on your after win experience - aggressive staff sounds totally the opposite of my experience - Wi-Fi needed improving as did food portions although neither stopped me - see previous post - also I believe they're being fixed

ggopman9• 13 years ago

Hi Thrown,

This is Greg from AngelHack. Everything you said is valid and I thank you for your feedback. We'll organize over 100 hackathons this year and while we work with venues for 8 weeks to ensure they're up to speed, train organizers on weekly calls, and oversee that everything is A-grade, we still have some problems. We've scaled fast, re-placed organizers that weren't top notch, and cut ties with venues that couldn't handle Wi-Fi caps that they promised us they could. We're a startup, and like any startup, we move fast and cut the shit out of the way as soon as it forms.

What you went through last summer was the first iteration of our pre-accelerator. We knew there would be holes and we knew the only way to truly understand it was to do it. We took no equity from your class because we wanted to make sure we added enough value first. At this point we're confident that we are.

We've built a new system for identifying good mentors, following up with them, and have hired 2 new members to oversee things for you. Sorry you had to be a guinea pig, but you lost nothing in the process and got a free trip out to Silicon Valley and the chance to show top VC's your work...

Sindrome• 13 years ago

I've been to a handful of hackathons and they were all poorly managed. Angelhack SF is the only hackathon I ever went to that was well managed.

sahlhoff• 13 years ago

Incredibly awesome. I have been waiting for this!

error54• 13 years ago

I haven't really looked into AngelHack and they may have nothing to do with this, but all these shill accounts really casts them in a negative light.

ggopman9• 13 years ago

Hi Error,

This is Greg from AngelHack. We have nothing to do with said "shell" accounts, nor did we give anyone incentive to make shell accounts. We offered our community free tickets to our next event if they helped us with up-votes (our definition of a successful product launch).

There was no incentive to vote more than once. But like with any community, we have our more passionate users that go above and beyond to try and help us succeed. It looks like that is what's happening here.

salsakran• 13 years ago

"nor did we give anyone incentive to make shell accounts" vs "We offered our community free tickets to our next event if they helped us with up-votes"

Cognitive dissonance much?

ch4ch4• 13 years ago

Angelhacks events are often better-organized than most.

eliecert• 13 years ago

I participated last year on AngelHack in Silicon Valley and it was just a great experience. There were crazy and amazing ideas, and the startup energy during the whole event is just inspiring.

r25WCvaR• 13 years ago

I don't care that the founder is spamming social media to get this bumped up. I care about them taking an equity stake in your company.

I would give a warning to anybody who reads this thread in the future and is seriously considering giving these guys shares. In a word: don't.

Their team has no history of successful exits and no members with technical talent that can be taken seriously; they are not going to help you build a company. Their "connections" are limited to the B-list of Silicon Valley. It's not clear that their founder can even write code.

Contrast this with the team at Y-Combinator.

Quality of accelerators are a power law that skews so far in the direction of YC that even attending the incubator in second place is a signal that you didn't get YC; Peter Thiel mentioned this in one of his lectures. It's not to say that you won't be successful if you don't do YC, it's to say that it's difficult to the value added by their "Accelerator" is greater than what you give up in exchange.

Once again, make your own decision by talking to them. They may change in the future, but you may also find them equally unimpressive.

scc• 13 years ago

The founder of AngelHack can't code. Technical founders should avoid AngelHack on this basis alone.

ggopman9• 13 years ago

Hi SCC!

You are correct, I can't code (yet!). But all my best friends are coders and I think on the same wave-length. Starting this year we'll be building out a network of code schools, which I hope to participate in. In the meantime, I'm happy adding value to your community wherever I can.

ggopman9• 13 years ago

Hi r25,

Greg from AngelHack here. The equity stake we take is 2%. This allows us to be sustainable and continue building this program. This accelerator (should be called a pre-accelerator), is designed to get people connected to the Valley from around the world and get them pre-pared for entering legit programs like Y-Combinator. We'll never be better than them, nor are we trying to be. We're only trying to assist you get to the glory land.

If you can get ready for these programs without our help, then you're on the right track. Most of the companies that come out from our hackathons are 2-3 days old and need A LOT of guidance. Technically they're very strong, but they need support with legal issues, founder issues, idea validation, product/market fit, viral engagement loops, guerrilla warfare marketing tactics, networking and pitch help, and help raising funding. We help them get through all that.

nanoscopic• 13 years ago

I participated in AngelHack 2012 DC. It was at the Microsoft building. It was a fun time. The projects were mostly complete crap, but it was fun.

Here is hoping they are not lying about giving free tickets to the first 200 upvotes.

markerickson• 13 years ago

I've participated in many hackathons, AngelHack has been one of the better ones, that said don't be surprised if there is disorganization and confusion. They have been getting better and providing better food.

Primary reason to attend, working with sponsors. In the past AngleHack has been good at bringing good sponsors/api vendors so its a good opportunity to engage with SAAS, PAAS and APIs.

Its about hacking in a short period of time, so overall a fun environment. Also a good opportunity to connect with others, but don't expect to build a team for your idea, bring a team with developers if you expect to get something done.

Too early to say about their just launched accelerator.

(Their "Upvote us..." is lame, and not in the spirit of quality comments)

gbr554• 13 years ago

go go

maffydub• 13 years ago

I went to the AngelHack 2012 London and it was good fun.

Contrary to other people's experiences, the logistics were pretty awesome - for example, despite the fact there were more people at a hackathon than I'd ever seen before, the WiFi held up.

It's worth commenting that I'm not a startup/business guy - I went along to play with cool technology and we ended up building an augmented reality app. Out of 50+ teams, we got an honorable mention (after the 3 top teams).

Probably due to the startup focus, it generally felt as though the teams were more looking at solving business problems with creative uses of existing technology than building new technology.

The only disappointing part of the weekend for me was that the presentations went on WAY too long. There was supposed to be a 2 minute limit, but some people spoke for 10+! Multiply that by 50+ teams and I was almost falling asleep by the end (having not slept the rest of the weekend).

But I'd definitely recommend it, and will go again.

ggopman9• 13 years ago

Hi Maffy, glad you had a great time. We're working on the 2 minute limit rule and some creative ways to speed up demos. We hate ushering people off-stage when they've worked so hard and yammer about on the demo... alas it is something we need to do though.

tomolivier• 13 years ago

I did 2nd on AngelHack Paris on last december, really great and inspirational event! The best hackathon for sure.

tshake2• 13 years ago

Great concept. Keep up the good work.

tshake2• 13 years ago

Anyone know the promo code for the free ticket to NYC?

AngelHack Launches A Startup Accelerator, Bringing Its Hackathon To 30+ Cities

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