"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.
I see, you're not just talking about network effects of aggregating all of the startups together, it's about having a common pool of investors as well. I wonder if angelconf is a first step towards a ycombinator-like structured approach towards the investing side of the equation?
Not just investors. There is a collection of people associated to varying degrees with YC who advise the startups. (They're the old-looking people in the slides on our frontpage.) Sometimes they invest, but they don't only talk to startups they invest in.
One of the hardest parts of being in Boston for us was that this pool of advisors was so much smaller there. It was just a handful of people. Whereas in the Valley there are on the order of 50 different people we might introduce one or more YC startups to each cycle.
Yeah, that's probably the case, I was just entertaining a thought experiment because I really like the people I've met through techstars and want them to do well.
The bay area's network effects really do create different kinds of opportunity rather than just more of the same - it's the reason I moved to the bay area in the first place three years ago and it's been a great career decision. Living here means being able to do things like apply to yc, whereas I'd probably never consider moving to Boulder or Boston if it just came down to 5 digits of seed investment. I'd rather stay here and force my projects to happen during nights and weekends instead. Here, you'd be crazy to turn down admission to yc and access to the advisors involved, no matter what your day job pays.
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.