The Startup Velocity Question: Accelerator Portfolios

There are over 7000 Incubators and 3000 Accelerators around the world by now. On average, they take 25-30 companies per cohort, give each $15k-$150k in pre-seed funding, and off the bat, drive them to seek exponential growth funded by Venture Capital.

Should You Validate Your Idea Before Applying to YCombinator?

From $100k to $1 Million: Should You Join an Accelerator?

There are over 8,000 accelerators around the world. Most of them fail. Before you decide to join one, you should try to understand why they fail, so that you do not end up failing with them.

The first business accelerator in the U.S. opened in 1959 and is still operating. In the last five years, we have seen a renaissance in the accelerator business. Pioneered by YCombinator, Silicon Valley’s flagship accelerator led by Paul Graham, accelerators have come back with a vengeance. YCombinator has seen some significant successes, including Airbnb, Dropbox, and Heroku. It has fueled a bit of an accelerator bubble, in fact. Accelerators are now a global phenomenon, and there isn’t a major city in the world where an accelerator isn’t cropping up.
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Is Y Combinator Asking for Too Much Equity for 120k Worth of Funding?

I don’t think it’s a bad deal. $120k is decent seed funding, 7% is reasonable equity for that amount. Their previous deal, I thought, sucked (6-10% equity for $15k-20k). This one is reasonable.

Recently, Sam Altman released some statistics … they’ve funded about 900 companies of which about 7 unicorns have emerged. That part of the story is great.
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Incubators and Accelerators FAQs

This post answers some commonly asked questions about incubators and accelerators. I have answered these questions on Quora as well.

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The Problems With Incubators And How To Solve Them

Excerpt from my book, The Other 99% (Entrepreneurs).

There is a very real knowledge gap in the early stage start-up game, on both sides of the table. First-time entrepreneurs lack the seasoning to captain a steady ship through turbulent waters. Inexperienced friends and family (and, increasingly, crowdsourced investors) lack the ability to gauge the viability of a business, or to mentor naïve entrepreneurs.

This knowledge gap, I have come to believe, is best filled by savvy incubators. However, there are over 7,500 business incubators around the world. Most of them fail.
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YCombinator’s Further Evolution Into A Seed Fund

YCombinator has just announced that it will replace its $17k for 7% pre-seed equity investment with a $120k for 7% seed investment deal. From the WSJ:

Previously Y Combinator’s standard deal was about $17,000 for 7% of the company, plus an $80,000 note from a group of venture investors and firms eventually known as YCVC, which most recently included Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Maverick Capital and Khosla Ventures.

So, startups will now get $120,000 from Y Combinator, instead of $97,000 from a combination of Y Combinator and select venture firms. That means the implicit valuation for YC startups rises to about $1.7 million from the previous $1.4 million (YC might deviate from the standard deal “in exceptional cases,” presumably for an ultra-hot startup that merited a higher valuation).

The $120,000 will come directly from YC and a fund it manages that has limited partners, though the accelerator itself has no limited partners, Altman said.

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The Funding of Avaz: Some Reflections