In what sense is this 'freeing' the talent? We're not exactly in shackles here in London.<p>Also, the name HackFwd is a bit surprising since none of the people involved are hackers in my mind.<p>Update. The HackFwd people disagreed with me about my assessment of the people not being hackers. I asked them who they'd highlight as a hacker and they pointed to <a href="http://hackfwd.com/people#prof.-franz-guenthner" rel="nofollow">http://hackfwd.com/people#prof.-franz-guenthner</a><p>Second update. The more I think about it the more I think this whole 'freeing' thing is arrogant. Who the hell are these guys to set us free? Why begin by implying that we are not free?
There's a lot of nay-saying going on here, so I'm going to throw out some cautious optimism:<p>This is somewhat non-obvious, but their copy is written against a background of other early stage investment stuff in continental europe. This sounds almost bizarre to Silicon Valley attuned ears, but funding hackers early stage doing original ideas is <i>not</i> common in Germany. It's encouraging to see people putting their money where their mouth is in hopes of changing that.<p>They do have a couple of folks that they've roped in, notably the Xing founder, who lend it some credibility.<p>27% is pretty steep, but hopefully that'll downshift some over time. The amounts that they're willing to invest for up to three person teams fall in the range of a decent early angel round, and it'd be nice to see the numbers fall closer to the expected dilution for such.<p>The biggest problem that I see is that it plays somewhat into the problematic mindset that's common in european would-be entrepreneurs: fear of risk. There are a lot of programs attempting to do that badly at the moment, grants from the state and whatnot, but they rarely produce good results.
It doesn't seem honest about the options and outcomes in their chart. I immediately dislike that about this concept, instead of wanting to really help they make it seem like they are the only ones capable of launching startups. I understand the marketing aspect of it, but other organizations don't mock you for trying other routes and talking to some of the people, they are more than willing to help you regardless of whether you take their program/money or someone elses.
The site is just way too "IN YOUR FACE" for my liking.<p>Because it's so "IN YOUR FACE" and "made for nerds" I almost get a feeling that the whole thing is a huge insult to every serious hacker out there.<p>...Especially the flow chart seems so fucking insulting to me. Yaddayaddayaa, yes, every geek likes starwars & light sabers, yes we've read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, yes, we've seen the back to the future trilogy etc.<p>In my opinion, funding entrepreneurship shouldn't be about making jokes on stereotypes. We're talking about peoples livelihoods here - not about star wars kids.<p><i>I like the idea but not the execution.<p>...And the art is in the execution.</i>
Proving the old cliche once again that "Europeans just don't get it". Compare and contrast with YCombinator, or if you think that's unfair because Y is so well-known, to the other tens of incubation/early acceleration programs in the US. I don't want to be too negative, but can't they at least get their HTML design more appetizing?
Presentation critisism aside, their application process is not exactly accessible:<p><i>You can't apply directly to join HackFwd, you have to know one of these people and convince them of your idea.</i><p>from
<a href="http://hackfwd.com/people" rel="nofollow">http://hackfwd.com/people</a>
Actually the best description comes from the TechCrunch article (<a href="http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/xing-founder-lars-hinrichs-launches-hackfwd-a-product-oriented-incubator/" rel="nofollow">http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/xing-founder-lars-hinric...</a>):<p>"Like a Klingon starship de-cloaking in the middle of Europe, Lars Hinrichs is putting his efforts onto a new startup investment vehicle dubbed HackFwd."<p>So they're the enemy then?