This is the perfect kind of wonderful idea which $200k of government money guarantees will be 60% report writing, 35% architectural astronomy, and 5% an application which will replicate the behavior of a script that could have been done in 3 hours.
In March 2009, I wrote:<p><i>PG made an interesting analogy to the college admissions process. How long until we see an "Common App" for seed firms, and a common decision timeline?</i><p>(<a href="http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=528071" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=528071</a>)<p>The answer was two years, apparently.
> The development of the universal application is being by a Kauffman Foundation grant of $200,000<p>If it's not too late to bid I'd gladly create a common startup application for a mere... (pinkie in mouth)... $100,000. I know, I know, I'll have to invent some sort of form technology, and some way to submit data to a web server of some kind. Perhaps invent some sort of database. This stuff is costly, folks. R&D. Could take years too. And there's no guarantee we'll succeed. But the challenge, it excites me. That and $100k.
A common application works well to make the process of applying easier, but my memory was the best schools used to add a supplemental question or two (although it's been a decade since I applied to college). Lower-ranked schools wouldn't add additional questions because they benefit from the increase in application flow by removing the friction of applying.<p>YC doesn't have to do anything really. What will likely happen is that the common app each year will just be the questions YC asks or a subset of the questions YC asks (effectively giving YC the benefit of a supplemental set of questions).<p>One other point. Unlike college admissions where you typically have to pay an application fee (and with incubators, a time cost associated with filling out disparate applications), it doesn't appear that there's any penalty for submitting your common application to every "incubator". There are probably some unintended consequences of every incubator seeing every application.
The Y-Combinator app is very unique you can easily see what PG and his team are looking for.<p>I doubt TechStars or any other incubator is looking for the same traits, or understand people the same way.
I don't understand why the other incubators don't just copy the YC application. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's good enough. Better than losing good candidates because they didn't want to fill out yet another form.
Ah, the cycle of revolution and co-option. It will be interesting to watch the original innovators of these incubator programs be replaced by cautious management types, and their institutions become the establishment that gets innovated around.<p>Make no mistake, YC, techstars and the rest have created massive amounts of value and turning into a clumsy industry giant is a great problem to have. This is just how it goes.
MIT doesn't take the common app, and I don't suspect YC will either. When you're at the top, you can afford to do that sort of thing... TechStars would do itself a world of good if it simply accepted a verbatim copy of the YC application; and so would every other seed funder. Creating a different standard would only cement them all as in the hunt for position number 2.
Off topic: On first reading I interpreted Application as in Program (computer) and was left wondering in confusion for a couple seconds how, why anyone would want such a thing. This sort of language ambiguity is Watson has to deal with and what makes it so impressive.
This is going to cause the same dilemma as the Common App for universities. An easy way for a program to filter applicants is the fact that they took the time to complete the long application process. On the other hand, as a startup founder, I'd rather spend my time actually working on the product than doing paperwork for 20 different startup programs.<p>Given that a common app definitely increases the amount of work for the VCs or accelerator programs, but reduces the work for founders, I hope that we'll see the more founder-friendly programs collaborate to make this happen.<p>I'm eager to see what YC's stance on this will be.