This guy's idea of what happens at a Demo Day is so far removed from reality. E.g.<p><i>investors walk around committing $100K checks to their “favorites.”</i><p>All that happens is they exchange contact info. The investor will want to meet (often multiple times) before writing the check, and the founders will meanwhile check up on the investor.<p>This too is completely false:<p><i>with the acceptance of outside capital they are making a 3-5 year life commitment</i><p>Neither founders nor investors believe there is any commitment to keep working on the startup any longer than the investors' money lasts. In fact, investors have even lower expectations than that. I've seen several startups blow up while they still had some investor money left, and they just returned what was left and there were no hard feelings.<p>And as for this piece of advice<p><i>If I were running an accelerator I would be brutally honest and advise the bottom 25-50% of their classes not to move forward with financing post-demo day</i><p>the problem is, we don't know that early who the big successes are going to be. E.g. Greplin now looks like one of the top startups in their batch, but after Demo Day they would probably have seemed in the bottom half. They were down to one founder, and a new idea he'd come up with 2 days before DDay which at that stage consisted of nothing more than mockups.
I agree with the premise - not the content.<p>My recent co-founders and I applied for YC this summer. While we did not make the initial cut, we did not move forward with applying to other incubators. The reasoning:<p>- YC provided experience not only from their own start-up success but also from an incubator (though they're really not an incubator) standpoint. Major reason to apply.<p>- None of the others we found provided something truly special.<p>Incubators need to find ways to differentiate. If they want to entice the best applications, it is important they offer something of interest outside of office space, some cash and a widely attended demo day.<p>I'm ready for another program worth applying to, and I do not want it to look anything like YC.
> I would be brutally honest and advise the bottom 25-50% of their classes not to move forward<p>Seems to be 'grading on a curve' where it's not necessarily applicable. You could have a group where they're all great, and a group where they're all mediocre. Also, you could have different sorts of companies: some that are swinging for the fences and will either do something great, or fail, and others that aim for more modest growth.