A modest proposal for 500 Y Combinators

How is this suggestion any different than telling the gov't to choose industries?<p>i.e. invest in 'clean tech' or 'electric cars' or 'the internet' or 'nuclear energy' or whatever.<p>The point of the free market is that no one knows where the next major innovation will come from.<p>Y Combinator is a product of the free market working. Not some government bureaucracy. Encouraging incubators is a bad, bad idea because all that will happen is that a lot of money will be wasted very quickly.<p>Just simplify the tax code, reduce the marginal corporate tax rate and get out of the way.<p>Let the private sector handle the rest.<p>Regulate the industries that need to be regulated of course - finance, health care, etc. But even then, loosen up where is reasonable.<p>FWIW, I am not a 'political conservative', just a government skeptic. I would much rather the free market decide who the winners are, than some gov't bureaucrat.<p>This reminds me of trying to 'buy' the top Digg users. Or buy your way onto the 'suggested list' at Twitter. Lame and won't work in the long run.<p>Edit: Also, when the government 'encourages' Accelerators, then the focus shifts from the entrepreneur to the fund manager (that is essentially what PG, and the partners are). In other words, people stop wanting to start their own company and want to start their own accelerator and they figure out how to game the system so that they can make their 2 &#38; 20. Basically, it becomes another bubble and valuations would sky rocket. You think we are seeing frothy valuations now? HAH!

Most of the value in YC is in their partners and their alumni network. While there is no question that the YC model can be duplicated, I'd be surprised if 500 clones would result in anything close to 500 able competitors. When you're giving away 10% of your company for $20k and advice, you'd better make sure the advice is top notch. Or at least that you're buying into a helpful brand name.

Jason, in your newsletter in November you said:<p><i>As these programs have expanded, I’ve found that the level of intensity and savvy of the founders has come down a notch. Basically, there are a lot of open seats in these programs, so some of the B-level students are getting in.<p>With the addition of more programs will come the placement of C-level founders, which are basically in the category of “not fundable.”</i><p>So with that said, what's the point of starting 500 accelerators when only the about the top 5 matter. I understand the education aspect, but with 500 accelerators the majority of the "mentors" will just be wantrapreneurs.

Not sustainable. They key to the accelerators is actually what happens after: ie- how to grow from 18k + simeple product to more people, funding, and a network. That requires yc tuesday dinners, techstars mentor meetings, demo day allocations, etc. Just not possible to have the people that need to be involved there spread out across 500 accelerators.

Overheard at a 500 Startups event: <i>500 startups isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion startups.</i>

I admit to only skimming this, but it doesn't seem to be satirical. Is this actually meant to literally be a modest proposal, or is it a "modest proposal" in the Swiftian sense?

There's always going to be debate over whether how involved the Government should be in the private sector. On it's merit, to be honest, I don't think that Jason's proposal goes far enough. He's definitely got his eye on an undercurrent that could be a problem if we don't try and do something about it.<p>The real issue at hand is what's the real expectancy of college. Is college supposed to teach you to think, and make your more well rounded or is it supposed to turn you into a ninja in your space? I always understood that it's academia's responsibility to teach you to think and give you fundamentals that you can take to the market, and have the market shape you. Obviously that's archaic.<p>My generation (I'm 26) is, in general, a disaster coming out of college now, and it's because they spent 4 years learning the applied physics of throwing a ping pong ball across and 8 foot table and driving vaporizer innovation. Don't get me wrong, there are tons that are graduating, and are doing awesome things right now, but I bet that most of them had some sort of taste of what it was like to work in their space while they were in school.<p>I think that students would leave school significantly better equipped, if we found a way to make it so that you can't get your degree without spending the last 18 months of college if you don't go work full-time in a startup-like scenario, whether it's an actual startup or something like a Y Combinator. How you pay for it and make sure that students aren't free labor and a tax break for a startup, will be an issue, but overall this would end up being a net-benefit for the economy.<p>The last 3 years in school, while I was getting my BA in English, I worked at a tech startup, and very quickly I had to come to grips with the brutal reality of where I was, what I knew, and what I had to learn- and quickly. Those three years were a fundamentally life changing experience for me. I was hired to do user quality assurance and content development, and by the time I left, I was the de-facto project coordinator, because I was the one writing all the python to make sure that everyone's content and art assets made it into the system, so the developers could tackle implementing the new features of the software.<p>The real key to make this proposal work, although funding is important, is the quality of mentorship that is available to students who participate. I'm freelancing now, but I've been able to pay my mortgage for the last 2 years because the lead developer and CTO of that company decided that investing 20 minutes of their day, having lunch and sipping cups of coffee with me was a worthwhile investment of their time. If the quality mentorship component is there, programs like this will be able to help students really step it up a notch or three.

While I love the idea, the problems is that the key of success for these accelerators is finding people who really have experience and can help, money isn't enough.<p>In Miami we see these happening a lot. People from completely other businesses, such as real estate, are jumping in this startup accelerators game without a real direct experience, with the only goal of taking advantage of inexperience young entrepreneurs.<p>The money isn't the problem, neither creating accelerators. The problem is finding people like PG or you that have a real experience and that are willing to share it, outside of the few well known tech hubs, like SF, NY or Boston.

And here I was thinking that someone would propose YC founders eat their children.

Was anyone else, after seeing the title, expecting a satirical piece about eating babies?

Are there enough raw materials to support an infrastructure of 500 accelerators? From investment pool to mentors, is that spreading the butter too thin? Let's take my home state of Louisiana for example. There are several "incubators" in the state. Office space and computer services offered, but few mentoring relationships are build. I don't know of any true accelerators. The incubator success rate is definitely up for argument. They tend to succeed more at wooing startups to move to the region, than really cultivating an educational growth program. It's a mindset that is not as prevalent in the region. I think the OA forum has a better chance of successful ventures, let's say in Baton Rouge, LA, than an accelerator would in the same location. Great ideas exist all over the country, but the quality infrastructure to build these into successes is extremely thin.

Calacanis to McClure: "I'll see your 500startups, and raise you 500seedAccelerators."

Why only 500? Why not 5000? Or even 50,000 accelerators?<p>After all, as the author simply claims that, "it depends" if 500 accelerators can actually succeed.<p>And if we are going bet, let's bet high. No point playing Roulette and betting on black or red. Let's go with the double 0s. So, I propose that "America" launches 500,000 accelerators. (Each unemployed person in the city of Los Angeles can be made a CEO.) Since, "it depends".

Jason - this is an interesting article, but why not release the dataset you used to make your graphs and charts?<p>A simple listing of accelerators along with website, location, average investment, equity stake, and length of class would be valuable to a lot of people.

YC always seemed like a plan to reorganize corporations.<p>In Capitalism Hits the Fan lecture <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/f35gs/capitalism_hits_the_fan_professor_richard_wolff/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/comments/f35gs/capital...</a> the professor concludes that startups are really communism, because the workers own the "means of production" and directly benefit from the profits made. So capitalism doesn't deserve credit for much of our technological progress.<p>Startups are also the only solution he knows for fixing what's wrong with the US economy. Bailouts, tax-breaks, regulation and deregulation won't help. The conclusion in his lecture sounds funny and simplistic but 500 startup incubators agrees with his basic premise.

500 Accelerators? Sure, why not? It's a big world. But 500 Y Combinators? There can be only one!

Has anyone thought of paying something like Y Combinator $20,000 instead of going to college? It seems the value extracted is enormous...