Pros and Cons of joining a start-up incubator

"Incubators tend to focus on the ‘low hanging fruits’, the companies that are either very easy to make profitable or very easy to ‘flip’ to a larger party in a tech acquisition or a team acquisition. Various incubator operators are on the record stating that they are ‘in for the long haul’ but the statistics do not bear this out and incubators tend to stay away from companies that really intend to ‘change the world’."<p>I have no idea if this is true of the others, but for the record, it is certainly not true of us. It's one of our guiding principles that the ideas with the biggest potential usually seem borderline crazy, and we consciously seek them out.

"The 'change the world' companies are typically not launched from incubators, though there is no reason why that should continue to be the case."<p>I wonder if this is simply because incubators of the YC variety are still such a new idea that we really don't know yet whether they'll produce a Google or Facebook yet. I doubt there's a deliberate focus on safe bets going on, since it seems to me it's in their best interest to take more risks if they're investing such a small amount at such an early stage.

Does the author have any direct experience in an incubator, and if so which one(s)? Might be better written from an insider perspective.

"If you plan on signing up for an incubator try to get an idea of how much time there is allocated by the various partners in the incubator for this mentoring and maybe talk to some alumni to see how well that worked out in practice."<p>This is actually something I have been wondering about. Can anyone give feedback in regard to this? pre-emptive thanks

Having actually worked in an incubated start-up, I can say this article is overstating both the pros and cons of working in one.