Entrepreneur First Thinks It Can Grab The Talent Long Before YC

61 点作者 jordn大约 11 年前

11 条评论

UK-AL大约 11 年前

Start ups used to be for scrappy guys, the people who dropped out or had a winding career path.Now its become a popular option its turned into selection system like a Goldman sachs graduate recruitment program. Precisely because its those type of people running these things.Fundamentally i'm not sure they have the same character as the previous entrepreneurs. Those guys specifically chose to take the risky untrodden path. That said something about their personality. That could be the piece that makes a successful entrepreneur.Its not like that anymore, so the people choosing to do it are a different breed. They are more like people who go to work for investment banks now.

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roberthahn大约 11 年前

This seems so… retarded. "YC 'zigs', so we're going to 'out-zig' them?" Seriously?Someone should try 'zagging' and seek older people with this kind of enthusiasm to develop startups. With their real-world experience and domain knowledge, I bet the kinds of companies experienced people create would be a lot more interesting. And, in aggregate, more successful.-old(er) and cranky entrepreneur.

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jordn大约 11 年前

I believe that the founders of EF have not set out with the idea of it being a ‘pre-accelerator,' leeching talent before YC or banks can get their hands on it. I do think they solving a genuine problem in the supporting startup ecosystem, particularly in the UK.I spent a year at MIT and it was hard to avoid people that were working on cool ideas and starting up. Students chose most of their classes, and each class generally had a culture of creating something in a project. As a result, a lot of students would experience working on building something cool with a variety of people. That, combined with a very supportive environment, meant that it was much more accessible to startup if you wanted to.In the UK (or at least Cambridge) there are fewer people considering creating a startup. The UK university system also places more focus on end-of-year exams rather than project work. It's harder to come across finding the right combination of people, ideas and motivations that is needed to create a startup. Most ‘entrepreneurial’ societies tend to be full of the bullshitty types and smartest people default to jobs in finance or consulting.So it's partly bringing together smart people, partly the legitimacy of not feeling the need to go into a corporate job ourselves, that I think make ideas like EF broadly work. That being said, the model still has its problems. Forming teams with people you've no prior experience of only works in a handful of cases. Thankfully the programme is long enough to try several combinations of teams. Even so, I believe all the people that have gone through it but haven't ended up continuing with a company (like me) still value the contacts and learning experience thoroughly.Disclaimer: I've just finished EF as part of their 2013 cohort.

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neverminder大约 11 年前

So this looks like a bait for fresh graduates, because more seasoned professionals know that good jobs are hard to come by. I'm a software engineer, I live 50 miles north off London and I'm looking for a job there. My spam folder receives a daily dose of "LAMP developers needed", ".NET engineers", "Fontend jQuery wizzard" and other similar offers that I'm less than excited about, but jobs with leading technologies that I work with and want to continue working with (Scala, AngularJS, etc) are nowhere to be found. What does Enterpreneur First think they can fix here?

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pgt大约 11 年前

Having experienced first-hand the hiring competition of Big Co's, I started recruiting second and third year Comp. Sci. students for internships. You have to invest a lot more time and effort in training and mentorship, but it pays to build a solid working relationship before they are recruited by the corporate competition (Amazon, Facebook). I have had some good results, but it is hard to scale. Other activities that make it easier to hire is to regularly speak about interesting topics at your local university and demo interesting projects. Deliver value, and others will follow.

thaumasiotes大约 11 年前

This reminds me of nothing so much as the Harvard (any selective college, really) model of recruitment: try to admit a pool of people you think stand a good chance of huge success later. (The university model's step two is "when they get it, ask them for money and hope they remember you fondly", which seems to work OK but I imagine will be replaced with "when they're admitted, make them promise to give you money later" by these guys.)Fundamentally, you have the options of selecting for demonstrated achievement and selecting for potential. You can assess potential much earlier, so it really is a good way to scoop other people looking for the same thing.It's also less accurate. But there's got to be a business model in there somewhere.

malanj大约 11 年前

His view is that there will be two accelerators left in the world – YC and the few that manage to survive on investing in startups created by the people who didn’t take it into YC.It seems strange that he's focusing on YC if he's based in the UK? I'd imagine that YC has very limited reach in the UK. My understanding is that the startup ecosystem in the UK and Europe is still very underdeveloped (i.e. lots of opportunities for funds) so worrying about competition on a different continent seems unnecessary

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ccallebs大约 11 年前

Jake Lodwick (Vimeo co-founder) was doing this with Elepath. I interviewed with them about 2 years ago and he was building the team before he had a product goal.Honestly, with the amount of start-ups pivoting into new spaces when their original business plan isn't fully realized, this doesn't seem like a bad plan. Build a team that can execute on ideas -- that seems to be the hard part anyway.

BrownBuffalo大约 11 年前

Basically the Minor Leagues of YC -> which is fine, but call it what it is.

teemo_cute大约 11 年前

I once read a post from a company's founder who is involved in the business of hiring fresh talents for tech companies.Basically, what he does is whine and whine about the lack of talent because most fresh graduates want to build a start-up for themselves instead of joining a company.He tries to convince fresh graduates that they are better of joining established companies because most startups fail anyway. It seems like people distort their values when it comes to self-interest.I said he does so because he is once the founder of a startup himself. Why would he discourage others from doing the same.

michaelochurch大约 11 年前

YC isn't just about getting the best talent. Some YC founders are clearly very good, others are unimpressive. I've seen the whole spectrum.YC could pick its crowd at random (not to imply that it does; it doesn't) and it would still work. A few bozos would get in and be likely to fail, but it wouldn't be remarkable considering the statistical noise already in the startup game.Venture capital is a feudalistic reputation economy, and YC is a case of Paul Graham monetizing his reputation. Just being YC establishes that a startup has real potential and puts it ahead of the teeming masses. Paul Graham wouldn't have to do anything to make YC a winning trade for him and the startups.Before anyone says I'm being unduly cynical, let me fill out a few of my points. First, Paul Graham earned much of that reputation. He's a good writer, he understands Lisp at a deep level, and his technical chops are strong even by engineer standards and put him ahead of 99% of financiers. Second, I'm sure that YC's picks are better than its rejects. Third, I'm sure he worked really hard on the YC program. My point is only that he doesn't have to. He could pick startups at random, do absolutely nothing, and it'd still work, financially speaking.Can anyone replicate this? Probably not. Paul Graham deserves credit for carrying the banner. In 2002-4, the mainstream business world had written startups off and people believed there'd never be another 1990s-style tech boom (which was mostly froth, but had a lot of genuine substance). Paul Graham pointed people back to the truths that the dot-bomb-shocked business mainstream was prepared to discard, like (a) that technology really matters, (b) small businesses can be extremely efficient, and (c) smart people require a different management style that most corporations don't get. He deserves a lot of credit for keeping the banner in the air in the gloomy early and mid-2000s. That right move, on his part, is a major reason why he has a monetizeable reputation. Is that feat replicable? Probably not.