I'm pretty sure I understand the value of YC - I know quite a few people who've been through the programme and I've visited the space and met with Harj who taught me a lot.
We're different though and I think different startups are looking for different things. If you have time, I'd certainly be up for meeting to see if there is a fit. My email is on the site.
Links added to the alumni page now - sorry, just slipped my mind to update. Three of the projects are still running.
Bethnal Green is an interesting place. It's got a pretty strong heritage as a place where social reformers have created new things - the Open University for example. It also has some very good pubs.
I wish you the best of luck if it's a real programme and not just grant & subsidy milking. That sounds really offensive, but it's not meant to be.
Do any of the alumni have a web-presence? Perhaps you could either link to their websites; or you could host small "about" pages for them?
You're going to get people thinking that this is just another quango product - something created to use a budget from some government organisation - so how could you address those concerns? How can you show that you're different?
I've popped links into our alumni page but with the caveat that the first test run was very different.
I guess I understand the concern that I'm just a quango/think tank guy but most of the useful stuff I've learned was as co-founder and CEO of School of Everything (www.schoolofeverything.com). We built a product, were finalists in the first round of Seedcamp, raised seed investment from angels including Esther Dyson and have a whole load of happy customers. We never became Google but the site does ok. I'm the first to admit I made lots of mistakes along the way which I hope I can help our teams avoid making again.
Would definitely welcome advice on how to show we're different.
Putting the info about your startup experience from the above comment on your part of the 'people' page would help. The reason people trusted YC early on was because everyone knew pg, rtm and tlb did Viaweb together, so they'd been through the whole of the startup process themselves.
So if you consider advice and mentoring a major part of the investment into the startups you fund in exchange for a lower cash valuation, you'll have to be very convincing that it really will add that much value.
(just hoping you'll take a look at my very-new website which, I hope, will be a great way of getting programmers to help your efforts: http://giving.github.com )
This is actually the first time we've run the programme properly. We did a test run about 12 months ago but at that stage didn't have the money to invest. Even so the teams got a lot out of it I hope. Good Gym (www.goodgym.org) has probably progressed the most but it was a different set up then - they're a not-for-profit.
The value for teams will definitely come from our network which we're still adding to the site to show who's involved. I think maybe we're underselling ourselves by being a bit British about the whole thing. Any advice gratefully received.
You can try but it’s very unlikely that we’ll fund you. We’ve found that a startup is much more likely to succeed when it’s started by a small team rather than just by one individual.
Is a big load of bollocks then?
You're passing yourself off as experienced when you're anything but.
To be honest that comes from our experience from Social Innovation Camp. We've watched a lot of people trying to get ideas of the ground struggle if they don't have a team around them. It can be a pretty lonely business.
+1 to this. I accept that the pg-anointed wisdom is that single-founders are less likely to be successful, but I wouldn't take advice like that as dogma. Assuming it's true 'because Paul said so' is a little weak.
I'm pretty sure I understand the value of YC - I know quite a few people who've been through the programme and I've visited the space and met with Harj who taught me a lot.
We're different though and I think different startups are looking for different things. If you have time, I'd certainly be up for meeting to see if there is a fit. My email is on the site.