I consider it one of the biggest waste of my time ever!
I'm hoping the program has grown more and I know Ross works hard and I congratulate him on keeping the program going. If you're an international company, perhaps their programs outside of US are more valuable since there are no other options for you.
But if you're US based, I would do my homework before joining them.
Why?
1 - the program was so disorganized. We were forced to follow this automated Powerpoint slide progression. If you needed it more time on one of your slides you copied the slide twice, to give yourself double the time. So basically we spent 3 months optimizing our pitches around this auto powerpoint process.
2 - we were used to build credibility for Village Capital. They would shuttle us around to their potential LPs to show it was a viable program. That's not bad in itself, however, it felt like we were providing more value to Village Capital, than Village Capital to us.
3 - Very founder-unfriendly terms. As I said we were one of the two top finishers. However, their financing term (which we only learned the details pass the half-way into the program) was nothing short of usury. We were forced to do a down round (by 4x) OR do the revenue share financing, where we would pay back 3X the money they loaned us.
I decided not to write about our experience, but given the reach of HN, I decided for the first time to publicly speak about it to warn other founders who might be interested in their program.
Can you clarify what "the program" refers to? Is this the new variant where demo days are discarded in favor of mock board meetings (as discussed in the blog)? Or is the demo day/mock board meeting just the last piece, and the underlying program is the same? Thanks.
When we graduated. The cohort class would vote the top 2 finishers among themselves. Which then would get the financing. This was a horrible idea!
It became very political. Basically we had 4 major sessions each 3-4 days alternating between Salt Lake City and Houston. At the conclusion of each session, we would rank each company on a set of criteria. The total score would rank each company. However, the last ranking would determine the final winners.
We finished #1 after the first session. However, I soon realized giving feedback (even privately) became rather contentious. People could easily mistake a genuine feedback for a political move to downgrade a company for scoring reasons. As a result, the value of cohort feedback diminished a lot.
The mock board meeting, was probably one of the more valuable things in the program. But the problem was the time with the mock board members was short, these "board" members had very little context about the company (so not very realistic). As a result, you had to spend most of the "board meeting" time educating them about your business before getting into the actual practice of a board meeting.
If you're in a remote location or city, with very little resources, then the program might be somewhat valuable. But if you live in any big cities, especially silicon valley. Then there is no value to it.
This is bad. The biggest value I get from YC are my peers from the batch and other alumni. We still reach out constantly and ask each other for pieces of code, business leads,etc.
YC puts A LOT OF EFFORT to build the community in the right way.
Lack of experience, probably the #1 reason. I think I just assumed every accelerator more or less followed the standards set by YC or very close to it.
Your question made me search my email to see if I missed something. I had't it just mentioned the amount and no details.
Other reason was, in their interview they did a great job selling us on how they have a network of investors as well as the largest hospital system in the world (partnering with them) where it will give us access to so much more than just their capital.
At the halfway point, we had a Webex call when their finance person took us through their financial terms. We still thought we were okay, since they indicated they would follow up on our existing seed terms. Well, they renegade that when the time came! Telling us, this would be a new term since our old term closed a while back.
Afterwards, I remember arguing with them when it came to their term sheet and using YC as the benchmark. It didn't persuade them.
So, the learning lesson for young founders who read this. Do your due diligence for the lessor known accelerators. Not just on financial terms. But overall benefits of the program.
I consider it one of the biggest waste of my time ever!
I'm hoping the program has grown more and I know Ross works hard and I congratulate him on keeping the program going. If you're an international company, perhaps their programs outside of US are more valuable since there are no other options for you. But if you're US based, I would do my homework before joining them.
Why? 1 - the program was so disorganized. We were forced to follow this automated Powerpoint slide progression. If you needed it more time on one of your slides you copied the slide twice, to give yourself double the time. So basically we spent 3 months optimizing our pitches around this auto powerpoint process.
2 - we were used to build credibility for Village Capital. They would shuttle us around to their potential LPs to show it was a viable program. That's not bad in itself, however, it felt like we were providing more value to Village Capital, than Village Capital to us.
3 - Very founder-unfriendly terms. As I said we were one of the two top finishers. However, their financing term (which we only learned the details pass the half-way into the program) was nothing short of usury. We were forced to do a down round (by 4x) OR do the revenue share financing, where we would pay back 3X the money they loaned us.
I decided not to write about our experience, but given the reach of HN, I decided for the first time to publicly speak about it to warn other founders who might be interested in their program.