I haven't read it carefully, but I noticed a few mistakes.
It's Y Combinator, not Y combinator. We started it in March 2005, not the summer. A lot more than 14% of the first 70 companies received follow-on funding; generally 2/3 or more do.
Also, I think this:
"While Paul Graham was influential through his essays, he is far more influential now that he runs the most high-profile accelerator programme in the world."
is actually false. Writing is by its nature a more effective generator of fame than almost any other kind of work. It's unlikely that switching part of your time from writing to some other kind of work would increase your fame. And in fact I have independent corroboration of this. Before I started YC, my site was often the first Google search result for "graham" and sometimes even for "paul." It's nothing like that now.
I read it a little more carefully, though still not completely, and I see another thing that's misleading: the poll of potential founders. What you end up measuring that way are what random people expect to get out of something like YC. You're thus two steps removed from the actual function of a ycomorph. (Because the people who get accepted aren't randomly selected, and even they may be surprised by what ends up being the most valuable.)
E.g. I notice that the feature that rated highest in the poll was "connections to future capital." That's actually pretty far down the list of what we do. But I've noticed that the worse a startup is, the more they think this is where our value lies. Their product is perfect, of course; the reason no one wants to invest in them is simply that they lack that magic intro from insiders. In fact the most valuable and the hardest thing we do is the low-rated "product support."
I need to edit my wording of that description. It was actually a mix of potential founders, as well as people that have gone through Y Combinator, TechStars, etc.
Amongst the founders that have been through Y Combinator, the "connections to capital" was virtually the same score, "brand and alumni connections" was higher than the overall average, and the other factors were all lower than the overall averages.
The non-founders actually rated "connections to capital" marginally lower than the overall group (YC + others) of funded-founders.
It's hardly 'independent corroboration' since both the ranking methods and the availability and popularity of information available on the net that matches these simple and common terms have likely changed dramatically (probably much more so than your own popularity) since you started writing.
It's very typical now for common term searches to list wikipedia pages in the top few ranks, for instance, and that change is entirely independent of your own fame trajectory.
Hi, Paul, and thank you for the clarifications. (They'll be reflected in the final version.)
I would presume that Y Combinator wouldn't have been as successful without your body of writing, but that without Y Combinator your writing wouldn't been seen by nearly as many people. My opinion is that they're tied quite closely together.
I don't have time to read it right now, but I'm told that I'm a decent writer when it comes down to it.
The only thing I'll say right now is you should probably reword your opening statement:
"The objective of this study is to objectively evaluate ..."
Maybe go with something along the lines of,
"The intent of this study is to objectively evaluate ..."
Or, maybe even something like this,
"The objective of this study is to give an unbiased evaluation of ...".
Basically, what you have right now just doesn't flow correctly, and using the words objective and objectively in one sentence might actually be repetitive. I know they have different meanings, but in this case maybe try whipping out the ol' Thesaurus for some ideas!
Hope this helps, I'll be reading this later today!
Doh... and very true. Typically when I have the content 90%+ set I turn it over to my wife who does free-lance copy-editing, where this stuff gets picked up. Obviously I haven't done that yet!
The final version should be much more grammatically correct and clear. My goal today was to see what people thought about the general content.
Question for you (and you can tell me to shove off if its not pertinent): Based on what I've read it seems that these seed incubators are mainly setup via angel or VC support and you mention that some are being started now with backing of a major firm instead. Two question on this point:
(1) As far as you know, do the setups that are backed by a large firm require entrepreneurs to make a first offer to the sponsoring firm as part of the exit process?
(2) It appears that the evolution of these incubators has gone from a few VC guys backing the incubator to consortiums backing them and now major corporations. Is there a point where government may step in and setup a similar program? Or is this what we are kind of already seeing when they do things like the DARPA challenge?
(2) - There are already local governments that have funded these types of programs, but I haven't seen anything from the federal level. They're generally doing it to kick-start an ecosystem.
(1) - That's a complicated question, and will try to address it in the paper...
Thanks for the warning, but I figure by posting it broadly here (and having full record of every change I've made within Google Docs) I shouldn't have a problem with the University. Of course, it helps that I shared it first with my advisor last week... :)
I believe it's better to be open, get feedback and have a better paper because of it.
It's Y Combinator, not Y combinator. We started it in March 2005, not the summer. A lot more than 14% of the first 70 companies received follow-on funding; generally 2/3 or more do.
Also, I think this:
"While Paul Graham was influential through his essays, he is far more influential now that he runs the most high-profile accelerator programme in the world."
is actually false. Writing is by its nature a more effective generator of fame than almost any other kind of work. It's unlikely that switching part of your time from writing to some other kind of work would increase your fame. And in fact I have independent corroboration of this. Before I started YC, my site was often the first Google search result for "graham" and sometimes even for "paul." It's nothing like that now.