About YCombinator (YC)

What is it? A three-month long programme to help start startups. Founders (you) get ~$15-20k in “seed” cash so they can live without any other commitments for the three months, in return for ~6% equity in the business. (Thus, being accepted immediately values your business at ~$300k, not that this really matters.)

During those three months there are weekly dinners with the ~15-30 other companies accepted into the programme. YC specifically doesn’t offer office space, but these regular dinners and office hours with Paul Graham provide regular contact and guidance from other startups going through the same issues you are. These dinners also feature guests/speakers from across the startup/tech industry.

At the end of the three months is a Demo Day, which is attended by some of the top VC’s and angel investors in the US. (I’ve heard anecdotally that as YC has established its brand, Demo Days have become much better attended.) So in addition to helping get your startup and demo ready, YC puts you in touch with an incredibly ecosystem of VC’s and advisors to take you to the next stage.

My dissertation

Since Ycombinator became successful, there have been efforts around the world to try and copy the “secret sauce” which makes YC a success. These include:

• TechStars
• SeedCamp
• DreamIt Ventures
• Capital Factory
• LaunchBox
• OpenFund

But while each of these other programmes are broadly similar to YC, they’re actually fairly different. What I consider to be broadly similar is:

• For small teams of startup founders to work on their own ideas
• Defined term of programme
• Funding - for living expenses while on programme
• Education - intense period of product & business advice
• Contacts - help you make appropriate contacts to help you in the next stage
• Demo Day - opportunity to pitch to potential funding sources and advisors

My Goal

I am writing my dissertation in order to put a “framework” around the YC “special sauce.” If you’re thinking about setting up something like YC, what do you need to include and what do you need to avoid? How do your goals for the programme help or hurt its eventual chance for success? What will truly help entrepreneurs, and how do you make sure you do that in the programme?

Summary

So this is what I’m going to be spending a lot of time on this summer. I hope to release an early draft or two openly to get comments, and then release my final paper when it’s finished at the end of August. I hope that providing a way to think about YC will help other people as they set up similar programmes, hopefully world-wide!

I’m pleased to announce the first Cambridge Technology Demo Night, on Thursday, June 18th. It will feature seven-minute demo’s from four great Cambridge startups:

• Plastic Logic - display technology (video demo, then talk by VP Technology)
• True Knowledge - answer (search) engine
• Timetric / Inkling Software - statistical software (YouTube for time-series charts), Mini-Seedcamp London winner
• Broadersheet - Hyper Personalised Newspaper

After the demos there will be a reception to be able to learn more about these companies and perhaps find opportunities to collaborate.

Register: Book your free tickets here!

Important Info

Date: Thursday, June 18th
Time: 6:30pm for a 7pm (strict!) start at Anglia Ruskin University.
Demo Night will take place in Lecture Room Cos124 in the Coslett Building. (Please note: this is about a 5minute walk from the East Road main entrance.)
Register: Book your free tickets here!

Goals

The initial goals for this Demo Night are:

• DEMOnstrate to the Cambridge and UK tech community the great products and companies coming out of Cambridge
• DEMOnstrate several technologies/products around a common theme to provoke new thinking in the sector
• make connections between startups, their local community, and potential partners/investors/advisors

The Demo Night is NOT:

• death-by-powerpoint and/or investment pitches
• networking without a focus
• boring speakers about macro-scale “industry trends”

I’m really excited about this! What started with the founding of OpenCoffeeCambridge in February has quickly grown into this. It’s our first attempt at this, and I would appreciate any and all feedback. (To include format, a better name, or anything else.) With all the great startups in Cambridge, I hope this will become a regular event. I think we could get a night focused on mobile/sensor technology and another night focused on healthcare/biotech.

Finally, I’d like to thank Chris Mitchell of Audio Analytic for his help in arranging the venue! And I’d like to thank Prof. Stuart Wall for his assistance at Anglia Ruskin, too. (They’ve kindly sponsored refreshments for post-Demo reception.)

Register: Book your free tickets here!

Not going to say much here other than that I got a paid internship for this summer in London! It’s ten weeks starting at the end of June, and I’m really excited. (I’m holding off on saying the name of the company until I’ve got everything signed, sealed and delivered! E-mail me directly if you’re curious.)

Other MBA classmates have been getting jobs, even in some hard-to-get finance areas, but it is a bit more bleak than a couple of years ago. I still believe that if you’re willing to reset your expectations you’ll still get a great job and be set for a great career.

That’s all for now… hopefully more soon.

Simon has had a fascinating career. He skipped his A-levels (similar to SATs for the Americans reading this) to join the crew of a merchant ship as it sailed around the world. Eventually he found his way to the French Foreign Legion, where he served for five years in Algeria. Passing up the option to become an officer in the Legion, he came back to the UK. Simon eventually became a hugely successful and highly regarded businessman in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Probably the most prominent of his current activities is being on the Board for Vodafone. More recently, he became the oldest man to reach the South Pole unsupported, at the age of 63. (It was a two-month trek!)

Career Advice

Simon had some really interesting insights for us as we approach our future careers. Specifically, one of his key points was that when thinking about jobs, we need to separate what we want TO BE from what we want TO DO. As long as you’re doing something you like, it really doesn’t matter who you become. (And if you’re doing something you like you tend to be really, really good at it!) What YOU DO is what YOU BECOME, so live your life to become the best at whatever you enjoy.

Another of his main points is that you have to grab opportunities as you see them. It was just a chance meeting that originally got him connected in Hong Kong, and Simon talked about how grabbing it was a seemingly small thing but an event that was a key to his future success.

Simon had two quotes that I thought were really interesting. Take them as you will:

• “Don’t go where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail.”
• “On bad roads you meet good people.”

Finally, he told a story about trying to get to the heart of what a potential candidate really wanted to do with his life. Simon, not getting an answer, finally asked him what he would do if he had the next day off with nothing to do. The guy (a recent university graduate) thought about it, and told him “windsurfing.” Simon at the time owned a company that made windsurfing sails. The new graduate was sent to that company and became a great success and has gone on to very significant successes since. That concept, that we decide what to do in our career based off what we would do if we had a day off, is interesting. As Simon mentioned, it may lead to unexpected places, but as long as we do what we enjoy it should be fruitful both personally and professionally.

Summary

Simon was a fantastic speaker. His mix of great stories and fascinating personality made it one of the top tier talks this year. I’m definitely going to have to buy his book and learn a bit more about his early years in the French Foreign Legion.

Well, I just finished with a massive project for my MBA (thus the lack of posting recently) and am enjoying a week off before classes start again. So I thought it would be a great time to put out a quick post or two to re-start this series. Here’s another great quote from the book:

Just because you find the work too hard to do, don’t leap to the conclusion that it is humanly impossible; but if the work can and should be done by a man, then consider yourself capable of doing it.

-Meditations, Book Six, #19

Amir spoke about his company and his experiences getting accepted to and going through the Y Combinator program. If you haven’t heard of it, Y Combinator is a really innovative program for software start-up companies. You get a small amount of funding and go through a three-month boot camp of getting your software ideas up and running. The whole time you have incredible mentoring from some of the best web/software advisors in the world, and the program concludes with a Demo Day, where companies show off their software and businesses to press and investors.

It was a great talk, and really brought out the benefits and realities of the Y Combinator program. Matt Schofield, the CEO of the Cambridge Network, wrote a blog post about it here.

Before I forget, you MUST try out WebMynd. They released a brand new version just a few weeks ago and it is AWESOME. You have to have the Firefox browser installed, which I highly recommend. (Go here to download Firefox.) Once you’ve got it, just head to WebMynd’s home page here and click on “Install WebMynd.”

WebMynd does four things:

1. Gives you more (and potentially more useful) results whenever you do a Google search. This is a fantastic feature.
2. Records what web pages you’ve been do, so you can literally go back visually to web pages you’ve seen recently.
3. Keeps a listing of the web pages you’ve been on recently, which lets you easily go back and/or share links.
4. One-click sharing pages with friends via Twitter, Facebook, etc.

There was some interesting talk on the night about Y Combinator. A few of the Cambridge Angels were there, as well as other investors like Laurence John (CEO of Amadeus Capital Parters Seed Fund). It seems like people are interested in the model, but want to create something that is appropriate for Cambridge. While Cambridge doesn’t have the same level of expertise in web technology as Silicon Valley does, there is some really advanced technology being developed here and a latent entrepreneurial spirit.

Laurence has started discussing this a bit on his blog, and I look forward to hearing more about it. Based on some things he said Wednesday night, it makes sense that any program needs to come from a consortium of angels or VC’s. This eliminates any negative connotation if a particular angel or VC chooses not to further invest in a company that was accepted into the program.

Perhaps I might be able to provide some perspective later this year… I’ve applied to this summers’ Y Combinator program. (With a thank you to Amir for his feedback and perspectives which were incredibly helpful!) With so many applicants it may be a long shot, but will know more in just a week and a half.

The Hartford looks like it’s in pretty bad shape. Here are photos from the NavyTimes.com:

This one shows the sail bent over at an angle:

This shows the damage on the front of the sail, but you can also see where the bottom of the sail has pulled apart from the hull after being bent over:

I can only imagine two scenarios about what happened. #1- The Hartford lost depth control and/or got sucked up in the wake of a big surface ship. (Unlikely but has happened.) #2- The Hartford was on its way to periscope depth and didn’t hear the New Orleans or realize it was as close as it was. Since the NavyTimes article quoted the Navy as saying the Hartford was “submerged but near the surface” it sounds like #2 is the right answer. Unfortunately this is not hugely uncommon; going to periscope depth is the most dangerous thing a submarine does regularly.

I feel really bad for the guys on the boat. I was on the Hartford when we grounded off of Italy in 2003; it’s an awful experience for everyone, whether you were personally involved or not. It causes a lot of disruption for the Navy and all the people involved. I’m no expert, but that damage is probably going to take a long time to fix.

[UPDATE]: More photos here from the Navy. The sail is pretty trashed. Lots of Navy-specific comments on Joel’s blog here.

[UPDATE 2]: Commenters on Joel’s blog have written that the Hartford experienced an 82-degree roll! If that’s even half-true (and it may very well not be) it’s amazing that only 15 people were hurt.

My old boat (the USS Hartford, SSN 768) sailed across the Panama Canal a year or two after I left; I’m still a bit jealous that I missed it. Going through the Suez wasn’t nearly as interesting, and I did that twice.