We were just talking about the buzz YCombinator has generated with its incubator model.
Now others are copying it. Paul Böhm has launched a European clone, called YEurope, and his site is awfully similar to YCombinator’s. (Techcrunch has more about YEurope’s copying of the investment model too, which is based on the number of founders, i.e., 5000€/each, and taking a 2-10% stake in the company.) Eight start-ups travel to Vienna to work on their companies.
Others are popping up, another strange reminder of the good ol’ days of 1999, when incubators were all the rage. We’ve mentioned Techstars in Colorado. And most recently, serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant of San Francisco has launched HitForge. He calls it a “cooperative,” where entrepreneurs apply to join HitForge and then they band together in teams to launch companies. If projects fail, fine, the team moves on to something new. We pressed Ravikant for more details, such amount given to sustain entrepreneurs and the project’s stock structure, but he said it’s a work in progress.
4 Comments
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Christian Dommers said:
I think the main difference between todays seed investor models and former incubators is that there is a stronger form of entrepreneurial engagement of the investors in the funded companys today. The high numbers of applicants at current programs (e.g. techstars had over 300 applications) show that young, creative founders really need those. I believe we need more initiatives like techstars and Ycombinator throughout all of Europe. We are currently forming a team for this in Cologne - which is a great city for Techstartups. We are about to start a programm combining selection, small funding, education, network and know-how for entrepreneurs that don’t have much more than a good idea. Since things work differently in Germany and in Europe than in the US, we will offer solutions for the specific needs of tech/web-startups in this region of the world. Our plans are to take applications thoughout the next months and have the programm start this fall. We will release more information on a regular basis from now on.
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webbeau said:
incubators are simply extensions of college fraternities…..at 22 who wouldn’t want in on one with their next great widget idea. why would you deal with vcs older than your dad? or angels busy jetting around in their g5s…
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Nick said:
I think I will try hitforge….
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Harshal Vaidya said:
The Hitforge page is down!
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Open coffee, beer & entrepreneurship « John’s musing said:
[...] the Entrepreneur’s Question Time and asked if Bristol was ready for a Y Combinator/TechStars/et al type investment and incubation fund/service. The panel (Mike Bennett, E3, James Foster, Xmos, Sandu [...]
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