Cool. They stole the application too, but I guess they can because doing so didn't hurt Techstars at all. They stole it so badly that I wonder if it's a joke.
"If one wanted to buy you three months in (March 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take?"
I wonder how long it will be before we see a clone in India/East Asia.
I think it's kind of funny that everyone uses the same app. One of these days someone will start a Princeton Review-like startup that submits the answers to all organizations with one click.
btw, I don't know if it's just me but I don't know why people are so worked up over these copycats. When the second university in the world was founded, maybe people accused them of copying the first university, but in the long run it's been good for mankind. Of course, if all the orgs want to talk amongst each other and pay royalties to YC, that might also be interesting.
Well rms I am from India. Mentality right now is against startups. Working for big companies is considered very
smart and only options out here.
But things are changing out here too. One of my friend quit his job to join a startup.
I do not have the right credentials otherwise i would have setup a YC clone here too.
not a joke - tried to contact pg a few weeks ago already - emailed them again - but running out of time - if we don't get applications now, we can't launch. if pg says anything in that direction, we'll immediately take it down, and ask people to resubmit new forms because we can't use them. the questions pg asks are great, it just didn't feel sensical to try to reformulate them.
our differenciation is in how we implement it locally, not how we ask questions - the questions just are the same everywhere in the world.
our local hacker club is what we think might make this work - we have a few hundred people sharing knowledge and ideas here. we hope to build up entrepreneurial knowledge and spirit around the metalab, and store it within the collective memory of the people here.
I believe YC's program is quite revolutionary, both in terms of supporting innovative businesses and also as an educational opportunity; I agree that right now, they are probably the best model to follow, but copying the application verbatim doesn't reflect well on your organization.
For example, do you have any other ideas you thought of applying with? One may be something we've been waiting for. I'd be very surprised if at the first time of execution, you are already so confident about your judgment of the internet startup landscape. It's reasonable to assume that YC really has things in mind. In this case, you are only waiting for things to come into your mind.
If the YC method is good, people will learn from it, and it will flourish. But seeing how yeurope does it right now, I will be wary.
i know that this is a big problem, and does not reflect well on us.
we've had some failed startup attempts 4 years ago, e.g. in the area of social sorting. we certainly can't provide the level of depth and experience pg has, but we've been trying our best to learn for a long time now. we're talking to lots of people in austria and throughout europe, and are trying to get more people to support and make this work.
we have been working on getting things going fulltime for 4 years now, but the situation is a lot harder in europe. once there are some successful startups around, we hope to convince them to join the board. we just don't have any people to look up to here, and got to bootstrap somehow.
we've been pretty busy in preparing the ground for this, both with our hacklab, but also with contacts to all kinds of people who might help out with this, private, corporate and political. we even founded an interest group for startup founders (IG Startup), to lobby with politics, and are actively discussing their ICT funding strategies with the respective politicians and decision makers.
our hacklab launched one year ago, after 2 years of trying to finance it, and has a few hundred users already. the problem is the financing option for yeurope has just arisen half a week ago, and if we don't launch now - we might never do it.
I second rms... but again, you shouldn't skimp on your website and your app, in any way; it's your public face. If you want to tailor the program to local apps, then it needs more thought. "We're looking for great people. We don't care that much whether your idea is the best thing since sliced bread."
How in the world are you going to measure "great"? It's definitely not going to come through via just the 28 YC questions. They have a news site for what it's worth. A monster hacker team that cannot come up with a sellable idea is merely a great team of coders -- nothing but.
well, these are tough questions. the answers to these questions heavily involve european culture, so i'm having a really hard time accurately portrying the situation. but i'll try my best to answer.
europe probably has just about as much cash, and as much education as the US. but according to the aho group report (http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/action/2006_ahogroup_en.htm), named after the former finnish prime minister esko aho, the ICT field, despite having some of the lowest initial investment costs in all of high tech, is the most severly underdeveloped.
the reasons for this, he muses are both a lack of entrepreneurial spirit, and a lack of funding in the pre-seed areas.
i'd like to believe the first point is not an absolute. we have great people with the skills and desire to create cool applications. on the other hand you can't just walk up to a rich friend here, who'll give you cash if your idea is great. there are no rich friends, and even if you know one or two, they haven't made their cash in a startup, or even in the off chance that they have, they're a business guy. businesses are started by business people here. if you want to start a business, you have no chance to get cash from someone from your world, who has been on that path before.
so you're left with public funding, and public funding involves politics. but public funding doesn't work for tech founders either - the lisbon goal of 3% GDP for r&d mostly goes into empty tech parks and research centers by big corporations. incorporating a limited liability company here requires at least 17000 euros, with a liability of up to 34000 euros.
if you want to apply for any kind of funding, you require months of meeting bureaucrats and writing applications - a different one for each place. these people will tell you after months your projects are either not innovative, or they won't work. but the budget is there, so people claim everything is alright. then they fund projects by friends, or stupid things with avatars running around in browser plugins.
the only places to get entrepreneurial information are bureaucrats. you're very unlikely to know anyone who started his or her own tech business without sheer luck and without their own money. there's no place to get advice, except other people who are on the same path right now. you usually don't start businesses before you've saved a significant amount of money and are probably well beyond your 40s. also people will discourage you, because it is seen as very risky.
we are adressing these problems both by creating non-profit community centers where you're surrounded by like-minded people, and to which we invite people we think of as insightful, and by actively lobbying for better legislation to support startups, and by making access to initial cash easier. of the few techie-founders we have here, most are single-founders, because it is really hard to convince two friends to found with you if they can barely pay their rent while studying and working at the same time.
for the argment about our capability to accurately judge the merit of the applications i have to say: you're unfairly postulating that we're unskilled because we have no huge successes to show yet. i have a hard time to counter that argument right now, but trust me, we're working hard to do just that.
I don't know the scene over there. But I'm guessing this is why Wikio got 12M(!) in funding?
To clarify, I'm definitely not calling you unskilled and am not qualified to do so. I'm attacking your copying of a question that implies you have solid experience in the field as a seed funding organization, operating like YC. I don't even know their inner workings.
But public funding + politics + international applicants seems to entail a lot more than seed funding + support. In another message (http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15641)
you said work permits are available if the idea is good enough. Do the politicians have a say in the selection process?
I think your effort is great. Lots of people will be watching; I hope things can go smoothly for you.
btw. this is an awesome quote from the aho report:
"Apart from more resources for R&D and innovation, a paradigm change that would preserve European values in a new social structure is needed for the achievement of the goal of an Innovative Europe." - Aho Group Report "Creating an Innovative Europe" (January 2006)
You should add a disclaimer to your site that says, "We are not affiliated with Y-Combinator, we just ripped off their name, funding model, and application." Otherwise, people may get confused.
Who are you? Metalab has an extensive website, but who's behind YEurope? You know that the funding is only a small part of what YC provides -- you won't be able to live up to pg, rtm et al, which is expected, but right now you don't say anything about yourself, so why should a prospective applicant value your connections and advice?
And: One of the things YC does is that it sets up a company for you. YEurope is in Austria. Austria is a country where it's expensive to incorporate (pg has written about how that is one problem for startups in Europe [1]). What are you going to do about that?
hello benja, i'm paul and i'm the one who mainly started this. your reservations are absolutely justified. who am i to think i can do this?
i haven't had any huge successes to show yet, and i really didn't want to launch like this. i had big plans of launching with my own money, and then i'd have prepared some nice texts telling my success story.
as things went, we are launching early. i'm certainly in a different league than pg, but i try. being where i am now, i'll also write down some more information about me and the other people involved, so that you can get a better idea.
basically i'm a computer security guy. started programming with 8, and then later spent a lot of time at university to get cheap net access using the DLX single-floppy linux distro that my brothers had developed in 96 (of course i had no student account at 14). met cool people there, tutors and such, and was trying hard to keep up with them. i started the teso security group in 98, and have been a computer security person ever since. i got involved with many NGOs, am really interested in game theory and reputation systems, co-wrote a paper on quantum cryptography, and started a company first trying to do social sorting, but ran out of money quickly (i wasn't checking against my own reality, but the reality i knew from my friends in SF, and expecting to get VC easily, so i rented an office, got myself a friend as a CEO who was good with words - i certainly wasn't back then). then i developed a bootable usb stick with a crypto IFS filesystem driver for windows, and loopback-aes for linux, to sell to local banks. we had a customer, and we finished the code, but my ceo got lovesick and didn't answer my calls for weeks. then i got a loan, hired a project manager to do this stuff for me. we didn't get anywhere, but she was really expensive. in early 2004 i had to close shop because we could neither get any funding at all, nor get anyone to manufacture the product. i made lots of mistakes. i got back into security consulting, and spent the last 3 years paying off my debt, and learning from these mistakes. i never managed to incorporate beyond my one-person-company. i spent my free time during the last 3 years building up the metalab, probably the most active non-profit and self-funded project center in europe. We have about 110 members, who pay 20 euros a month to finance our location. We are completely nonprofit and independent, and will remain like that. But one of the goals of the lab was to prepare both for my own next startup, and the startups of other people. so far we've been quite successful at sharing knowledge, experience, and instantiating projects. being wary of big endeavours with too many unknown factors, i'm organizing a computer security conference (http://deepsec.net/) right now and had planned to use that money to finance yeurope in a year. my startup probably is the most risk-averse of all we have in the lab right now. i was urgently aiming for success and start cash for yeurope. half a week ago, because we started lobbying as IG Startup (interest group of startup founders), an opportunity has arisen to do YEurope right now, by taking an angel on board. we certainly have worse cards than YC in the US, but i'm confident we can do this, or i wouldn't try.
i'll try to write these things down in a more readable fashion in the future. in the meanwhile you can read a slightly outdated but less prosaic CV here: http://kybkreis.org/~enki/cv_paulboehm2007.pdf
regarding the incorporation question: we have a harmonization regulation in the EU which allows us to start companies anywhere in Europe. we could start cheap LLCs or LLPs in the UK and still use them in Vienna, with Viennese law applying to all business except shareholder disputes which would be under UK law. for non-EU citizens we might have to find special arrangements. i have no idea how this might work. i'm not a lawyer though, and i'll leave this stuff to our lawyers.
Having recently relocated to Innsbruck (from Padova, Italy, and originally from Oregon in the US), I'm curious about utilizing an LLP from the UK. I'd be really interested to hear if anyone has more information on that, because as things stand, starting a company in countries like Austria or Italy is absurdly expensive.
the company form you would typically choose is actually the Ltd. rather than a partnership; there is really nothing special to it, you can self-incorporate online for a few hundred EUR and will only need a mail forwarding agent
having gone the AG (company by shares) route before i would agree the legal expenses associated with the traditional legal forms are insane, plus you need a significant minimum amount of founding capital upfront
being in Innsbruck right now (for non-startup reasons) I wonder what brought you here?
Many European countries have minimum capitalization requirements for limited companies, as well as high transaction costs (you've basically got to pay the notaries' cartel their monopoly rent) and background checks. Holland got rid of an EUR 18k (!) minimum cap requirement a few years ago, after a court decision made clear that it was perfectly legal to incorporate in England instead. Even now, the transaction costs associated with starting a Dutch BV are easily twice what you pay for an English Ltd., and reporting requirements are more complicated too. The Chamber of Commerce, a QUANGO that is supposed to advise new companies and which doubles as the registry of companies, likes to claim that a Ltd tends to have a harder time raising capital than a BV, presumably because it sounds weird and foreign; but I suspect that the fact that you pay a low fee to Companies House in London instead of a high fee to your local Chamber of Commerce is also part of the reason why they discourage jurisdiction shopping.
You need to set up a forum for prospective YEurope startups to communicate about the idea. I don't think this discussion is going to happen on this thread.
i'll link this from the main yeurope page too, after getting some well deserved (i hope) rest.
i'm not sure if ggroups is the perfect communication medium - better ideas welcome! if you want to insta-chat with us, we're big fans of jabber. my jid is enki@jabber.metalab.at. lets hope feedback stays on a sane volume so i can directly stay in touch with all of you.
i wouldn't mind giving them percentage, or for that matter, even all of it - we don't care about making money with it - i have my own startup running already. what we want is to attract talent to austria, and make it possible for locals to make the leap.
So that I have this straight: You've tried to copy YC's approach and website as closely as possible down to featuring one of their startup's product in the middle of your page and naming your yourself so as to suggest that you're somehow affiliated and you are holding out hope that they're going to be happy (or even just not upset) with this?
Many people in Europe have been looking at what YCombinator is doing and how they are doing things. There is no less creative and hacking talent in Europe than in the States but certainly a lack of entrepreneurial spirit and the infrastructures and environment favorable to the emergence of top notch startups. Nevertheless it is well worth trying!
I tried to contact PG a few months ago on the subject of getting YCombinator to participate one way or another in such a scheme in Europe with no success. The YEurope rip-off does not reflect well indeed on such endeavors but you can be sure that other will emerge and hopefully turn some ventures into successes.
Hint: It's not in the first, second, third or sixth word.
You're missing at least 50% of the value of Y Combinator by being outside of a startup center, probably more. Can a successful startup happen outside of the Valley? Sure...but you're definitely hurting the chances of success by a significant degree.
Certainly the value of YCombinator is bringing interesting people together. I don't think the Valley is the only place in the world with interesting people, though.
YEurope doesn't look too promising, though - the cloning approach leaves a negative impression. If they are so cutting edge, surely they would have been able to come up with their own scheme.
Also, they don't say how they will come up with interesting speakers.
take a look at http://metalab.at/wiki/Folder:V5a-en - we've spent years building up a thriving community. we had planned to launch in 2008 with the money from our first successful startups, but half a week ago the opportunity has arisen to start in 2007. we could have spent more time pretending to look different like techstars has done, but what good would that do? we rather launch now and face the critics.
we are openly copying the concept of ycombinator, akin to copying the concept of an university. we are neither trying to hide that fact nor arguing against it. time will tell if our approach works. but a verbatim copy of the implementation in europe certainly wouldn't work, and how such an implementation could look, this is what we have concentrated our thought and deeds on.
I agree that in general it is better to do anything than nothing. Maybe you should just make it a little bit clearer on the web page why you copied YCombinator, and what background experiences you have, to evoke more trust.
Your metalab looks interesting (wish there was something like it where I live), and I think Vienna is a great city (much better than the Valley, I suspect). I wish you success with the venture!
Hi YEurope! I am part of the Ycombinator batch that started this January. I dont understand the voices that are negative about other startup incubators like yours etc. The more initiatives that enable ideas to become companies, the better I say. So I say go for it!
hey I wasnt sure if your website was serious at first, or trying to make fun of Ycomb since you have pics of those guys sitting in the street with fake graphs...
yeah, and how about YNotEurope, or ECombinator for name? :)
If %50 of the value of YC is the fact that they require startups to locate in Boston or SF, then any startup who doesn't get into YC can get %60 of the benefit by simply relocating.
Seriously, I hope that %50 of the "benefit" of YC is not moveing to an expensive location where every resource you could need for a business is constrained.
I've seen no evidence that locating outside of SF or MA reduces your chances of success. (Though this is often claimed, of course.)
"where every resource you could need for a business is constrained"
Every resource except:
Money. The Valley has money like you wouldn't believe. Everything worth anything gets funded. If you can pull out a nice demo and sign on a few paying customers, you will get money--more than enough to make up for the cost of living.
People who understand what you're doing. There are dozens or hundreds of "startup" attorneys here...and nowhere else. There are dozens or hundreds of "startup" accountants here...and nowhere else. There are always events happening that will bring you into contact with other entrepreneurs.
I've started a company outside of the valley (started in Houston and moved to Austin, which is no slouch as far as technology goes) and I've started one in the valley. The valley is better.
The traditional claims for success/failure of companies inside/outside of the valley comes from Venture Capitalists who have years worth of statistics coming from their own investments.
The stats point to a change in percentage chance of success for any incremental distance from Palo Alto/Mountain View that a venture funded company is moved. (I don't know the numbers offhand - but it's significant, even down to whole percent numbers per 10 miles if I remember correctly)
From someone who's recently been talking to many people about the choice to live in Boston, Mountain View/Palo Alto, San Fran - or somewhere else, every person (investor/entrepreneur/historian) points to MV/PA.
Many people (and firms like Sequoia ...etc) won't invest unless you're in the valley.
You're giving me rumor and second hand inuendo and no stats. You say you can't remember them offhand, but I don't think you ever heard any-- that weren't made up on the spot.
The fact of the matter is, there are many very successful startups in Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, etc. etc. etc.
People in the BAY AREA think that the BAY AREA is necessary for success for a startup.
But they are not taking from any kind of a scientific knowledge.
Man, I'm amazed at the bitching here... Someone's trying to help foster startups in europe! The horror! There's no way it can be decent, right? Jesus.....
Its not like the idea of doing early stage funding is that new, nor is the idea of havign an application form new. Ok, so the questions may not be original-- but that's flattery, its not like the YC form is a trade secret!
Getting startups together for a fixed period in a fixed place is relatively new, and seems to be a YC idea. Ok, so what does it mean when others emulate this? IT means they think its a good idea! How does this hurt YC?
YC is evangelizing a different approach to early stage funding. Now others are emulating the idea-- there is no way in hell that this can be a bad thing!
This is called success!
Do y'all who were rejected by YC hate the fact that there are now other options?
Or do you think that these people are going to steal all the "good" startups from YC diminishing their pool?
Possibly people were offended more by the plagiarism than the desire to fund startups in Europe. It is a bit much calling the thing Y Europe, for example. Seed funding doesn't require your name begin with Y.
It also implies a collaboration with YC, which doesn't exist.
Regardless, I think it will be hard to fully replicate the YC model, because it's unlikely these firms will generate the following YC has. This following equates to attention, press, prestige and connections for all the new YC companies.
Without all that, all you have is an angel investor. And there's nothing new about that.
Really, when it comes down to it, this is just an enormous validation for what's happening here. After all, "imitation is the best form of flattery."
Really, these guys aren't claiming to be YCombinator II. They're just validating the model and wanting to do something similar in Europe. They clearly state on their page "This site is inspired by, but not affiliated with YCombinator."
The YCombinators should be flattered, and everyone who participates in YC can give themselves a pat on the back for being funded by the original YC-style firm. [Hm, that has a nice ring: "YC funding" vs "VC funding". I wonder if that was intentional.]
Edit: Oh, now I see that they only added the disclaimer after a post in this thread called them out on it...
I'm surprised you think that's sucking up. Was it that I was complimenting the YC business model? Please elaborate...
I'm not sure what motivation I would have to suck up, either. I'm not applying for funding, nor do I have any plans to.
However the point remains, without the YC's following (us), the company is just another angel investor / incubator. And that's already been done. These guys are trying to copy YC, but forgetting about its one biggest differentiating factor.
Most people don't care much about plagiarism, they just think YC is a much better deal than its clones. And it is all about perception. The current clones look lame even at a first glance. If another tech celebrity tries to do the same thing, it would be a different story. A track record of successful startups would help you, but if you are right about the major shift towards startups, there is no way on Earth to keep all that market for yourself.
Especially when the "Y" part of the name actually means something in context. Too bad ybother.com is gone. It could have make for a great name for a web 2.0 graveyard.
I think that it's great there's something like Y in Europe for startups. Anything that helps to promote entrepreneurs are great. The 'issue' here is that YEurope, the "Y" implies that you're associated with YCombinator...which is kind of misleading. Secondly, the questions are exactly the same as the Y right down to the period. The program could have reworded it, took out irrelevant questions or add some more like TechStars did. Thirdly, the design of the site looks relatively similar to that of Y's with the huge sliding picture in the front.
If you want to use the questions right down to the period, might have been better if you emailed and asked the Y team if you could do that.
I know its weird and you're probably thinking, who cares if they copy right down to the period? Its giving entrepreneurs a chance. Yes, but at least give credit where credit is due.
Your idea is interesting, but frankly, I don't get it. Your resume and your website do not hint at your having the money to sponsor the groups. You do not tell us how giving up a percentage of our companies is going to benefit us. The money is small - I could work on the side and make that money every month.
What is not clear is this:
1. Do you have the money for this? If so, from where? If a piece of software needed additional funding after 6 months, would you be able to do this (like pg put 50.000 in justin.tv)
2. Do you have the marketing reach? Will affiliating myself with you give me greater marketing strength?
3. Do you have access to legal information and advice? Can you offer this to your startups?
4. Do you have any connections to Venture Capital? Do you _know_ about venture capital, such as to give good or bad advice?
The problem with this is that I can't see the people involved. Who are the investors? What are their backgrounds? Why are they going to increase my chances of success?
Replicating the YC seed funding model is fair game. What I find irritating (and btw I'm very keen to see more European start ups funded so I'm not outright attacking you for the sake of it) is that people replicate the easy parts without putting the effort into the hard parts of YC.
Easy parts = Getting money and an application form
Hard parts = Getting high profile speakers every week to talk with founders, putting together an investor day with the most high profile investors in the world, providing real mentorship, creating a supportive community.
We did actually introduce Kiko to angels who invested in them. And Kiko didn't sell because they were out of money, but because their users were draining away.
The usual acquirers buy whole companies, including the programmers (which are actually the main thing they want). They don't buy just software in asset sales. So the fact that Justin and Emmett didn't want to keep working on the calendar meant that a normal acquisition was out of the question.
There's a difference between adding value and doing things for you.
Believe it or not, once you get into YC you still have to put your own work into your start up and not expect YC to magically work everything out for you...
One of the hardest parts of a "seed investor" is having actual successful experience in an early stage company (See PG, Trevor, and RTM in ViaWeb-Yahoo Store), and being able to use that experience when mentoring a young company.
Having talked with all kinds of investors it's amazing how much more you can respect and understand the advice of someone who's been in your place before - and how much more relevant they can make it through their own experiences.
great news!
as founder of First Tuesday in Vienna in 1999 I was involved in a lot of start up connections.
the angel boerse here i2 might be useful, other contacts are a "similar" space from Frequentis for related companies to have incubator space, it was running in the 4th bez. and then there is Julie Meyer running Ariadne with the desire to build a new europe ...http://www.ariadnecapital.com/team_julie.htm and others like http://www.discoverybeach.co.uk/
best regards, nigel
great news!
as founder of First Tuesday in Vienna in 1999 I was involved in a lot of start up connections.
the angel boerse here i2 might be useful, other contacts are a "similar" space from Frequentis for related companies to have incubator space, it was running in the 4th bez. and then there is Julie Meyer running Ariadne with the desire to build a new europe ...http://www.ariadnecapital.com/team_julie.htm and others like http://www.discoverybeach.co.uk/
best regards, nigel
socialism, risk aversion, retarded labor laws, few adequate computer programmers, tiny private equity market, most startup investors are not well-connected outside their immediate environment thus add little value
I think it's a great Idea! I've been at Metalab quite a few times now and it's a great place with great people.
Last friday they hosted the first "Startup Freitag" (Startup Friday) to bring people interested in startups together. As Paul hasn't talked about YEurope on friday, I guess some opportunities emerged from that first get togehter.
I'm eagerly awaiting the next one the 5th of May. I left the last one after a great chat at about 3am (if I remember correctly).
While I do understand why people don't like the YEurope copycat from YCombinator, I think the reasons why they did it is obvious: attention and getting the message out fast. Most people interested in startups know about YCombinator and most of them will asume YEurope is doing something similar.
(time might also have played a factor)
I personally know Paul and if you have a look at Metalab and on what he (and the others) achieved there, I think it's a good point to have some trust in YEurope.
Many will agree that one of the great values of YCombinator are connections and bringing the right people together. That's exactly what the Metalab is trying to do and has done really well so far.
(I first wrote that comment on TechCrunch and then copied it over here)
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[ 101 ms ] story [ 955 ms ] thread"If one wanted to buy you three months in (March 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take?"
I wonder how long it will be before we see a clone in India/East Asia.
btw, I don't know if it's just me but I don't know why people are so worked up over these copycats. When the second university in the world was founded, maybe people accused them of copying the first university, but in the long run it's been good for mankind. Of course, if all the orgs want to talk amongst each other and pay royalties to YC, that might also be interesting.
Interpreting the responses is the skill that matters.
our differenciation is in how we implement it locally, not how we ask questions - the questions just are the same everywhere in the world.
our local hacker club is what we think might make this work - we have a few hundred people sharing knowledge and ideas here. we hope to build up entrepreneurial knowledge and spirit around the metalab, and store it within the collective memory of the people here.
For example, do you have any other ideas you thought of applying with? One may be something we've been waiting for. I'd be very surprised if at the first time of execution, you are already so confident about your judgment of the internet startup landscape. It's reasonable to assume that YC really has things in mind. In this case, you are only waiting for things to come into your mind.
If the YC method is good, people will learn from it, and it will flourish. But seeing how yeurope does it right now, I will be wary.
we've had some failed startup attempts 4 years ago, e.g. in the area of social sorting. we certainly can't provide the level of depth and experience pg has, but we've been trying our best to learn for a long time now. we're talking to lots of people in austria and throughout europe, and are trying to get more people to support and make this work.
we have been working on getting things going fulltime for 4 years now, but the situation is a lot harder in europe. once there are some successful startups around, we hope to convince them to join the board. we just don't have any people to look up to here, and got to bootstrap somehow.
we've been pretty busy in preparing the ground for this, both with our hacklab, but also with contacts to all kinds of people who might help out with this, private, corporate and political. we even founded an interest group for startup founders (IG Startup), to lobby with politics, and are actively discussing their ICT funding strategies with the respective politicians and decision makers.
our hacklab launched one year ago, after 2 years of trying to finance it, and has a few hundred users already. the problem is the financing option for yeurope has just arisen half a week ago, and if we don't launch now - we might never do it.
How in the world are you going to measure "great"? It's definitely not going to come through via just the 28 YC questions. They have a news site for what it's worth. A monster hacker team that cannot come up with a sellable idea is merely a great team of coders -- nothing but.
And why does politics need to be involved?
europe probably has just about as much cash, and as much education as the US. but according to the aho group report (http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/action/2006_ahogroup_en.htm), named after the former finnish prime minister esko aho, the ICT field, despite having some of the lowest initial investment costs in all of high tech, is the most severly underdeveloped.
the reasons for this, he muses are both a lack of entrepreneurial spirit, and a lack of funding in the pre-seed areas.
i'd like to believe the first point is not an absolute. we have great people with the skills and desire to create cool applications. on the other hand you can't just walk up to a rich friend here, who'll give you cash if your idea is great. there are no rich friends, and even if you know one or two, they haven't made their cash in a startup, or even in the off chance that they have, they're a business guy. businesses are started by business people here. if you want to start a business, you have no chance to get cash from someone from your world, who has been on that path before.
so you're left with public funding, and public funding involves politics. but public funding doesn't work for tech founders either - the lisbon goal of 3% GDP for r&d mostly goes into empty tech parks and research centers by big corporations. incorporating a limited liability company here requires at least 17000 euros, with a liability of up to 34000 euros.
if you want to apply for any kind of funding, you require months of meeting bureaucrats and writing applications - a different one for each place. these people will tell you after months your projects are either not innovative, or they won't work. but the budget is there, so people claim everything is alright. then they fund projects by friends, or stupid things with avatars running around in browser plugins.
the only places to get entrepreneurial information are bureaucrats. you're very unlikely to know anyone who started his or her own tech business without sheer luck and without their own money. there's no place to get advice, except other people who are on the same path right now. you usually don't start businesses before you've saved a significant amount of money and are probably well beyond your 40s. also people will discourage you, because it is seen as very risky.
we are adressing these problems both by creating non-profit community centers where you're surrounded by like-minded people, and to which we invite people we think of as insightful, and by actively lobbying for better legislation to support startups, and by making access to initial cash easier. of the few techie-founders we have here, most are single-founders, because it is really hard to convince two friends to found with you if they can barely pay their rent while studying and working at the same time.
for the argment about our capability to accurately judge the merit of the applications i have to say: you're unfairly postulating that we're unskilled because we have no huge successes to show yet. i have a hard time to counter that argument right now, but trust me, we're working hard to do just that.
I don't know the scene over there. But I'm guessing this is why Wikio got 12M(!) in funding?
To clarify, I'm definitely not calling you unskilled and am not qualified to do so. I'm attacking your copying of a question that implies you have solid experience in the field as a seed funding organization, operating like YC. I don't even know their inner workings.
But public funding + politics + international applicants seems to entail a lot more than seed funding + support. In another message (http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15641) you said work permits are available if the idea is good enough. Do the politicians have a say in the selection process?
I think your effort is great. Lots of people will be watching; I hope things can go smoothly for you.
"Apart from more resources for R&D and innovation, a paradigm change that would preserve European values in a new social structure is needed for the achievement of the goal of an Innovative Europe." - Aho Group Report "Creating an Innovative Europe" (January 2006)
Who are you? Metalab has an extensive website, but who's behind YEurope? You know that the funding is only a small part of what YC provides -- you won't be able to live up to pg, rtm et al, which is expected, but right now you don't say anything about yourself, so why should a prospective applicant value your connections and advice?
And: One of the things YC does is that it sets up a company for you. YEurope is in Austria. Austria is a country where it's expensive to incorporate (pg has written about how that is one problem for startups in Europe [1]). What are you going to do about that?
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html
as things went, we are launching early. i'm certainly in a different league than pg, but i try. being where i am now, i'll also write down some more information about me and the other people involved, so that you can get a better idea.
basically i'm a computer security guy. started programming with 8, and then later spent a lot of time at university to get cheap net access using the DLX single-floppy linux distro that my brothers had developed in 96 (of course i had no student account at 14). met cool people there, tutors and such, and was trying hard to keep up with them. i started the teso security group in 98, and have been a computer security person ever since. i got involved with many NGOs, am really interested in game theory and reputation systems, co-wrote a paper on quantum cryptography, and started a company first trying to do social sorting, but ran out of money quickly (i wasn't checking against my own reality, but the reality i knew from my friends in SF, and expecting to get VC easily, so i rented an office, got myself a friend as a CEO who was good with words - i certainly wasn't back then). then i developed a bootable usb stick with a crypto IFS filesystem driver for windows, and loopback-aes for linux, to sell to local banks. we had a customer, and we finished the code, but my ceo got lovesick and didn't answer my calls for weeks. then i got a loan, hired a project manager to do this stuff for me. we didn't get anywhere, but she was really expensive. in early 2004 i had to close shop because we could neither get any funding at all, nor get anyone to manufacture the product. i made lots of mistakes. i got back into security consulting, and spent the last 3 years paying off my debt, and learning from these mistakes. i never managed to incorporate beyond my one-person-company. i spent my free time during the last 3 years building up the metalab, probably the most active non-profit and self-funded project center in europe. We have about 110 members, who pay 20 euros a month to finance our location. We are completely nonprofit and independent, and will remain like that. But one of the goals of the lab was to prepare both for my own next startup, and the startups of other people. so far we've been quite successful at sharing knowledge, experience, and instantiating projects. being wary of big endeavours with too many unknown factors, i'm organizing a computer security conference (http://deepsec.net/) right now and had planned to use that money to finance yeurope in a year. my startup probably is the most risk-averse of all we have in the lab right now. i was urgently aiming for success and start cash for yeurope. half a week ago, because we started lobbying as IG Startup (interest group of startup founders), an opportunity has arisen to do YEurope right now, by taking an angel on board. we certainly have worse cards than YC in the US, but i'm confident we can do this, or i wouldn't try.
i'll try to write these things down in a more readable fashion in the future. in the meanwhile you can read a slightly outdated but less prosaic CV here: http://kybkreis.org/~enki/cv_paulboehm2007.pdf
regarding the incorporation question: we have a harmonization regulation in the EU which allows us to start companies anywhere in Europe. we could start cheap LLCs or LLPs in the UK and still use them in Vienna, with Viennese law applying to all business except shareholder disputes which would be under UK law. for non-EU citizens we might have to find special arrangements. i have no idea how this might work. i'm not a lawyer though, and i'll leave this stuff to our lawyers.
having gone the AG (company by shares) route before i would agree the legal expenses associated with the traditional legal forms are insane, plus you need a significant minimum amount of founding capital upfront
being in Innsbruck right now (for non-startup reasons) I wonder what brought you here?
You need to set up a forum for prospective YEurope startups to communicate about the idea. I don't think this discussion is going to happen on this thread.
i've set up a google group (both forum and mailinglist) at http://groups.google.com/group/yeurope/
i'll link this from the main yeurope page too, after getting some well deserved (i hope) rest.
i'm not sure if ggroups is the perfect communication medium - better ideas welcome! if you want to insta-chat with us, we're big fans of jabber. my jid is enki@jabber.metalab.at. lets hope feedback stays on a sane volume so i can directly stay in touch with all of you.
paul
secondly, you state having your own startup. if this is not a shitty startup it will absorb all of your free time.
what makes you think your lack of time, apparent lack of connections, and lack of interest in financial gain would be a good deal for an entrepreneur?
I tried to contact PG a few months ago on the subject of getting YCombinator to participate one way or another in such a scheme in Europe with no success. The YEurope rip-off does not reflect well indeed on such endeavors but you can be sure that other will emerge and hopefully turn some ventures into successes.
"YCombinator Clone in Vienna, Austria launches!"
Hint: It's not in the first, second, third or sixth word.
You're missing at least 50% of the value of Y Combinator by being outside of a startup center, probably more. Can a successful startup happen outside of the Valley? Sure...but you're definitely hurting the chances of success by a significant degree.
YEurope doesn't look too promising, though - the cloning approach leaves a negative impression. If they are so cutting edge, surely they would have been able to come up with their own scheme.
Also, they don't say how they will come up with interesting speakers.
we are openly copying the concept of ycombinator, akin to copying the concept of an university. we are neither trying to hide that fact nor arguing against it. time will tell if our approach works. but a verbatim copy of the implementation in europe certainly wouldn't work, and how such an implementation could look, this is what we have concentrated our thought and deeds on.
Your metalab looks interesting (wish there was something like it where I live), and I think Vienna is a great city (much better than the Valley, I suspect). I wish you success with the venture!
hey I wasnt sure if your website was serious at first, or trying to make fun of Ycomb since you have pics of those guys sitting in the street with fake graphs...
yeah, and how about YNotEurope, or ECombinator for name? :)
Seriously, I hope that %50 of the "benefit" of YC is not moveing to an expensive location where every resource you could need for a business is constrained.
I've seen no evidence that locating outside of SF or MA reduces your chances of success. (Though this is often claimed, of course.)
Every resource except:
Money. The Valley has money like you wouldn't believe. Everything worth anything gets funded. If you can pull out a nice demo and sign on a few paying customers, you will get money--more than enough to make up for the cost of living.
People who understand what you're doing. There are dozens or hundreds of "startup" attorneys here...and nowhere else. There are dozens or hundreds of "startup" accountants here...and nowhere else. There are always events happening that will bring you into contact with other entrepreneurs.
I've started a company outside of the valley (started in Houston and moved to Austin, which is no slouch as far as technology goes) and I've started one in the valley. The valley is better.
The stats point to a change in percentage chance of success for any incremental distance from Palo Alto/Mountain View that a venture funded company is moved. (I don't know the numbers offhand - but it's significant, even down to whole percent numbers per 10 miles if I remember correctly)
From someone who's recently been talking to many people about the choice to live in Boston, Mountain View/Palo Alto, San Fran - or somewhere else, every person (investor/entrepreneur/historian) points to MV/PA.
Many people (and firms like Sequoia ...etc) won't invest unless you're in the valley.
The fact of the matter is, there are many very successful startups in Seattle, Portland, Chicago, New York, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, etc. etc. etc.
People in the BAY AREA think that the BAY AREA is necessary for success for a startup.
But they are not taking from any kind of a scientific knowledge.
Its just provincial arrogance.
Its not like the idea of doing early stage funding is that new, nor is the idea of havign an application form new. Ok, so the questions may not be original-- but that's flattery, its not like the YC form is a trade secret!
Getting startups together for a fixed period in a fixed place is relatively new, and seems to be a YC idea. Ok, so what does it mean when others emulate this? IT means they think its a good idea! How does this hurt YC?
YC is evangelizing a different approach to early stage funding. Now others are emulating the idea-- there is no way in hell that this can be a bad thing!
This is called success!
Do y'all who were rejected by YC hate the fact that there are now other options?
Or do you think that these people are going to steal all the "good" startups from YC diminishing their pool?
Regardless, I think it will be hard to fully replicate the YC model, because it's unlikely these firms will generate the following YC has. This following equates to attention, press, prestige and connections for all the new YC companies.
Without all that, all you have is an angel investor. And there's nothing new about that.
Really, when it comes down to it, this is just an enormous validation for what's happening here. After all, "imitation is the best form of flattery."
Really, these guys aren't claiming to be YCombinator II. They're just validating the model and wanting to do something similar in Europe. They clearly state on their page "This site is inspired by, but not affiliated with YCombinator."
The YCombinators should be flattered, and everyone who participates in YC can give themselves a pat on the back for being funded by the original YC-style firm. [Hm, that has a nice ring: "YC funding" vs "VC funding". I wonder if that was intentional.]
Edit: Oh, now I see that they only added the disclaimer after a post in this thread called them out on it...
But copying the name, the index page slideshow, the application form: isn't that just out and out plaigarism?
I'm not sure what motivation I would have to suck up, either. I'm not applying for funding, nor do I have any plans to.
However the point remains, without the YC's following (us), the company is just another angel investor / incubator. And that's already been done. These guys are trying to copy YC, but forgetting about its one biggest differentiating factor.
Most people don't care much about plagiarism, they just think YC is a much better deal than its clones. And it is all about perception. The current clones look lame even at a first glance. If another tech celebrity tries to do the same thing, it would be a different story. A track record of successful startups would help you, but if you are right about the major shift towards startups, there is no way on Earth to keep all that market for yourself.
If you want to use the questions right down to the period, might have been better if you emailed and asked the Y team if you could do that.
I know its weird and you're probably thinking, who cares if they copy right down to the period? Its giving entrepreneurs a chance. Yes, but at least give credit where credit is due.
Your idea is interesting, but frankly, I don't get it. Your resume and your website do not hint at your having the money to sponsor the groups. You do not tell us how giving up a percentage of our companies is going to benefit us. The money is small - I could work on the side and make that money every month.
What is not clear is this:
1. Do you have the money for this? If so, from where? If a piece of software needed additional funding after 6 months, would you be able to do this (like pg put 50.000 in justin.tv)
2. Do you have the marketing reach? Will affiliating myself with you give me greater marketing strength?
3. Do you have access to legal information and advice? Can you offer this to your startups?
4. Do you have any connections to Venture Capital? Do you _know_ about venture capital, such as to give good or bad advice?
Replicating the YC seed funding model is fair game. What I find irritating (and btw I'm very keen to see more European start ups funded so I'm not outright attacking you for the sake of it) is that people replicate the easy parts without putting the effort into the hard parts of YC.
Easy parts = Getting money and an application form
Hard parts = Getting high profile speakers every week to talk with founders, putting together an investor day with the most high profile investors in the world, providing real mentorship, creating a supportive community.
That's why Kiko had to use eBay?
Ha!
Isn't that where a well-connected investment firm adds value?
Believe it or not, once you get into YC you still have to put your own work into your start up and not expect YC to magically work everything out for you...
Having talked with all kinds of investors it's amazing how much more you can respect and understand the advice of someone who's been in your place before - and how much more relevant they can make it through their own experiences.
Last friday they hosted the first "Startup Freitag" (Startup Friday) to bring people interested in startups together. As Paul hasn't talked about YEurope on friday, I guess some opportunities emerged from that first get togehter.
I'm eagerly awaiting the next one the 5th of May. I left the last one after a great chat at about 3am (if I remember correctly).
While I do understand why people don't like the YEurope copycat from YCombinator, I think the reasons why they did it is obvious: attention and getting the message out fast. Most people interested in startups know about YCombinator and most of them will asume YEurope is doing something similar. (time might also have played a factor)
I personally know Paul and if you have a look at Metalab and on what he (and the others) achieved there, I think it's a good point to have some trust in YEurope.
Many will agree that one of the great values of YCombinator are connections and bringing the right people together. That's exactly what the Metalab is trying to do and has done really well so far.
(I first wrote that comment on TechCrunch and then copied it over here)