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Y Combinator reality tv show

8 points by tersiag ↗ HN
Daniel Loewenherz’s post on the full story behind Breakup Notifier (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348702 or http://dlo.me/breakup-notifier/) got me thinking that it would awesome to have a web-based Y Combinator reality tv show or channel. Where viewers, from around the world, could literally see what it takes to create a startup.

I, for one, am tired of all the music, food, fashion, dieting, dating, celebrity, etc reality tv shows which currently exist and would love to learn something useful for a change. I’ve also observed that people enjoy watching “behind the scenes” footage. A look at the comments on any of the TechCrunch Cribs videos (http://bit.ly/gvEObR or http://tcrn.ch/g2i21X ) confirms this.

A tv show can also be beneficial to the startups themselves (just look at what Idols has done for musicians) Creates brand loyalty and early adopters of products You can get direct feedback from your audience during product development Viewers could give you advice or make suggestions if your stuck … you don’t have to do it alone!

[An incentive to the Y Combinator team, the show could make money from both subscriptions (per episode/weekly/monthly/year) and advertisements, think about it]

How many of you guys would, would be interested in watching such a show? What would you want to see during the show? What reality show format would be best for Y Combinator? (try and give an example of tv show)

10 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 38.0 ms ] thread
tersiag
I would like to hear what advice investors and founders from established companies give to startups. As for show format, I prefer the "follow the founders/business" and watch it grow from week to week rather than the "your fired" model.
beatpanda
The problem with this idea is visuals. You can only have so much footage of people sitting at computers before viewers would get bored.
tersiag
true, but YC involves more than just coding. There is scouting for location, getting the right h/w and s/w, hiring people, registering the company, not to mention the weekly dinners with other YC staff, investor days, presentations, meetings, seeking advice from previous participants etc http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html
bmelton
You'd think the same thing about half the shows on TV.

"There's only so many cupcakes you can watch a person make."

"There's only so many times you can watch somebody bolt headers onto a motorcycle."

"There's only so many times you can watch somebody eat rice on an island."

In more general media: "There's only so many times you can watch a guy throw a football."

"There's only so many 'medical mysteries' House can solve."

davidandgoliath
We've got an example of it operating here in Canada called 'byteclub'. They showcase a few different companies each season -- it's worked well, and I follow it semi-religiously:

http://www.lifeforcetv.com/byteclub

I looked into investing in them a few years back but at the time it would have required something like $12k a season to bankroll. They went another direction shortly thereafter and started allowing the companies showcased to fund some of the episodes, which luckily didn't affect the quality of the show overall.

Enjoy watching it myself. Wouldn't mind seeing something similar in the U.S.. re: techstars -- they've got an advantage of having everyone centralized into one location, so production costs easily scale down significantly vs. flying people around.

Either way, there's definitely a market :)

tersiag
I totally agree and thanks for the link
dglassan
You'll like Startup Junkies

http://www.hulu.com/start-up-junkies

It only went one season but you get to watch the day-in-day-out activities of a startup for 8 full episodes.

It's kind of a hybrid startup in that they operate online but their service revolves around the postal system. It gives you a good idea of the ups and downs a startup goes through during it's lifetime.

tersiag
Thanks for the link, unfortunately we can't access Hulu videos from Finland