[vdibart]

My first question would be why you consider YC to be your best choice. No offense intended to the host of this forum, but there's a lot of reasons that might not be true. Clearly YC gets better press, but as with FI it's not for everyone. A lot depends on the stage of your idea/company.

My gut reaction to the underlying question is that you should focus on figuring out which program is better for your situation and devote yourself to it. Having been through the FI experience I personally find the idea of using it as a fallback or filler a bit insulting, but Institute doesn't make that distinction.

[jpatte]

Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. But as you said yourself, just because I think YC is a better choice for me does not mean it's true, and it's certainly does not mean it is true for everyone and YC > FI. So I'm not sure why you feel this way...

Thanks for your advices, I will consider both programs carefully. One of the aspects which make me prefer YC so far (as an European) is the "Silicon Valley adventure", I just don't want to miss this chance :) So again I'm not saying YC is better than FI, I was just wondering if it's worth the money if I don't go to the end of the program. And honestly I think it is, I just wanted to have some input to assess my decision.

[vdibart]

Not taking it personally, no worries. Just want to make sure the FI doesn't get disrespected. Realize I might not be in the right place for that though :)

I certainly don't understand YC as well as I do FI, but I would think a lot of it comes down to how far along you are with your company. FI might be more valuable if you're less advanced - have a great idea, maybe a prototype but not a ton else. YC is probably more suited for companies that are further along. YC grads can feel free to correct me on that.

Whichever you choose I'd make sure you really, fully, totally, unequivocally understand as much about the details of the program as you can. As others have mentioned here and elsewhere, there are bound to be surprises no matter which program you enter. The goal is to minimize the impact of those surprises.

[pg]

YC is probably more suited for companies that are further along.

No; we've funded groups that had been launched for a year and others that didn't even have an idea yet. Our threshold is simply whether the founders are ready to work full time on the company.

[vdibart]

Thanks for the clarification pg.

I would think that it'd be pretty uncommon to be accepted at the pre-idea stage though, no? I mean, seed funding for literally nothing more than a good team is pretty tough to come by. For FI that's actually pretty common (at least in my experience).

[pg]

It's quite common with us. A lot of the companies we fund do something different than they applied with.