[firtoz]

I am currently participating in another accelerator in London called Antler; and I have been exposed to ideas from 70 entrepreneurs. We are presenting to investors this week.

Also I am in YC Startup School too, which allows you to see what's coming up in the world, and that's awesome too.

It's amazing to see that a significant percentage (~30%) of ideas they have come up with have been also thought of by others e.g. from the YC list independently to an uncanny extent.

Honestly it should not have caught me by surprise but it did.

[freeflight]

> It's amazing to see that a significant percentage (~30%) of ideas they have come up with have been also thought of by others e.g. from the YC list independently to an uncanny extent.

Imho the concept of multiple discovery [0] applies just as much to innovation as it does to scientific discoveries.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery

[vmurthy]

It has always intrigued me how even great ideas like the theory of evolution were thought of by more than one person. I always reasoned that the spread of knowledge by books to begin with and then the tele* media( graph , gram , phone etc) accelerated it. Nowadays it is almost unbelievable if multiple discovery didn’t happen. Internet plus 7 billion people plus the accumulated treasure of knowledge is one helluva tailwind

[rcarrigan87]

A lot of businesses look similar when comparing the basic idea. When you compare on execution things can get dramatically different.

[yread]

As a tech founder in B2B I would go even further and say the idea nor technical implementation matters much, what's important is how well you can build relationships with your prospects, how you can sell it, and hire people to help you scale it up

[jacobobryant]

I wouldn't go that far. All those things are important. I'm a tech founder too, but for some more credible citations, I'll defer to Sam Altman[1] and PG[2].

[1] https://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/

> It's become popular in recent years to say that the idea doesn't matter. ... But the pendulum has swung way out of whack. A bad idea is still bad and the pivot-happy world we're in today feels suboptimal. Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere. There are exceptions, of course, but most great companies start with a great idea, not a pivot.

[2] e.g. http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html. Controversial, but I'm a believer.

[new_realist]

I think the most important thing is managing to convince dozens of sweat-shop, conveyor belt startups per year to give you equity for almost nothing, thereby guaranteeing at least some equity will eventually be worth billions merely by chance. Good job, YC.

[not_a_moth]

What do you think about their fee and stake?

Looks like it ranges 60-80k [after their fee] for a 10% stake.

That feels pretty expensive for an accelerator, especially one that's new, with little network effect yet.

[toxicFork]

For me personally the benefits I already got from the program are worth a fee and stake, and without them I would have taken much longer to take that leap of faith into starting my own company. And it's fair enough especially for a first time founder like me, considering the risks involved. I am newer than them.

If I was someone more established with an existing network and knowledge of how these things work, that would be a different story.

[not_a_moth]

Yeah it looks like the program is mainly for super early stage, ie no cofounder, pre-idea folks.

I think if you already have a co founder and an idea and/or prototype, then that fee/stake for value might seem unacceptably expensive.

[aerophilic]

When I advice folks... I always like to say, for any good idea you have, 100 other people have already thought of it. For any great idea you have had, 1000 people have thought of it.

The core difference lies in the execution. If you can execute on even a marginally “okay” idea, you can build on that, but even the greatest idea in the world has no chance without that execution.

Corollary: don’t worry about protecting your idea, worry about how you can be the best person to execute it.

[atlasunshrugged]

I recently heard about Antler, how is the programme?

[toxicFork]

It has been very helpful for me. I am a tech guy and they have assisted in various ways for me to find a cofounder, for example with opportunities to work on mock business cases with the other people in the program, lots of time to chat and allowed us to take our time when to decide to partner up, most people teamed up after 3-4 weeks.

Speaking about other people, as I mentioned it's about 72 of us, 40% ish with tech background, the rest with business and/or industry experience.

They provided us with advice on what to do first to validate the idea, get traction with first customers, and many opportunities to do mock investment pitches where we would get comments from a committee with what we need to improve or what investors would ask.

Additionally there were some courses about different aspects of startups, from design thinking to unit economics, sort of like a mini mba.

So far it has been very valuable for me.

However, on the criticism side, it's sort of early days for them so they could not give too much advice for example on how to tell if a team works or not, with my first team that I had formed we spent 5 weeks (out of 10) spinning in circles not being able to decide on any idea. We generated around 12 but discarded them as soon as any friction came. So we had disbanded and stressed out, then I met another person who had a firm idea what to do and had already validated it, just needed a tech person, and this is going much better now.

[puranjay]

Slightly off-topic, but as a non-tech guy (unless you count making websites with Bootstrap as 'tech') with significant experience in the business/marketing side of things, would attending an accelerator with the intention of finding a tech co-founder help? I can self-fund a product for a few years at least so I would bring that into the equation as well.

[toxicFork]

Yes :)

60% of the program attendees are pretty much as you described, including my co founder. They have found the tech partners here.

[kirso]

Its focus is different. Pre-YC where you need to find a co-founder, ideate and validate asap.

[toxicFork]

Yes, forming the team, ideating, validating, then preparing for a seed round, then with traction or other metrics for another round

[IshKebab]

It's because ideas are the easy part. How many people thought of Uber before it existed? Probably everyone that has ever had to book a taxi.

[mrbombastic]

Would guess schlep blindness caused a lot of people to dismiss the idea, a whole lot of groundwork and legal headaches besides just making an app to request a car. http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

[streetcat1]

The interesting part about Uber is the legal side and not the actual transportation. I.e. how can you legally provide a public transportation without paying for permit.

Or how can you call a driver a non employee while specifically giving him orders to drive.

This is the real innovation.

[briandear]

Uber is a marketing company and the customers are the drivers. The criticism of Uber “ordering” drivers ignores the fact that exactly how the taxi business has worked. Taxi companies don’t have drivers as employees, they are almost always contractors that lease or buy cars from the taxi company. Spend some time as an actual Yellow Cab driver and then contrast that to how good Uber drivers have it by comparison. You can, for example, just not drive and Uber doesn’t charge you a fee. A taxi driver has to pay Yellow Cab daily or weekly for their car/fees no matter if they are rolling or not. A Yellow Can driver can’t also work in the same car for another taxi company, while Uber drivers can drive simultaneously for Lift, do deliveries for various companies, etc. Uber markets rides for the drivers, drivers are customers of Uber, not employees. The taxi business has always sucked for drivers, Uber didn’t create that, they actually made it better because a driver isn’t forced to lease Yellow Cab metal. Uber also broke the taxi medallion racket that kept taxis in many large cities under the control of the mafia or other connected people who could artificially distort the supply and demand using political pressure and payoffs. Destroying the value of taxi medallions was the real, great innovation of Uber. And, the public isn’t any less safe with Uber than they were with taxi monopolies. Passenger safety is practically the same, especially when accounting for the dramatically higher volume of ride share trips compared to the volume of taxi trips.