[paulbaumgart]

For the record:

We settled this over tacos and beer. True Ventures is not trying to compete with the likes of Facebook for top technical talent. That seems to be a misleading spin added by the authors of the article at TechCrunch.

True Ventures is instead trying to find people for whom the value of a summer spent working and learning at a start-up and building relationships within the firm is greater than the $12k+ pay delta. I agree that this can hold true for certain individuals, especially people looking to found their own companies in the very near future. I imagine there are many struggling start-up founders who would be willing (not that anyone would offer this deal) to pay $12k for the sort of access a TEC participant has.

Unlike what the TechCrunch article implies, this does not do much to solve the recruitment problems faced by many start-ups, nor is it intended to do so.

Thanks for the tacos, Adam!