[michaelt]

Isn't the whole point of a VC/Accelerator to take investors' funds and idenfity good investments to make, while not making bad investments? Is that not the core of their job?

If the only investments available are unprofitable, you don't invest.

I don't see why you'd introduce a reality-TV-style backstabbing mechanic, just to get the 19 year old founders to do the work the rich, sophisticated investors were supposed to be doing but weren't.

[pyb]

They always say that finding great investments is much more important than avoiding bad investments. This is because the upside is unlimited, whereas you cannot lose more than 1X what you put in.

However, Techstars always had an adverse selection problem : the best companies usually prefer to join YC.

[itsoktocry]

>This is because the upside is unlimited, whereas you cannot lose more than 1X what you put in.

Well, yes, this is exactly what someone who sells this kind of service would say. Where is the skill, though? Just spray and pray. Eliminating survivorship bias, is it actually successful, on average? Can it beat the S&P?

The upside is certainly not unlimited, and you can lose all of your money before you find a big winner.

>the best companies usually prefer to join YC.

If they are already the best companies, what does YC add? Besides, most of the best companies don't join any incubator.

[pyb]

> Where is the skill, though?

100's of competing accelerators popped up but none could match these results : https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/

[alephnerd]

There are a couple niche ones - Team8 (Cyber), PearVC (YC lite), Antler (YC for Asia), Sequoia Surge (YC for Asia but better terms), Thiel Foundation - but yea, it is hard to beat YC's mentorship and network.