[jber]

Agree with you, it's certainly better to be at the same place, but there are hundreds of counterexamples of huge successes with VCs not living near the companies. In Europe, Israel, Russia, we have plenty of them.

We are also investing with a lot of local investors and they are sometimes managing the local relationship (or mostly making things worse :-()

Last but not least, many of our companies are targeting a local market (China, India, Pakistan, Switzerland, France, Argentina, UK, Germany...). They have nothing to do in the Silicon Valley.

The YC model is awesome. No doubt on that. but there is room for many other models. (and thanks God, we invested in Rapportive before they went to YC ;-)).

Check also what my partner is building : 1000Startups, the biggest incubator in the world in the center of Paris http://1000startups.fr/en/

[kops]

As far as I can tell, YC isn't much of an option if you aren't located in US. Besides most of the start-ups go down the drain not because they lacked advice but because they ran out of money. So congratulations for creating an option that can be considered by those who have no intention/ability of moving to US.

[schenecstasy]

http://1000startups.fr/en/

Wow! That's twice as powerful as 500 Startups