[rjf1331]

I agree with the concept for the most part, but have a few gripes.

First, the desk space argument is very real. Y Combinator takes 60+ companies and has no real space constraints since they do not offer office space. Other accelerators take far fewer companies and do have office space, so they need to know ahead of time 1) that their batch will be full and 2) that each company has passed their own due diligence process.

Also, as with term sheets, founders can take their offer from one accelerator and shop it to others. It's happened before (with people I know), who take an offer from one accelerator and use it to trigger FOMO from the other.

Couldn't an accelerator just position it's start date before Y Combinator's decision date, and therefore not need an exploding offer but have the same effect?

Exploding offers should be reasonable, and I'm not against being fair to founders. But doesn't democratizing this essentially involve accelerators colluding to have the same offer/acceptance date?