Most startups need all the help they can get. Google has decided to provide help only to those who have sold their souls away. Seems rather evil to me.
In a way it is. Accelerators have become two things: Pitch training camps and old-boys networks. The focus seems to be all about polishing a pitch, and faking stats for whatever part of your business needs to be faked to show traction of some kind, so that you can pitch to the old-boy network on demo day, get some money and go to work for the accelerators backers partners.
Startups long ago stopped being about building innovative business, and about VCs employing a bunch of kids to work really long hours on bad terms to make the VCs rich.
I think it is a legitimate criticism-- not ad hominem-- to say the Bay Area model has produced a bunch of soulless startups. Though of course some do follow this path and still retain their souls.
I'm uncomfortable with your generalizations (though you did account for exceptions with your last sentence).
I guess I would not be so pessimistic and give founders the benefit of the doubt that they think they are building something innovative (a word that means different things to different people).
The summer YC class had a fusion startup and a fission startup if I recall correctly. That is innovation in my book. And I think most startups are trying to change the status quo even to a small extent.
And why does a startup even need to be innovative? In this great talk by the founder of Asana (http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3117) the point was made that while they're not curing diseases their software helps the people that are stay organized and save time.
Obviously I'm jumping to a point beyond the notion of a soul.
Nice branding with "accelerator". What do you think one is trading for money? Even in a simple equity trade you are giving up more than just equity... you are also putting on a leash which will alter your original being. VC's and soul trading aside, it's the exclusion part that makes the deed evil.
And yeah, I expected down voting from a group of people flocking to a VC forum like HN.