[dheera]

Doesn't YC give 120K for 7%? An incubator/accelerator that isn't as good as YC (and therefore has less to offer) should have a better deal than that to make up for the difference. Given YC as a baseline, an investment of 10K GBP == 15488 USD should be taking less than 0.9% of the company.

[smeyer]

>An incubator/accelerator that isn't as good as YC should have a better deal than that to make up for the difference

Only from the perspective of someone being recruited by both YC and the alternative. If YC isn't an option (as it isn't for most people), then it doesn't much matter whether or not YC is offering a better deal to someone else.

[mcguire]

And at some point your only option is Vinny, who hangs out all day at the bar over on 4th. His deals can be...problematic, but he'll give them to anyone.

[sorenbs]

From the YC application page:

"The ideal company would have two or three founders. We’ll consider those with four or five. We’re reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have funded a few."

There exists a large group of technical people who are currently only capturing a small fraction of the value they are creating for whom getting into a position where they would fit the YC ideal company is untenable. For this group EF is a valuable option and I'm quite surprised this model isn't more widespread.

Everybody in the EF cohort are quite smart so if they were in a position to take the YC deal i'm sure most would :-)