It is interesting to see these trends over time. I wish there was some way to view this on a per-account basis. Specifically I am curious about how companies on EC2 evolve their instance strategy over time. I think there is tendency to grow into larger and larger instances over time.
I wish things like this had been around when Localytics was making its technology decisions. It would have saved us doing a lot of this investigation ourselves.
But now I have to go online to download the bits. And how am I going to read it in bed? If you'd be less self-serving and think about the rest of us for a change you and print the article out that would be appreciated. It's only 50 page but it would probably be better to get it bound as well.
There is also something to be said about a founder not being the right person to a grow a company. A techie might make a great CEO to impress a VC and raise a million bucks. But is he able to make the right deals, find good partners, hire superstars, etc? He is invested in the company, possibly more than most so it is in his own interest to let the VCs place a better CEO so he can focus on what he is best at.
0) Desperate 3-man startup needs capital to survival. (gone 4 years w/o salary)
1) After pitching only thing they get is an offer with 'participation'. This means a preset amount is guaranteed back to the investors in an exit event if the % gain doesn't match a specific minimum. I.e. Investors are guaranteed 1,000,000 if their equity doesn't exceed that value.
2) A partner sees the company is weak, knows the founders are rockstars and rolls them up for 1.2 million.
3) Founders get jobs at company X and 200,000 split among 3 of them before taxes.
Does anybody know how these bots perform against humans players? This seems to be early enough in its infancy that I would expect humans to outperform computer players pretty significantly but I might have too much faith in my own race.
I'm a TS Boston '09 grad. TS bills itself as a family or fraternity for entrepreneurs. Once you get through the program you have friends to relax with, colleagues to bounce ideas off, and mentors to guide you through the many stages of your career still ahead. Whenever I go to events around the country I always check the roster and hope some TS teams will be there so we can meet up. As TS has grown I've been able to do this more and more and I look forward to meeting some of the grads from the recent Seattle class.
To address your two questions more directly
1) This isn't a college application. Don't just apply and wait for a letter to come back to you. Get your application done early and send it in. Follow up with an email or two. Try and meet some mentors and get their feedback. Don't apply in a vacum!
2) Be open to feedback and work hard. Start now. Get your application done early and get feedback as quickly as you can. Basically, do more faster.
Reasons to go:
- Meet new entrepreneurs in your physical location or technology space.
- Get free advice from great mentors.
- Be involved in the community.
- Increase your chances if you apply next year by learning about TechStars.
- 5% is significantly more likely than life happening, and yet here we are.
Reasons not to go:
- You miss 8 hours of development, of which you'll probably work for 4 at best.
- Might catch a cold from all the hand-shaking.
Seems like a no-brainer to me, but I'm biased because our company got in to last year's Boston program.