Seems like an incubator is the wrong type of vehicle for them.

These guys seem to be great product guys...but they don't seem to have been founders prior to Google. What does a product guy at a corporation like Google know about jump starting a startup? That requires a completely different skillset and approach.

As a boutique VC firm, these guys would be perfect...as an incubator...not so much.

My co-founder brought up the same objection when considering joining AngelPad. I responded with the following:

Two of the seven partners are currently running their own startups -- Vibhu Mittal is the founder of Root-X Research (dedicated to improving learning online, etc.) and Gokul Rajaram is the founder of Chai Labs (acquired by Facebook last week).

David Scacco (though not a founder) is one of only 4 people at MyLikes, a very new startup with seed funding. He's already shown his ability to execute by bringing in early revenue from advertisers and securing multiple partner commitments to grow their company.

Keval Desai co-founded Achex (a la PayPal) with Michael Arrington over 10 years ago, which was acquired in 2001 by FirstData for $32M. That's in addition to him being the pioneer of Google TV Ads and currently working with Kevin Rose in a leadership function to re-launch Digg.

Deep Nishar founded Patkai Networks (a B2B online services provider) 10 years ago before moving to Google and now is essentially the #2 guy at LinkedIn (granted, a good-sized company now).

Rich Chen is an accomplished angel investor with multiple successful exits in his portfolio companies in recent years, but he too founded his own company in Japan called OptoMail 10 years ago, which was a B2B email marketing startup.

Thomas Korte is a founder in his own right by being the lead in launching AngelPad. However, he too has startup experience (though not a founder) at an enterprise news startup a decade ago called Moreover Technologies.

So whether prior to or after Google, every one of the partners has significant early startup experience to complement their leading roles at Google. Just wanted to make the clarification.

FYI, as a founder for a startup recently accepted into AngelPad, I added a detailed response on how it's different from Y-Combinator: http://www.quora.com/How-is-AngelPad-different-from-Y-Combin...

Very interesting change of perspective. I think there's definitely room to experiment with tweaks of this caliber on YC's model (not so say that YC needs tweaking themselves).

I'm excited to see what they come up with!

Everybody needs tweaking, nothing is perfect.

The counter-argument is that, based on public gathered figures, YC is doing pretty damn well right now. I say they don't need tweaking because of that. They could tweak and try to scale quickly or get better returns, but they don't need to.

Any chance for non Bay Area based startups? like startups near Google... Zürich? (In case they are on HN?)

The article starts with: "The problem is obvious: it’s hard to launch a startup"

Really? Seems contradictory to what I see & read elsewhere.

Should probably be qualified better: "The problem is obvious. It's hard to take a startup and turn it into a successful company."

These guys appear to lack both technical backgrounds and start-up backgrounds. They're backers not hackers. Could be useful for some businesses, but for consumer web startups the YC approach and team seem far more relevant.

Have incubators worked out somewhere? I thought all the empirical evidence has shown they are a waste of effort.