Re:The Equity Equation
by eposts on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @01:27PM
(#35030)
Was this article written in response to Seth Levines comment? What Seth Levine doesn't know or doesn't want to tell is that a lot of YC alums could raise the 5K/founder on their own, so money is NOT the primary reason they are there.
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No, I'd been working on it for a while.
I'd been thinking of taking that footnote out, since it seemed like everyone now finally understood us. But when I saw that old dumb argument again in the USA Today article, I decided to leave it in.
I can't help but laugh at the audacity of another tech-related investment firm commenting like that. He is trying to persuade people that YC is just writing cheques.
I'm never sure whether such people are clueless or deliberately misleading. I'm inclined to give most the benefit of the doubt and say clueless. When you change the model for something, it takes people a long time to get what you're doing. I remember from web-based software.
Maybe this is not so innocent as I thought. Apparently Seth Levine is the partner of Brad Feld, the founder of Techstars:
http://www.foundrygroup.com/team.php
What a slimy move. It won't make any difference in the long run though.
Definitely self-serving move, and certainly won't make any difference in the end... articles like the USAToday one always need to find that contrarian view in order to seem unbiased. I'm sure Seth Levine was all to happy to provide them the material. But how would you feel if you were a Techstars startup group and you see him making comments like that - blasting the model of his partner's program!?
Good catch Paul!
Surprise, surprise Seth Levine is a "mentor" at Techstars:
http://www.techstars.org/site/page/pg5883.html
What a shame!