It's a great idea, but you'll benefit from focusing on a particular industry (so that the startups benefit from network effects & relevant mentoring/advice etc.). Also, one of the reasons YC works so well is the relatively low fixed overheads & scaling effects of success in software. If you can find a non-tech niche that fits then fantastic - good luck!

We occasionally do fund startups led by non-techies. They should be doing something at least related to technology though, because it's hard to really be a startup without that.

Can you elaborate on Y Combinator's definition (or scale) of techie -> non-techie?

Is someone with a knowledge and understanding of the tech landscape and years of experience in the industry considered a techie...even if they're not hackers? Or does Hacker=Techie?

I just meant non-hackers.

One idea for a non-tech field where it might work: film!

All the prerequisites are there:

1. Loads of young people with good ideas but needing funding, advice and connections

2. $20,000 is enough to make a worthwhile full-length film nowadays (have you seen Primer? It cost $7,000.)

3. A successful yet cheap film can easily make back many, many times its production cost.

4. A single well-connected individual (the pg of film) could provide enough connections to give the films the maximum chance of being shown at festivals etc and eventually picked up for distribution. Alternatively, even the ones that weren't picked up for distribution could be marketed on DVD, and the fact that they were made as part of the "YC-of-film" program would attract at least some interest for them.

Foreseeable problems: the existing studios and unions might have a problem with it. I'm not sure exactly what they would do about it, though.

Conclusion: If I were a bored, well-connected Hollywood guy with money to throw around I'd be totally doing this right now.

I think the reason tech startups (and web-tech startups in particular) work great with the incubator/YCombinator model is that $10,000 and 3 months gets you somewhere in terms of a beta or an alpha, or a design or something that can get you Angel Investors or SeriesA VCs. Many non-techie businesses don't really have that "alpha" stage until there's a lot more money involved, making 3 months and $10,000 a poor trade for equity from the founder's perspective.

Additionally, tech startups tend to have a serious valuation ramp-up and multiple investment rounds that many other industries don't. So getting in on the ground floor with $10,000 is a worthwhile investment. For a YC-like program to be successful, it has to be in a field with a similar structure.

I say we make programming languages where you don't have to program.

Seriously, though, if they aren't in the tech world...they are just waiting to be overtaken by us....agriculture? could use better tech.... medicine? could use better tech.... massage therapy? we could add a muscle scanner...

Maybe a place for non-webapp-oriented tech businesses, like biotech and such, would make for a good HN spin-off...or maybe we just need more of those here...

.: no sleep until the machines and we are one ! :.

While the founder might not be a techie, if a new business in a traditional field could get a leg up on the establishment by the adoption of emerging, appropriate technology, that might be worth considering.

Woz was the techie. Steve Jobs wasn't. Yet Jobs, while only a co-founder, turned out to be the, uhm, core of the long-term Apple success.

(Afterthought: Is it even possible to start a business these days and hope to compete without substantially embracing some emerging technology?)

That's the idea behind 14ninetytwo (http://www.14ninetytwo.com/) here in Columbus, OH.

Don't know about this one... Most tech startups were started out by techies.

I'd say it could work for non-technical startups.

Excellent! Creativity doen't stop at the techies's desks.