It’d be really interesting to see what the various barriers to entry are for other stuff, as I type this I remember a startup I meant to show Laurence … friend angel invested, hardware thing, uniquely low barrier to entry, totally game changing. You guys should remind me next OpenCoffee, OK?

The money, as YC proved, is irrelevant. There is a major point a lot of people appear to miss. “Is $15K a lot? is it enough?” the difference between $15K and $0K is enormous to a couple of university graduates wondering what to do next. The difference between $15K and $150K? Nowhere near as different to (poor) founders.
You’ll probably scare a few startups off if you toss big “$100K” digits at them — hackers are hackers, not managers.

Yes, if you *want* to found a startup you’ll *eventually* save the money to startup. But why not solve that problem for the founders? take the worry and time spent saving money up out of the loop. If, in 4 months, I can’t blow an investors minds, I’m probably wasting my time. And your time. I don’t want to be labelled that, so I’d better be fucking efficient.

Do investors want founders with background in this stuff? Expect a massive salary then, maybe they can’t even code. They’ll run away from your $15K and crack jokes at you. A lot of them can’t “fuck shit up” [as the YC startup proved at Red Gate] because they’ll probably go bust and lose their mortgage. What does Doug Richard say? No risk no reward, Huge risk huge reward… QED

Do you want driven founders just out [or still in] university, that can code, that live on ramen anyway and want to change the world? $15K and a day or two of advice a fortnight is gold to them. Literally.

Both models work perfectly. If you’re lucky.

Are the economics of having 10 companies at $200K better than 100 companies at $20K? I have no idea. Those $200K investments are probably safer, which your fund manager will appreciate. A hacker won’t, though.

I’m curious how you plan to link synesthesia to seed investing…

As for Y Combinator, I’ve been thinking about it more and think it succeeds in particular for two specific reasons.

1- They have a philosophy of throwing around lots of small amounts of cash, and expect to have a good number of “misses.” Which is a bit different than even what I understand most other investors are willing to do.

2- They’re physically located in the heart of their market: San Francisco. (Assuming their market is generally web-enabled software.)

No other city can “re-create” Y Combinator because they don’t have both parts. But there is a potential to leverage a particular city’s expertise to transform the model a bit. For example, you could create a Y Combinator-like program in Seattle where your defined target market is software/hardware built off the Microsoft platform. I think there’s the possibility to do the same thing in Cambridge with some really high-tech hardware & software developments. (Like your #camrev line… go into the labs, steal their stuff.)

Perhaps food for thought…