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Comment by leodesrumaux | Hacker News Reader

Of course :) We launched our prototype in February. Right now www.seedrunners.com is only a website where aspiring investors can register their interest and startup applicants can apply to our first batch.

We are in "soft release" mode (even though we are on Hacker News lol). We are currently collecting startup applications from students at my school, which is also where most of our current aspiring investors come from.

On the other point, you are indeed right. With Seedrunners, startups from all over the world and not only US startups will be able to access capital from the investor categories I mentioned previously. Our current legal structure allows us to receive investment from any person that is a "resident in the EU, EEA, Switzerland or any other country where they may legally receive financial promotions of the nature provided by Seedrunners, and are legally entitled to invest in the type of investment offered".

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Sounds cool! Some (including me!) will argue that your list of schools is biased in a certain way :). I would encourage you to expand your list as 10 schools really is a short list.

The list of schools is always one of the most contentious point whenever we have the opportunity to pitch Seedrunners :)

In a sense, it is a necessary evil to have such a restrictive list.

One, creating scarcity helps us build interest in Seedrunners.

Two, we carefully review and help each of our startup build their application (as it is in our interest for every one of them to have the best profile possible for the rankings). Something we could not realistically do if we were to receive thousands of applications.

Finally, and most importantly, it has a significant marketing power when it comes to investors to guarantee that every startup is led by founders coming from the best schools in the world.

Once we have proven that Seedrunners works and have the necessary financial resources, we will easily be able to open Seedrunners to all startup applicants (same goes for community membership).

But, I mean like Yale is excluded, and a lot of really top schools. You could make a good case that the top 25 schools are so close in quality that there is hardly any difference, and it still creates scarcity.

Now I really hope you are not from Yale :)

I totally agree with your point.

But while it is true that Yale is not currently in our upcoming startups batches it will be very soon. Indeed, every month we plan to expand the list of schools and countries from which we accept startup applicants – until eventually allowing startups applicants from all corners of the world.

But at this time we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin. We rather do a few small consecutive batches well (France first, UK second, US third) and then expand from there once we have proven that Seedrunners works and have the resources to scale up.

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