Ask HN: Venture Studio Model vs. Y Combinator
I recently fielded an offer from an unnamed Venture Studio.
For those unfamiliar a Venture Studio model is like an accelerator with these key differences (feel free to ignore my summary and also Google this): - The startup idea comes from a pool of researched / vetted startup ideas from the studio. They purportedly will have highlighted things / products they believe have good potential for product market fit - The venture studio may match you with a cofounder after vetting similar interests backgrounds etc (so a slightly more filtered version of founder dating going on here) - The studio will generally provide more capital than an accelerator for a bigger portion of the pie (given they are providing the idea, the network, and capital out of the gate)
In this particular example (have fudged the numbers within a certain range so as to not out anyone in particular) the studio offers the following: - Idea, network for cofounder - Starting salary in the 100-150k range - Seed funding round in the ~1m dollar range
In return cofounders get ~25-36% of the startup (so about 12-18% each) post seed round funding.
Now obviously you are losing a lot of equity compared to if you had raised this seed money yourself, but the promise is of some degree of mitigated risk and guaranteed funding at the outset to build a team with.
Would love to hear from anyone that has experiences with this model and what the pros/cons might be compared to joining a place like YC (Techstars, 500 Startups etc)