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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

The immediate reaction here appears to be to pan the article as though it was written from a position of ignorance or as flamebait, but consider that Techstars, YC, etc are not the only incubators out there. Far from it. There are a plethora of copycats, few of which boast any bonafide credentials or success stories.

If you can get into one of the tier-1 incubators, then it's almost certainly a good idea if you're building a consumer app. For the lower-tier accelerators, however, it might just be a waste of time and equity.

Just as an incubator can offer great assistance to a startup, it can also be a hindrance or waste of time and resources. Pick your incubator like you pick your cofounder. If you can't find the right match, then be prepared to go it alone. It's better than making a poor choice.

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"For the lower-tier accelerators, however, it might just be a waste of time and equity."

Is it? First of all the equity only matters if you are a success. The time only matters if there is an opportunity cost of the time (unclear with the "18 to 20" year olds). Hard to believe someone that age is going to not get some benefit from the mentoring that is worth the equity and psychic benefits. And of course we don't have good data and controls to compare non incubator startups either.

I would argue that, similar to "psychic income" there is a certain "psychic bump" to feeling that (even wrongly) you are on your way to something because of the structure of the incubators. Something similar might be companies back in the day (not sure if this is done anymore but it was in the 80's) who would take groups of laid off workers and have them show up at an office to work on resumes and look for jobs. Being in the presence of other job seekers apparently did some good for them in terms of their self esteem and how they approached that task (as opposed to doing it from home). (My first hand experience with this was as a vendor to a company that became the leader in this field, Manchester Career which landed large contract after contract and expanded greatly because of what they were able to achieve).

So I would question that there isn't some benefit to the lower tier incubators that is worthwhile to experience and I don't believe that has been proven out in any research of them and in fact there is this story which was widely discussed here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/04/30/top-tech-i...

Incubators are just like street market. There are overcrowded spots where there is always something going on, and there are spots that no one visits. Be in the right spot and you get piece of action.

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