Also, the name HackFwd is a bit surprising since none of the people involved are hackers in my mind.
Update. The HackFwd people disagreed with me about my assessment of the people not being hackers. I asked them who they'd highlight as a hacker and they pointed to http://hackfwd.com/people#prof.-franz-guenthner
Second update. The more I think about it the more I think this whole 'freeing' thing is arrogant. Who the hell are these guys to set us free? Why begin by implying that we are not free?
Well, London is about as good as it gets in "Europe", of which a great deal remains where 'startups' are a something of a foreign notion. So I say the more the merrier, and things will sort themselves out.
Case in point: ZenDesk. Their "here's our new price, this is transparent cuz we didn't charge you without telling you" bit and then their non-apology apology, and CEO's tweets complaining about their upset customers, etc.
That behavior, and this behavior, are cut from the same cloth.
I wish the above weren't my experience, seeing as I'm an American transplant in Austria, naturally. I'm invested in it NOT being that way. And yet, there it is.
[1] There are plenty of people in the venture/entrepreneurship/funding game in Europe who aren't like this, I imagine, but the prominence-seeking seems to be the indicator for being unlikably, and unjustifiably, arrogant.
EDIT: replaced start with number to solve formatting issue
This is somewhat non-obvious, but their copy is written against a background of other early stage investment stuff in continental europe. This sounds almost bizarre to Silicon Valley attuned ears, but funding hackers early stage doing original ideas is not common in Germany. It's encouraging to see people putting their money where their mouth is in hopes of changing that.
They do have a couple of folks that they've roped in, notably the Xing founder, who lend it some credibility.
27% is pretty steep, but hopefully that'll downshift some over time. The amounts that they're willing to invest for up to three person teams fall in the range of a decent early angel round, and it'd be nice to see the numbers fall closer to the expected dilution for such.
The biggest problem that I see is that it plays somewhat into the problematic mindset that's common in european would-be entrepreneurs: fear of risk. There are a lot of programs attempting to do that badly at the moment, grants from the state and whatnot, but they rarely produce good results.
Because it's so "IN YOUR FACE" and "made for nerds" I almost get a feeling that the whole thing is a huge insult to every serious hacker out there.
...Especially the flow chart seems so fucking insulting to me. Yaddayaddayaa, yes, every geek likes starwars & light sabers, yes we've read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, yes, we've seen the back to the future trilogy etc.
In my opinion, funding entrepreneurship shouldn't be about making jokes on stereotypes. We're talking about peoples livelihoods here - not about star wars kids.
I like the idea but not the execution.
...And the art is in the execution.
This Lars guy (and the others) are not. They have made money etc. (which makes me jealous), but they are not geeks. And they should not talk to us like that.
It's like when your parents attempt to use slang that doesn't come from their generation to appear trendy. They fail, and fail hard.
"Like a Klingon starship de-cloaking in the middle of Europe, Lars Hinrichs is putting his efforts onto a new startup investment vehicle dubbed HackFwd."
So they're the enemy then?
"We make small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small stakes in the companies we fund (usually 2-10%)."
Which I assume means $20,000 = 10% (max of both ranges). So a 30% stake, at this stage, is worth $60,000, which is less than the salary of an average experienced programmer, so is it such a bad deal?
You can't apply directly to join HackFwd, you have to know one of these people and convince them of your idea.
