In addition to requiring full-time students, it disqualifies any students on the semester system since all winners are apparently required to work in their office from June 1st to September 30. Only students on quarter systems can meet that requirement, narrowing their applicant pool even farther.
But I'll agree that the requirement seems arbitrary without an explanation.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/engineering-vs-liberal-arts...
It would be difficult to build a product over the summer if you didn't have someone on the engineering side on the team.
Must an engineer (CS or EE) be on the team? Does the engineer have to be a student?
· Each team must include at least one individual who was a student (graduate or undergraduate) in the 2010-2011 academic school year · At least ONE member of the team must have a degree in Computer Science or Engineering
Edit: Implying that they may not have an CE or SE program (didn't look)
But free money is free money, if you get into this, do it in a heartbeat.
With that said, I'm very happy to have taken the dilution hit from going through Y Combinator the summer after :)
Seems like this it the type of act that is characteristic of a firm that is either quite visionary or quite desparate, but I'm not sure which is the case here ;-)
That's going to be $25k in most cases, not $45k unless I'm missing something.
An incubator's value is much more complex than (dollars) + (office square feet) - (equity %). Ask almost any successful founder from an incubator such as YC or DreamIt, and they'll tell you the equity percentage is easily worth the benefit. In fact, the percentage can easily increase the total value of the company.
When Paul Graham/Ron Conway/Yuri Milner are financially motivated to see you do well, the intros and connections these guys make are priceless. Just see how Paul Graham went to bat for AirBnb when he tried to get Fred Wilson to invest.
When you get into YC, you know you are going to be working directly with people like PG, Harj, Garry, Alexis, Robert M., Paul, Jennifer, and Trevor.
With this Lightspeed VC deal, they just tell you that you get two partners advising you. You don't know which two. You don't know if they are VCs by trade. You don't know if they were former entrepreneurs. You don't know if they happen to be an Entrepreneur in Residence or Designer in Residence. These details matter and matter a lot.
I think the best incubators and angels are those that emphasize people over money. People execute. Money just keeps those people fed and housed.
If you want an honest review of the experience, shoot me an email jason@pushpinsapp.com.
What do they get? They get to know really smart entrepreneurs at the beginning of their career. I highly recommend you apply.
Each team is given a partner who works with them throughout the summer. The partner helps with intros and getting you in front of the right people, vetting your pitch deck, etc.
They also bring in incredible founders and mentors for lunch each week.
Last year we had: - Liam Casey (PCH) - Dave Lieb (Bump) - Wences Casares (Bling Nation) - Joe Greenstein (Flixster) - Jedidiah Yueh (Delphix) - John Schroeder (MapR) - Max Simkoff (Evolv)
Plus, they ran the best presentation I've seen on fundraising. It was basically the stuff that a VC is thinking, but they will never tell you.
When you bring in someone older to make your business seem more experienced it's called a "gray hair". So what's the opposite? "Purple hair"?