> We don't want you to go to your accommodation before 12 midnight - so we provide you mattresses near your workspace for resting. There's anyways a security guard outside your work-area - so you don't get to leave the office before 12 midnight and you don't get to sleep in the office. Attendance happens at 9:30 am every morning. Sundays are off if you have met your weekly goals!
(I am from India.) No, I think that's just bizarre.
As a people, we aren't as much averse to structure as US people are, but this is taking things a bit too far. And I honestly hope that these people are only kidding when they talk about all these "we will watch you" kind of things.
Does anyone know if this kind of thing is still practiced? I can think of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (factory doors were locked to keep people from misbehaving; the fire was disastrous), De Beers (built concentration camps for workers so they couldn't fence diamonds), and the drug trade -- does anyone else work under actual guards?
Apologies for having done a bad cloning. I represent CIIE - group which is doing the iAccelerator. We definitely can't match what YC has done. We are still open to ideas and would love to get your advise and restructure the program.
However, we would like you guys to understand the Indian innovation scenario before any suggestions. In a space where there is limited innovation happening, very few university start-ups happening, very few "IT-expert students" creating anything world-class or anywhere closer (other than doing some outsourced software services) - we feel this is a step to try something new to push people into starting-up an innovative company.
Our aim is to change the statistics of number of kids starting up out of college. And believe us, if we can't make a huge difference and end up creating 3 start-ups out of this process - we would have succeeded.
For those who understand this space better, we would love to have your feedbacks and how we can use this model better.
Apologies PG and YC fans (believe me I am one of them), we are just trying to bring some disruption in our innovation system. Look forward to your inputs.
The main criticism was that you enforce draconian working standards. In YC, people work hard because they want to. You say you have a guard to prevent people from leaving. It sounds bizarre.
Yes, I understand. We were actually kidding. But I guess the message wasn't put across in the right manner. Have changed the text anyways.
I thought people would understand that we can't be so cruel and must have been kidding. Apologies for the assumption. Yes, we do provide people mattress next to their workplace - give them the luxury of resting as and when they want. We are trying to be as friendly as possible. Thanks for your feedback. It's not gonna be a jail believe me.
"I guess the message wasn't put across in the right manner. Have changed the text anyways."
As of one minute ago the "changed" text reads,
"We don't want you to go to your accommodation before 12 midnight - so we provide you mattresses near your workspace for resting (well, we've got limited resources - can't provide you AC accommodation - so thats the least we can do to ensure that you beat the summers in Ahmedabad). There's anyways a security guard outside your work-area - so you don't get to leave the office before 12 midnight and you don't get to sleep in the office. Attendance happens at 9:30 am every morning. Sundays are off if you have met your weekly goals! (we got to be kidding on this!!)
End results are more important to us !! "
we don't want you to leave before midnight - check
you don't get to sleep in the office - check
attendance happens at 09.30 - check
Sundays are off if you have met your weekly goals - check
Is the "(we got to be kidding on this!!)" supposed to indicate that all the above is just you guys trying to be funny?
Just a suggestion from one of the much despised Indian "hackers" who can't think of a business plan without the IIM-A grads chipping in ;-).
When you are writing about how your process works, just say what you mean. Don't try to be funny. Writing humour calls for exceptional skill in writing. All this description manages to do is make you sound like lunatics. (Note : I said "sound like". I don't say that you ARE crazy).
Just say " we'll pay each founder 200 $ (or 8000 rupees) per month and give you non AC accomodation and an office with PC s and internet connectivity".
See? It's that easy.
And your whole "YC clone" theme is a bit of a non starter. YC works because as someone pointed out earlier on this blog, It is promoted by PG (and others) who "walked the talk". One of the reasons YC can't be cloned easily is that unless you have people of roughly equal caliber backing it up it makes no sense. People don't join YC's program for the money.
A mental experiment.
Think of what YC would sound like if it was promoted by a bunch of people with no credentials in either business or programming. Err... we are MBA students and we'll pay you 200 $ a month and make you go through hell (at the least you have to listen to our "humour" ;-) ) and give you ... ummm ... an internet connection. In return you will work your hearts out and try to create a killer startup.
Yeah that makes sense ;-)
Anyone who can hack can get (with ZERO experience) a 1500 $ / month job in Bangalore with no trouble at all. A couple of month's savings will give them more money than you guys can (and they can work whenever they feel like, with no security guards ;-) ). So what exactly is your value add? Pairing with an mba student?
This is not to discourage you from attempting to "incubate innovativeness" . Your deal just doesn't make any sense. But don't let me stop you. If you can get a world class product out of the door in three months with this deal structure , more power to you. We'll wait 90 days and see. (won't we? ;-) ).
Finally,
"give them the luxury of resting as and when they want"
resting when you are tired is not a "luxury" which you "give". It is a basic human right.
Read some of your posts Mr. ABCD. When was the last that you visited India? Ever tried starting up here? You aren't probably the best person to comment.
You seem to be a good for nothing migrant who can't appreciate a novel attempt to promote startups in India. More so, you must be one of those guys who couldn't make it to Google, couldn't make it to IIMs and now massages your ego criticizing everything good that happens in your motherland. Ridiculous !!
We are a bunch of IIT CS grads all set to apply to this program at IIMA and take our ideas to fruition. Look forward to more of your criticism anyways. That's what you are good at?.
Ahhhh, thanks for a final word of appreciation. I was all of a sudden beginning to think that we were doing a grave mistake by trying to be innovative about promoting innovation. :)
1) Do you take a stake in the new formed company ?
2) Why are you offer a stipend ? It's not that expensive living in India, and a dot-com startup doesn't require any funds really.
3) The real strengths of YC, as others have observed, are mentors and a hacker culture. How would you offer that ?
4) Is an IIM the right place to incubate ?
5) A YC like incubator does best in a place which already has a thriving hacker / entrepreneurial culture. Gujarat, BTW, is perhaps the most entrepreneurial state in India.
6) You say that "IIM Ahmedabad students shall work closely with the teams to develop a sound business plan". Is that not a little insulting to suggest that hackers can only hack :) ? After all they are the only ones who understand their product, and can possibly form a business plan.
Lets not stretch our imaginations too much. We are trying to provide help to hackers with no selfish motives !
With all due respect, our aim is not to belittle the hackers - we respect them and the whole spirit behind the program is to actually encourage them to start-up. Our interaction with a lot of tech start-ups (by tech i don't just mean IT) suggests that often the failure is rarely in development of product - it's often in the ability to understand the market and to penetrate it. We might be mistaken, but we feel that IIMA grads can do a good job on that. A good techie+MBA make a better team than an IIMA grad alone or a techie alone does.
Equity: We are a not-for-profit entity and don't plan to take equity at this stage - if we decide to provide additional funding to these start-ups we might.
Stipend: Yes, India is cheap. However our target audience is students and young IT professionals - the stipend is a sweetener. You get to work on your idea without having to think about how your expenses get paid. (Indian students typically don't take up RA/TAship in their universities and depend heavily on parental income for their education. So we are trying to provide them with a tension-free environment! Ahh, some would still believe it is a jail uh!!)
YC Model: We can't be a YC - if we are trying to be we are probably mistaken. Our aim is to be a group which is trying to make a difference to say the least. There have been no Google or Skype coming out of India - but there have been the Naukri.com and the Makemytrip.coms which are some of the more successful names in the Indian dot-com scenario. If you think that the founders of these can add some value, yes mentors would be there. We'll have regular mentoring and weekly networking dinners where you should expect a few successful entrepreneurs/VCs/investors to be around. We are beginners in this and would love to learn on how we could do this better.
IIM/Gujarat - the right place: Its at least a start to make the YCombinator culture more popular in India. Hopefully someone else - in the right city and right environment would do a better job. We'd love to see that happen. Not too sure if IIM is the best place - what else is? Are they ready to do it? We've got the resources to help the budding entrepreneurs - so we are trying. Gujarat, may be quite entrepreneurial, but there are very few hackers around. So we don't limit ourselves to Gujarat.
Good luck at your experiment. I think it is great that you are trying something.
You ask an interesting question though - MBA + Techies > Techies. I am not sure. Most of us look at the sloanies as leeches although they did help me a little in defining the market for my project.
Scarily enough these guys are serious. They think they are actually doing something "cool". The whole idea seems to be that "real hackers" (note the quotes) would feel "challenged" by such an environment and buy into it. After all why else would they want to attend a google interview? (ignoring the fact that Google India is no where near as cool - in terms of work done or quality of people hired - as Google California).
In short this is just managers living in their own fantasy world. No real hacker would take these guys seriously.
Read some of your posts. You seem to be a good for nothing migrant who can't appreciate a novel attempt to promote startups in India. More so, you must be one of those guys who couldn't make it to Google, couldn't make it to IIMs and now massages your ego criticizing everything good that happens in your motherland. Ridiculous !!
We are a bunch of IIT CS grads all set to apply to this program at IIMA and take our ideas to fruition. Look forward to your more of your criticism once we are successful.
control dude...lets not make it personal...plinkplonk does have a point but he cannot understand our requirements...it seems iima does....see you at iima hopefully...:)
What are these people. 8K rupees a month = $200. Security guard - are you kidding me ?
the culture in india is risk averse. i grew up there, went to undergrad there and then come to an engineering school here. i had no trouble getting job offers, but declined them so I can do a startup, and my mom still feels so insecure that she asks me to take up a job with microsoft every time i talk to her.
I think you're doing the right thing by doing a startup. Keep fighting the good fight.
You have to do what makes you happy, which may not be what makes your mom happy. Remember, it's you who will have to live with your choices in life, not your mom.
quite risk averse believe me...getting 25k from my parents for a start-up is going to be tough....here i'd get some sustainance stipend plus system and server etc hopefully :)....i will at least try for a while now...helps me run for longer if i get selected for this program...how did you finally convince your mom..need some tips
I think it is the company as a whole and the benefits that they provide make ppl very comfortable with where they are. Plus, a lot of them don't won't to take chances like us!
Since they actually name yc, it is my opinion that you should write a post about how their adaptation of it is (horribly) wrong. In addition to everything that is morally wrong with their rules, they make little business sense. If you don't trust the founders to manage their own time how can you trust them to be major share-holders and leaders of the company you are investing in?
Including Rescuetime and 8aweek in our content for promotion of the program was our attempt to highlight successful YC innovations. Believe me in India very few people (including VCs) know about YC - we'd hope more people get to know about YC. Not the clones, but the original YC.
Proves my point. Failed to crack CAT uh? Trying another attempt at inference problems - alas! For someone who doesn't know what rescuetime is - he would have Googled and figured out that its a product from YC. I didn't know about YC till I came across this program in India.
I think the most important couple of things a YC Clone needs is strong mentorship from someone who's been there, done that and a strong hacker community. Both of which seem to be missing at a cursory glance, and from the way they have worded it, seems like a prison of sorts :-)
yes for sure....a lot of techies do end up doing their MBAs but rarely follow the tech-path post that...interestingly thou i've been reading about iim grads doing tech start-ups (not to mention the biggest successes of indian web 1.0 ventures - rediff, naukri n makemytrip were iim grad ventures and not iitians)....incubation is beginning to happen in India even at engineering colleges...i am from an NIT (comparable to some of the better IITs) and they've taken a leaf from IIMs to implement the placement holiday...i dont have to take the risk of not finding a good job in case my start-up fails...my college lets me sit in the placements over next 3 years
not really ..check this out .."Once the prototype is ready, IIM Ahmedabad students shall work closely with the teams to develop a sound business plan and get traction for the product."..so finally the business guys will get in and teach a thing or two to the hacker group ;)...sounds like a plan.
For a second I was afraid (and happy) that they beat me to this. Then I looked at the details. Its a scary hybrid of archaic school rules and a lack of repsect for latent business abilities of hackers with the yc concept.
I hope someone beats me to it because my plan is to first start a startup, learn how to do it right, make money to invest and THEN instantiate an object of a subclass of yc.
It is foolish to make any very general statements about "India" (just as it would be to make very general statements about "America"). Too large an entity to make generalizations.
Yeah, you shouldn't be able to downmod below -1. That's enough to send the signal. Otherwise people will just keep downmodding and go in for the kill.
I heartily disagree about you wanting YC to stay one of a kind though. The beauty of our capitalist society is that if anyone wants to try to do it better, they can give it a shot. It's to YC's credit that so many people want to copy it. And I think they welcome that.
i think people wouldn't have downmodded you to this extent if you had said the above instead of "puke". it's the "what do i make of that response" irritation which causes people to do that.
Uh... nice try but no cigar, guys.