Start-Up 100: Could Europe build a Y Combinator? - Telegraph
And then there's the question of how much the success of Y Combinator is tied to its founder. It’s impossible to imagine Y Combinator being as successful as it is without Paul Graham behind it. Still, replicating the model should not be synonymous with cloning him. While Graham is able to recognize the indispensable role that he plays, he feels that given the right mentors (and additional factors, including in particular a strong angel investor community) the model should be replicable.
Graham’s belief seems in-line with the experience of Startup Bootcamp founder, Alex Farcet. Startup Bootcamp, which is based in Copenhagen, is the first international branch of Boulder, Colorado-based TechStars, which is behind startups like BrightKite, Graphicly and Foodzie. Mr. Farcet puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of the selected mentors, especially their extended networks and the fact that they “always know the right guy in the right place.” Choosing mentors for the program is a subjective process: Startup Bootcamp dedicated 5 months to their recruitment, making sure that everyone had the right motivation and wasn’t simply interested in pay or obtaining equity in the participating startups.
Startup Bootcamp is just one example of how Y Combinator could be implemented in Europe. Launched in January 2010, the team just completed its first run, from August through November, with 32 entrepreneurs from 12 different countries participating. In order to replicate the TechStars model in Copenhagen, Farcet spent a week observing one of the TechStars programs in Colorado. While he and TechStars founder David Cohen had exchanged a lot of information via email prior to his visit, he felt that actually observing the program in action was what really allowed him to understand the model.
Since the launch of Startup Bootcamp in Denmark, Farcet says he has been contacted by numerous people from across Europe wanting to duplicate the model for their country – from Poland to Switzerland.
France is one country that has seemed eager to develop its own Y Combinator. Entrepreneurs and investors have been very vocal on Twitter about their desire to develop a similar program locally. For example, Paris-based non-profit Silicon Sentier will officially inaugurate Le Camping this week. Over 100 applications from across Europe were received for the first program, with mentors from various European startups and investment firms. All that’s missing is a few Americans. Unlike programs like Startup Bootcamp, TechStars or YCombintaor, Silicon Sentier doesn’t take equity in any of the companies nor does it offer participating entrepreneurs a stipend to cover living costs during the duration of the program. In addition, we’ll have to wait and see if the infamous investor day actually manages to pan out to concrete investments.
The program that probably most closely mirrors Y Combinator on this side of the Atlantic is Seedcamp. Financially backed by some of Europe’s top funds and investors - like Index Ventures, Atomico, Atlas, DN Capital and Balderton – Seedcamp’s team hosts a number of “mini Seedcamps” throughout the first half of the year in order to scout out the best potential participants from across the globe. The best companies receive up to €50,000 – usually for about 8 to 10 per cent of the company – and participate in a 3-month program in London with over 400 mentors. But even if Seedcamp covers a potentially larger territory than its American rivals and boasts hundreds of top-tier mentors, it funds far fewer companies per year than Y Combinator or TechStars, perhaps because angel investment doesn’t flow like rainwater on this side of the Atlantic.
In the end, developing a Y Combinator-like model for Europe may not be as complicated as it seems and it definitely doesn’t require cloning Paul Graham with all the local talent we have here. Sure, companies will have to think beyond their national boundaries from the get-go and deal with a potentially less-developed angel investor community. But from my experience, good ideas always get funded one way or another. And for people like Farcet, the problem isn’t so much the lack of initial funding but rather the inactive exit market. Even if the European imitations aren’t carbon copies of the real thing, their existence will definitely be beneficial for European entrepreneurs and facilitate sharing their savoir faire across borders.
Roxanne Varza is the editor of TechCrunch France.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/technology-startup100/8250380/Start-Up-...
