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Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars. Bloomberg followed all 11 (not 10) companies throughout

Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars. Bloomberg followed all 11 (not 10) companies throughout the entire program, but focused only on 6 companies because it was impossible to follow 11 different story lines in 6, 22-minute episodes.

mikescar 15y ago
> Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars. Required by whom? Sounds like TechStars signed up for a 'documentary' PR push and prioritized the filming over the founders. If it didn't work out, sorry, but I don't think TS can play the victim card here.
seven_stones 15y ago
TechStars forced its startups to do a faux reality TV series that amounted to a kind of smear campaign? This is going to have serious blowback. Yet another example of suicide being a startup's or related program's worst enemy, not competition! So while TS is busy shooting itself in the foot, YC has continued at their own place and gradually fixed most of their shortcomings. One of the problems was doing half the year in Boston; a nice favor for Boston, but a disadvantage to the startups. "Fetch isn't going to happen." Or Boston, in this case. That one was fixed by accident, but it got fixed. The biggest problem was probably the miniscule amount of funding, which meant you ran out of money right when you were hitting your stride. You were faced with having to sweat out trying to get follow-on investment during the time period when you were supposed to NOT be distracted, working on your demo. But now the $150k convertible loan has taken care of that part. (Also due to external conditions.) * NOTE: This account has been killed by admins, this post will not appear to users who aren't logged in.
projectileboy 15y ago
Whoa, what? Did you know about this before you took investment money from TechStars?

mikescar 15y ago

> Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars. Required by whom? Sounds like TechStars signed up for a 'documentary' PR push and prioritized the filming over the founders. If it didn't work out, sorry, but I don't think TS can play the victim card here.

seven_stones 15y ago

TechStars forced its startups to do a faux reality TV series that amounted to a kind of smear campaign? This is going to have serious blowback. Yet another example of suicide being a startup's or related program's worst enemy, not competition! So while TS is busy shooting itself in the foot, YC has continued at their own place and gradually fixed most of their shortcomings. One of the problems was doing half the year in Boston; a nice favor for Boston, but a disadvantage to the startups. "Fetch isn't going to happen." Or Boston, in this case. That one was fixed by accident, but it got fixed. The biggest problem was probably the miniscule amount of funding, which meant you ran out of money right when you were hitting your stride. You were faced with having to sweat out trying to get follow-on investment during the time period when you were supposed to NOT be distracted, working on your demo. But now the $150k convertible loan has taken care of that part. (Also due to external conditions.) * NOTE: This account has been killed by admins, this post will not appear to users who aren't logged in.

projectileboy 15y ago

Whoa, what? Did you know about this before you took investment money from TechStars?