"Raising the first $25K for product development is easy – join an incubator."
I think that trivializes the process. There are now multiple incubators, but about two orders of magnitude more looking for spots. Y Combinator gets thousands of applications for a few dozen spots. Tech Stars Boulder got 600 apps IIRC, and only 10 get in the program. Early stage money gets trivially easy if you're in one (especially YC or TS), but getting further funding is still a time drain, and now you're competing with the 100+ incubator-based startups for VC/Angel money.
I do agree about cap tables. With less money needed to start a company, the equity normally given to investors can (and should) go to employees. It's an opportunity for many who have talent to get a bigger reward for their hard work.
I suspect those numbers may be skewed by the same "we only hire the top 1%" phenomenon. There could very well be a recurring group of people with not so great ideas that repeatedly apply to incubators, and repeatedly get turned down, whether with the same idea or a new one.
I'd be interested to see the skew as well. Maybe a large part of those declined were unserious college students or similar.
Sure, at least half of the applications hit the trash bin. I recall a comment from pg at startup school in 2010 correctly, he said a surprising number of the applications to YC (I want to say 20%) were in ALL CAPS. That's an easy way to self-select one's way into the bit bucket. But even at half the size, there's still at least 1000 applications that are likely well-formed in one way or another. PG has said that the hard part is finding something exceptional in an application that would put it over the top.
I couldn't raise 10K to build a prototype. Had to earn the cash the ol' fashioned way. Unless a handshake and a smile can get money from someone you know, raising cash is frikkin' hard.
I think that trivializes the process. There are now multiple incubators, but about two orders of magnitude more looking for spots. Y Combinator gets thousands of applications for a few dozen spots. Tech Stars Boulder got 600 apps IIRC, and only 10 get in the program. Early stage money gets trivially easy if you're in one (especially YC or TS), but getting further funding is still a time drain, and now you're competing with the 100+ incubator-based startups for VC/Angel money.
I do agree about cap tables. With less money needed to start a company, the equity normally given to investors can (and should) go to employees. It's an opportunity for many who have talent to get a bigger reward for their hard work.