Definite PR article for EF. I live in Shoreditch, have my own startup, go to a lot of events and have barely heard of them. The events I've got more out of include:
http://3-beards.com/dontpitchmebro - Interesting pitches, usually very high quality. The group that run it do a lot of cool startup events.
Lately the best meetup has been "lean coffee" (http://leancoffee.org/) , the quality of people and feedback I have got from that meeting has been superb. I suggest starting one in your area.
Overall I am negative on accelerators. Perhaps I am bias as I have enough savings/income from an existing small business that I don't need my living expenses paid for what I think may be giving away too much of your business. Though I look forward to reading other peoples experiences.
>Overall I am negative on accelerators. Perhaps I am bias as I have enough savings/income from an existing small business that I don't need my living expenses paid for what I think may be giving away too much of your business. Though I look forward to reading other peoples experiences.
If having cash lying around from a previous business/startup attempt was a pre requisite to starting a startup are you not creating a sort of catch 22 scenario for the whole ecosystem? The current accelerator model seems very completely sensible given the level uncertainty involved in startups and has plenty of successful examples including YCombinator.
Have you specific reason to not like accelerators?
I personally agree with Ryan. The whole accelerator ecosystem is designed for the final benefit of VCs. It is like some clever fox built a pen, where the hen are competing to get more fat for the feast of the fox. If you managed to get enough for your own good, why the heck you need to work harder and trouble people just to enrich one more VC?
I don't agree with this (EF#3 Cohort Member). I was pretty sceptical of accelerators before joining EF, and remain sceptical of VCs, but I found EF really useful for things that I just would not have seen coming (someone else has mentioned "unknown unknowns" which sums it up fairly well).
http://3-beards.com/dontpitchmebro - Interesting pitches, usually very high quality. The group that run it do a lot of cool startup events.
http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/ - Geeky fun, though has been getting increasingly commercial
Lately the best meetup has been "lean coffee" (http://leancoffee.org/) , the quality of people and feedback I have got from that meeting has been superb. I suggest starting one in your area.
Overall I am negative on accelerators. Perhaps I am bias as I have enough savings/income from an existing small business that I don't need my living expenses paid for what I think may be giving away too much of your business. Though I look forward to reading other peoples experiences.