

How Philadelphia incubator DreamIt Ventures wants to improve on Y Combinator model - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/10/06/y-combinator-recombined-talking-with-philadelphia-startup-incubator-dreamit-ventures/

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fallentimes
Two comments:

1\. Philadelphia is a mediocre city for startups, not only because it's sort
of boring, but because there's NO INVESTOR MONEY THERE. That's the number one
determinant of where startups are and thrive. Hi SF, Boston, NYC.

2\. What's up with dreamit's website? <http://www.dreamitventures.com/>

_Live Your Dream!_ \- Do they want me to sell knives or something?

As a founder I'm all for anything that gives entrepreneurs capital to build
their own companies and increases the level of competition, but something just
seems...off.

EDIT: No idea why I typed Midwest. Reading about my beloved Detroit Lions and
writing on HN is not smart. Rich zip codes don't matter much. Investors do. I
thought it was obvious I was talking about investor capital, but I updated
that as well.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
Midwest WTF?

There is a serious amount of capital around Philadelphia. It has a couple of
the richest zip codes in the country. You just don't know what you're talking
about.

~~~
fallentimes
haha that was my bad, corrected.

Just because the zip code is rich doesn't mean the area is full of startup
investors. Maybe I should up & move to Beverly Hills, Palm Beach or New
Canaan. Come on.

I didn't say it was awful, it's just not very good.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
> doesn't mean the area is full of startup investors

I'm sorry, I forgot startup just means webtard 2.0 stuff around here. New
profitable companies that work with elevators or pharmaceutical plant
operations don't count.

~~~
fallentimes
We're profitable. And so were my two businesses (one website, one not) before
this one.

I get what you're saying, but I believe the article was talking about
startup/website/application investments not traditional brick & mortar
businesses.

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cera
I love it when people that live in the Philly burbs bash the city. This is a
lifestyle choice ... you're either a suburbanite or a city slicker. My opinion
is that these likely don't mix well in any city.

There are plenty of neighborhoods in the city that are great places to live
and are safe. I live in West Philly (Univ City), I walk 12 blocks to the
office of my startup everyday, and I absolutely love it.

I posted other comments about Philly on news.yc a few weeks ago:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295277>

------
drusenko
"So, with the help of the strategists and the professional firms we were able
to throw a few more resources at the teams. We got a local marketing firm to
donate some strategizing help. We wanted to set up an infrastructure for each
team that they could potentially build around. And it worked out really,
really well. I know that some of the DreamIt companies ended up getting quite
a few people from these partners companies to be on their boards."

Having people on the board of directors of your company from the local
accounting and marketing firms? That's just really weird.

A board position is certainly not something to be handed out lightly, should
reflect the ownership of the company, and definitely not something you're
"lucky to have people on".

~~~
hugh
Perhaps they mean an advisory board rather than a board of directors?

~~~
drusenko
it's certainly possible, although "board" usually refers to the board of
directors.

~~~
cera
As someone that went through the program, I can say that it's the advisory
board.

------
shedd
Good overview of the motivations behind the DreamIt program as it ran this
past summer, but it does cover any of the apparent upcoming changes to the
DreamIt model which were mentioned
([http://www.psustartups.com/content/2008/09/25/ignitephilly-a...](http://www.psustartups.com/content/2008/09/25/ignitephilly-
and-dreamit-news/)) in Steve Welch's (another of the DreamIt founders)
ignitePhilly talk, including the so called "Hacker Track".

~~~
umjames
_the next DreamIt program will be (or include?) “Hacker Track”, which will
address the problem DreamIt noted that was there were a lot of great ideas,
without the technical developers to implement them. Steve mentions that this
Hacker Track will allow hackers to apply and they’ll be teamed up (I’m
assuming) with teams with business skills, but in need of technical
assistance._

As someone from the Philly suburbs, I would say this sums up the problem. How
is this that different from a consulting gig from the point of view of the
hacker? I can already see the nightmares of business-bred founders bombarding
the hacker(s) with requirements that reflect their understanding of computers
as some sort of magic box. I wonder how often this sort of situation occurs at
YC.

That being said, if anyone can bring decent tech entrepreneurship to Philly, I
support the idea. God knows Philly needs it in the worst way.

------
redorb
The problem with dreamIT is the name of the companies it founds, all 2.0 :(

scvngr.mobi vuzit.com phrazit.com beanstockd.com anthillz.com trendient.com

* I know you can't just the by their name, but the truth is a lot of people do. (and yes I know about F'ing Google.com)

------
villanovalaw
Philadelphia > Anywhere in Jersey

~~~
Zev
I'd take Jersey over Philly, if only because the parts of Jersey that i'd live
in are closer to NYC then Philly is. But that's got more to do with my
personal biases then any business decision.

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paulgb
Wasn't this the incubator that lifted YC's application form nearly word-for-
word?

~~~
blakeweb
Nope, you're thinking of Founder's Coop in portland.

Here's the discussion on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=164892>

They actually have updated their application to include a thank-you to YC:
<http://www.founderscoop.com/apply.php>

~~~
paulgb
Cool, it's nice to see credit where it is due.

------
kingkongrevenge
The problem with Philadelphia is the City of Philadelphia. The surrounding
suburbs have tons of capital and businesses and highly educated people and
very nice neighborhoods. The city itself is a hopeless basket-case. It just
seems to me that you can't make the leap into being a first tier metro region
without desirable urban neighborhoods. I've read that younger people leave
Pennsylvania not for lack of jobs or for notably better wages, but because
it's boring.

~~~
tyler
As someone who left Pennsylvania: Dead on.

~~~
sjs382
As a resident of Pittsburgh, I disagree. :)

