In what sense is this 'freeing' the talent? We're not exactly in shackles here in London.
Also, the name HackFwd is a bit surprising since none of the people involved are hackers in my mind.
Update. The HackFwd people disagreed with me about my assessment of the people not being hackers. I asked them who they'd highlight as a hacker and they pointed to http://hackfwd.com/people#prof.-franz-guenthner
Second update. The more I think about it the more I think this whole 'freeing' thing is arrogant. Who the hell are these guys to set us free? Why begin by implying that we are not free?
I don't see anything objectionable in that beyond typical angel/incubator rhetoric. Isn't something like: "we provide the seed capital that frees up entrepreneurs to pursue their ideas", a pretty stock justification for the role they play?
Well, London is about as good as it gets in "Europe", of which a great deal remains where 'startups' are a something of a foreign notion. So I say the more the merrier, and things will sort themselves out.
I think all they wanted to imply is that they 'free' you from worrying about paying the bills and allowing you focus on your startup idea by matching your current salary. But I agree that the wording is unlucky and can be easily be misinterpreted.
It's been my experience that the people who are involved in, and want to be prominent in[1], venture/entrepreneurship/funding in Europe are cargo culters, and their idea of tact is not the same as in the UK/US - they also don't do a good job carrying off lovable arrogance, like Americans and Brits have much practice doing.
Case in point: ZenDesk. Their "here's our new price, this is transparent cuz we didn't charge you without telling you" bit and then their non-apology apology, and CEO's tweets complaining about their upset customers, etc.
That behavior, and this behavior, are cut from the same cloth.
I wish the above weren't my experience, seeing as I'm an American transplant in Austria, naturally. I'm invested in it NOT being that way. And yet, there it is.
[1] There are plenty of people in the venture/entrepreneurship/funding game in Europe who aren't like this, I imagine, but the prominence-seeking seems to be the indicator for being unlikably, and unjustifiably, arrogant.
EDIT: replaced start with number to solve formatting issue
The cliche with a little snippet of code asking the audience to raise hands ("look at us we're such nerds!")... Tasteful.
They spoke a lot but said nothing.
Somehow it's funny to see how the audience might be a little more informed than the presenters... Especially the question at around 23:00 to me seems like a big "fuck you" to the presenters. The sigh at 23.22 sends chills through my spine as the presenter knows that he hasn't got any clue of how to answer to that nerd-question - but he won't be able to admit that because then he wouldn't be such a nerd he thinks he is.
There's a lot of nay-saying going on here, so I'm going to throw out some cautious optimism:
This is somewhat non-obvious, but their copy is written against a background of other early stage investment stuff in continental europe. This sounds almost bizarre to Silicon Valley attuned ears, but funding hackers early stage doing original ideas is not common in Germany. It's encouraging to see people putting their money where their mouth is in hopes of changing that.
They do have a couple of folks that they've roped in, notably the Xing founder, who lend it some credibility.
27% is pretty steep, but hopefully that'll downshift some over time. The amounts that they're willing to invest for up to three person teams fall in the range of a decent early angel round, and it'd be nice to see the numbers fall closer to the expected dilution for such.
The biggest problem that I see is that it plays somewhat into the problematic mindset that's common in european would-be entrepreneurs: fear of risk. There are a lot of programs attempting to do that badly at the moment, grants from the state and whatnot, but they rarely produce good results.
Basically the people listed at HackFWD are the same type of people responsible "for grants from the state and whatnot" - so should anyone expect different results?
I have no idea what would make you say that. Their board includes the founder of Xing (German LinkedIn competitor that IPOed, #225 in global Alexa rankings and #15 in Germany) and StarOffice (which exited to Sun and became OpenOffice) and the other two are also founders that look like they have some credible experience. Those aren't exactly bureaucrats.
I'm not saying that they are bureaucrats, I was talking about the mindset. I know some guys from 'High Tech Gründerfond' (German state fond) and I really see no difference between them and HackFWD, only that they read something about YCombinator in 'Brand Eins' or on Techcrunch and now are trying to make a hyperbolic copycat of it...
Thanks for the lesson about Lars, not that I didn't knew it already ;)
That's not fair at all. If you look at the profile of the folks leading High Tech Gründerfonds one wouldn't assume that they are experienced in building companies (their backgrounds are in banking and consulting) and they also have a quota from the state to make a certain number of investments per year that they try to reach.
HackFwd doesn't look particularly similar to Y-Combinator and it's disingenuous to say that successful entrepreneurs (and active angel investors) are finding out about YC though Brand Eins. When I look at this I see it as a nice idea, with a competent team, with a couple of problems that look like they'll need adjustment along the way. I certainly wish them the best.
So, now, in like spirit, I'll write off your comments as the typical German nay-saying. ;-)
"I'll write off your comments as the typical German nay-saying."
Weels I can live with that. I usually keep my mouth shut about such things - it was just a little bit too funny to see it and as 'davidw' already said "...the more the merrier, and things will sort themselves out." :)
It doesn't seem honest about the options and outcomes in their chart. I immediately dislike that about this concept, instead of wanting to really help they make it seem like they are the only ones capable of launching startups. I understand the marketing aspect of it, but other organizations don't mock you for trying other routes and talking to some of the people, they are more than willing to help you regardless of whether you take their program/money or someone elses.
The site is just way too "IN YOUR FACE" for my liking.
Because it's so "IN YOUR FACE" and "made for nerds" I almost get a feeling that the whole thing is a huge insult to every serious hacker out there.
...Especially the flow chart seems so fucking insulting to me. Yaddayaddayaa, yes, every geek likes starwars & light sabers, yes we've read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, yes, we've seen the back to the future trilogy etc.
In my opinion, funding entrepreneurship shouldn't be about making jokes on stereotypes. We're talking about peoples livelihoods here - not about star wars kids.
I don't like it when non-technical people talk about geeks. It doesn't feel right. The reason this community works is because PG is a geek (or hacker or whatever word you want to use) so he immediately has credibility.
This Lars guy (and the others) are not. They have made money etc. (which makes me jealous), but they are not geeks. And they should not talk to us like that.
It's like when your parents attempt to use slang that doesn't come from their generation to appear trendy. They fail, and fail hard.
I know this Lars guy. He's not a programmer and he never claimed he is, but when I worked with him, he was able to patch up his own shell scripts, ssh into his web server and configure them without help. Later he did the smart thing and hired people more talented with tech than he is, and wasn't shy to admit this. Your geek score may be higher than his, but I'd definitely call him a geek. One thing is true, though - the fact that English isn't his first language may make his choice of words weird from time to time.
Proving the old cliche once again that "Europeans just don't get it". Compare and contrast with YCombinator, or if you think that's unfair because Y is so well-known, to the other tens of incubation/early acceleration programs in the US. I don't want to be too negative, but can't they at least get their HTML design more appetizing?
By "HTML design" do you mean the graphic design? In my eyes the site has an edgy, artsy, designer-y feel to it, are you put off by that? I found it more fun and exciting than YCombinator's or Seedcamp's sites or those of any VC I've ever seen (except maybe Sequoia). Of course an established investor/incubator/funding program doesn't need to rely on site design to communicate their awesomeness, but it seems like an obvious place to start differentiating and I don't agree that HackFwd's is "unappetizing" in any way.
Yes, I found the visual design to be interfering with the message (the animated logo is a poor choice, for example). You're right, it is edgy and artsy in a startup-y way. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that incubators should leave the edge to the startups they fund.
"Like a Klingon starship de-cloaking in the middle of Europe, Lars Hinrichs is putting his efforts onto a new startup investment vehicle dubbed HackFwd."
Agreed, but perhaps the article is referring to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in which Kirk decloaks the Klingon ship on Earth in the Bay Area (above SF IIRC).
I wonder what sort of equity Y Combinator would take if they ran a similar operation in Europe. Maybe 30% is more to do with business conditions than with HackFwd's own preference.
I don't know any specifics, but on Y Combinator's page they say:
"We make small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small stakes in the companies we fund (usually 2-10%)."
Which I assume means $20,000 = 10% (max of both ranges). So a 30% stake, at this stage, is worth $60,000, which is less than the salary of an average experienced programmer, so is it such a bad deal?
Also, the name HackFwd is a bit surprising since none of the people involved are hackers in my mind.
Update. The HackFwd people disagreed with me about my assessment of the people not being hackers. I asked them who they'd highlight as a hacker and they pointed to http://hackfwd.com/people#prof.-franz-guenthner
Second update. The more I think about it the more I think this whole 'freeing' thing is arrogant. Who the hell are these guys to set us free? Why begin by implying that we are not free?