YC doesn’t seem like a good example of avoiding geographic clustering effects. You are required to move your company to the San Francisco area while you are going through YC, and PG (cofounder of YC) has written about why founders should move to startup hubs. One of the weirdest parts of my personal YC experience was how they paid to fly me to Mountain View and stay a couple nights in a (ridiculously overpriced, IMO) airbnb, just to have a short conversation with me because they think being in person is so important.
One thing which did differentiate YC when they started is that they had “soft” adds: they offer you a lot of connections and advice, in addition to just money. Possibly more grantmakers should do this, but I’m not sure.
YC doesn’t seem like a good example of avoiding geographic clustering effects. You are required to move your company to the San Francisco area while you are going through YC, and PG (cofounder of YC) has written about why founders should move to startup hubs. One of the weirdest parts of my personal YC experience was how they paid to fly me to Mountain View and stay a couple nights in a (ridiculously overpriced, IMO) airbnb, just to have a short conversation with me because they think being in person is so important.
One thing which did differentiate YC when they started is that they had “soft” adds: they offer you a lot of connections and advice, in addition to just money. Possibly more grantmakers should do this, but I’m not sure.