Y Combinator Combinator 2014
Now accepting applications
Do you long to be a part of the startup world, but have no business ideas and little money? Do you enjoy hosting dinners, renting office equipment, and listening to young people stumble through clumsy presentation rehearsals? Do you think Silicon Valley would be a better place if only there were a few dozen more companies aspiring to be the next Facebook?
If so, then you should apply for Y Combinator Combinator 2014, the first startup accelerator accelerator, designed to help provide seed money, advice, and connections to people looking to start their own startup accelerators. If you’ve previously tried renting a warehouse and enticing young tech entrepreneurs to give you 6 percent equity in their companies in exchange for the use of your fax machine and some venture capitalist business cards you found in a trash can — but thus far you’ve failed to find the next Twitter — then our three-month program may be for you.
What happens at Y Combinator Combinator?
The better question is what doesn’t happen at Y Combinator Combinator. First, we give you a desk. Then we place that desk among a whole bunch of other desks that we’ve given to people just like you — people who want to get aspiring entrepreneurs to believe they have value to add, and give them equity in exchange for virtually nothing.
In three months, through the magic of synergy, connections, teamwork, introductions, partnerships, alliances, unity, harmony, symbiosis, and the use of an online thesaurus, everything comes together to turn you from an unemployed ex-barista into a leader of a quasi-legitimate startup accelerator ready to open up applications for its very first cycle.
But of course there’s more. We sometimes give you dinner.
Dinner.
Dinner is crucial to your experience at Y Combinator Combinator. Because without dinner, you starve.
Also, we invite people to talk to you at dinner, and provide valuable wisdom to help you build your accelerator and get it off the ground. Our dinners are legendary for inspiring day-long debates about whether young entrepreneurs will be more enticed by an accelerator that takes them to play laser tag or an accelerator that gives them paintball guns to use in their workspace.
Planned dinner topics include:
- Ways to say “equity” without making people realize you’re taking a piece of their company.
- Nodding enthusiastically even when you don’t understand anything about the technology being discussed.
- Best online sites for making and ordering customized t-shirts that can fool college students into believing you are a legitimate entity.
- How to teach someone basic PowerPoint even if you’ve never given a presentation in your entire life.
- Convincing your unemployed friends to show up to Demo Day and act like potential investors, in exchange for a free dinner.
- Finding abandoned warehouse space and letting your teams squat in it for three months while pretending you own it.
- Developing an application process that makes you seem highly selective, even though you’re desperate for anyone willing to give you a piece of their company.
And there’s more.
Why be just another startup accelerator in an industry filled with startup accelerators? We’ll help you develop your own unique niche in the marketplace. You can be the first startup accelerator designed exclusively for medical equipment technology companies based in the Mountain Time Zone. Or copper-based consumer packaged goods that rely on wind power in their factories. Or the first startup accelerator devoted to the growth and development of new startup accelerators. Oh, wait, that’s us.
But what does Y Combinator Combinator get in exchange?
For the workspace we provide, the introductions and connections, the off-the-record dinners, one free t-shirt, a stress ball, two pens, access to our climbing wall, and three official, limited-edition Y Combinator Combinator water bottles, we ask for 6 percent of any money you make doing anything over the course of your lifetime. And $25,000. Because it’s expensive to run a startup accelerator accelator, and we all need to pitch in and share the cost.
Our selective application is only available to the first 1,000 people who request it, so be sure to contact us immediately. There’s a desk in an abandoned warehouse with your name on it. (Note: Please remove your name from the desk before the program ends or we won’t get back our security deposit. Thanks.)
