Is Buildspace the next YC?

Yo guys

Sorry for the fat break I took from the newsletter.

Here’s a banger post to make up for that!

I just spent 11 of the best weeks of my life at the Buildspace in-person campus in sf.

• 77 days

• 35 homies

• 0 billion $ companies (yet)

I learnt a lot. Here are some thoughts:

firstly, what is buildspace?

buildspace is a place where anyone can work on their ideas. it is an education company

they run a 6 week nights & weekends online program + in person cohorts in SF (i just took part in the second batch called sf2)

@Farza gonna hate me for this but:

Is buildspace the next YC? 🧵

ft. excerpts from @paulg 2013 blog post “How Y combinator got started"

kinda?

not really:

- because right now they don't invest money in buildspacers so can't have proven track record number stuff for money people to see, understand and compare to peers

- not everyone is working on a startup

yes because:

- its an 11 week program in SF for people who wanna work on their ideas

- I think over the next 10 years buildspace is going to change how people approach startups and building a business and how investors approach investing in startups

kinda like YC did all those years ago

YCs first project was the Summer Founders Program, an experimental replacement for the conventional summer job. that's it.

The ecosystem of startup funding with incubators and accelerators, the way it is now, wasn't a thing back in the early 2000s

"I (Paul) had been telling Jessica all the things they should change about the VC business — essentially the ideas now underlying Y Combinator: investors should be making more, smaller investments, they should be funding hackers instead of suits, they should be willing to fund younger founders, etc."

at the time these were radical original ideas for the venture industry

YC was the first accelerator before they even knew it themselves.

I believe buildspace and what they’re doing is in a similar vein

here's pg talking about the YC early days:

"It's hard for people to realize now how inconsequential YC seemed at the time. I can't blame people who didn't take us seriously, because we ourselves didn't take that first summer program seriously in the very beginning. But as the summer progressed we were increasingly impressed by how well the startups were doing."

this is how the buildspace team talks about the campus cohorts. they don't really know what they're doing.

but somehow, some way it works.

"Other people started to be impressed too. Jessica and I invented a term, "the Y Combinator effect," to describe the moment when the realization hit someone that YC was not totally lame."

“Now YC is well enough known that people are no longer surprised when the companies we fund are legit, but it took a while for reputation to catch up with reality. YC itself was dismissed as a toy idea initially."

the success buildspace 'projects' will see- not just the campus batches but also nights and weekends- is gonna surprise a lot of people

I think that buildspace, without really meaning to, is challenging the way startups have been funded and built for the last 10 years

I have no idea if what buildspace is doing as an education company can be counted under the venture industry

but there’s a lot venture can learn from what they’re doing

similar to YC in 2005, there's a couple of questions it asks the venture model

why aim for a billion dollar valuation from the start? why should you build a pitch deck and learn how to pitch before building a business? why try to raise money first and then constantly focus on the next raise? why focus on growth at all costs? why not just start on your nights and weekends?

why not build your startup around your passion, it's hard as fuck anyways.

Farza and co. are building a one of a kind company that no one has really seen before

They’re gonna change the way we view edtech and education in general.

Or they’ll fail trying. But what an attempt it would’ve been

(tbh they don't really know what they're doing but I think that's how it should be)

the top education companies in the world are textbook companies or they sell courses. education companies have never really seen the highs that other industries have.

maybe there's a different business model for education

it makes sense for an education company to benefit from the success of its students and what they may build, rather than preparing to send them for jobs

It’s gonna take a while to see where the sf1 + sf2 batches end up

People have no idea what’s coming their way

Buildspace may not have founders exiting with $1m ARR but there’s just something special about it

I can’t quite put my finger on it yet but it’s there.

It’s giving people the tools to sustainably build on their passions and make it full time

It’s not meant for someone taking a moonshot and spending millions on their company

A lot of idiots can build a company with millions of dollars

But following your passions for no reward and making that your living is insanely difficult

startup founders need that resilience and the freedom to build a business that suits their needs. they dont need to fit into the parameters of a venture scale idea

I appreciate everyone who read all the way here!

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