It's absolutely a side project for the founding team at this point. That's the secret sauce that lets us recruit from the best players in the industry to help advise the class.
With so much great opportunity out there, the most valuable thing we (creators) have is our time, and weekends belong to us. So let's do something amazing with that time that has tremendous upside.
I can't help but notice you side stepped most of his questions. OoTheNigerian asked about YOU and what YOU'VE done. You hardly said anything about yourself and keep alluding to this "founding team" which you also don't give any details about.
The problem is credibility. How are we supposed to share our ideas with you and do business with your organization if we know nothing about who is behind it. Where are your credentials? How does this being a side project for the "founding team" equal your "secret sauce" to recruiting the "best players in the industry" to advise your companies? If we know nothing about you, and neither do your great advisors, what is their incentive to even be involved, let alone companies applying to your class?
Not to mention that with Dandelion taking 50% equity and your being required to give at least 1% equity to your class, you automatically start out owning less than half of your own company—and if you have multiple co-founders you personally know (verses the ones in the class) and share equity between them, you start off owning a pretty dismal share in your own venture.
I know personally I'm not very incentivized to know that if I have an idea for a product and I start a company through your incubator I enter the game already having lost at minimum 51% stake in my own efforts. I understand that you receive equity in other companies in your class, which is great for investment and money purposes if somebody else makes it big, but for would-be founders such as myself (especially early stage) we're more focused on building our own companies. I would rather have a larger stake in my own efforts than a smaller stake plus small stakes in 99 other companies. I don't think that makes me a selfish entrepreneur, either.
Edit: I notice you added your "More detail about the team is coming." in between when I started writing and when I posted. I would suggest that your credibility would have been helped by having the detail available from the beginning. As the cliché goes, you never get a second chance for a first impression. Still, though, I would be interested to read about your team.
Maybe the wording isn't clear. But Dandelion only gets half of whatever percentage a founder agrees to give up, which may be as little as 1%.
Please don't submit the application if you are not comfortable (we'll make some improvements to the site in the near future which ought to help). I talked with a lot of people about Dandelion at startup school and the response was pretty overwhelmingly positive, so I decided to post a link to the home page to HN in its current state of completion and polish.
Obviously full trust and transparency is essential. So feel free to email me and I'll give you a call or something to fill in any details (this applies to anyone who is interested).
Obviously the page of the site relating to the founding team is crucial and so I am (appropriately) reluctant to post it in haste.
Ah, I see. Maybe I did read it wrong. Sorry about that.
Still I would think that credibility and trust is hampered by lack of information about the people behind it. I don't doubt there is more to the plan/idea than is represented on the site, but unfortunately when it's a flat website of "Coming Soon" you can't really find answers to your questions. I probably would have stated on the front page that more information is coming soon. Like someone else said I had the impression that it was already established and operational and I had only just heard about it. The copy is definitely written in this way. Like most people I clicked through the tabs for more information and was disappointed seven times in a row.
Anyway, </whine>. Good luck with it! I'll keep an eye on it to see the details that come out. :)
OK thanks for the constructive feedback. I consider the overall feedback from HN to have been extremely positive and will incorporate all of the suggestions.
The concept has a few chicken/egg issues with ramp up, but why let that get in the way :)
