Ali Partovi Wants to Beat the Old YC - by Eric Newcomer
In December, in an interview with YC President Geoff Ralston, I wrote that the seemingly unrivaled startup accelerator wanted to grow to have 1,000 companies in a single batch.
Ralston bragged that he’s “not so interested in the competition” since YC has put itself “in a really unique position of sort of having the first choice, first look at almost every startup that matters.”
Ralston told me, “I worry less about the competition and more about disruption, which is future competition that I don’t understand yet.”
Partovi wants to create an elite accelerator for coders fresh out of top universities, or a few years into their first coding job. That’s who YC used to mostly attract.
“We are competing with Y Combinator circa 2010 or 2012,” Partovi told me. “Y Combinator today is not what we’re competing with. The top students from top universities aren’t applying to Y Combinator today.”
So today, Partovi is launching a 20-slot program called, the “Neo Accelerator.” It’s part of a fund that he’s been running for the last half decade that has been building a network of technically talented and diverse recent college graduates.
