Funding software innovation

Startup accelerators like Y Combinator leave a lot to be desired, and not just because I'm salty about my past 8 applications being rejected. For one thing, accelerators obviously don't do much good for open-source developers or anyone else who is mostly interested in building public goods. But even if we restrict our focus to those who want to be founders, the reality is that it can take years for a nascent idea or desire to mature into a real business. YC may be focused on early-stage companies, but sometimes even an early-stage company takes a long time to build.

That's been my experience, at least. My 4-year anniversary of quitting my job and going full-time on entrepreneurship was sometime last week. I've only been able to go at it this long thanks to, in order of significance, 1) living with family since the pandemic started, 2) my wife continuing to work until the pandemic started, 3) savings from the one year I spent as a regular software engineer.

This has been workable in my case, but it points to a lack of institutional support. Not everyone has the resources (or stakeholder buy-in) to take a 4-year sabbatical. We have institutional support for research—what if there was something like "going to grad school," but for open-source developers? Could it be scaled up enough so that people can actually get in without applying 8+ times?

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