> Pair them with mentors that are top founders and VCs

Super difficult to get right. From my very limited experience in New Zealand:

1: Good founders need to be self-starters and discover their own solutions in many areas where they are ignorant. Leaning on experts can be counter-productive for unobvious reasons. Having self-doubt and thinking experts know what they are doing is subtly wrong thinking. Founders need to havea lot of belief in themselves. I'm not sure you can encourage self-belief but I am sure many people kick it out of founders (I've been on the receiving end of some destructive people - I think they were well meaning but they didn't know how to empower). Listening to advice is often good, but ignoring advice is often critical.

2: many advisors don't know how to support founders. Advisors often want to pretend they know the answers and sometimes they play status games and knock down founders. I remember one arsehole bankrupt guy trying to be a mentor. Too many advisors have the wrong motivations.

3: VCs want to go big. I saw investors push founders in particular ways that were regularly unhelpful.

I'd love to see you succeed - there's a heap of talent that is out there.

I pretty much agree with each point. That said, I think when you work in the bay - by simply being around other successful founders and investors etc you get motivated and you learn from their mindset and approaches. At least this was quite helpful to me personally. As you say it's obviously pretty bad if its a situation where a founder simply like relies on an advisor and mentor. However, having mentors/friends that you can talk to, that can motivate you, and you can go for advice can be quite powerful especially if you aren't in the bay where there is already such a community.

All this of course depends on the quality of the mentors you can find, and the quality of the fellows - if the fellows are bad the mentors just won't give a shit. And also, this is definitely not a replacement for the personal discovery a founder needs to do

How did you get the experience in NZ ? Curious since I'm currently also in NZ and would like to learn a bit more about startups here.

We had an office at an incubator when we started our business. Facilities management saves a lot of headaches. We just paid rent, not equity.

I learnt a lot by watching the other companies make mistakes. Most valuably, we didn't chase investors. Saved our time and effort, focused on profitability, retained 100% ownership, and avoided any misaligned influence from investors.

A shared space or coworking with other startups is likely to be helpful I think. I like learning from peers.

I'd now consider moving to SV if I wanted to try founding again. Wellington if in NZ. Even though I suspect a good idea can work anywhere.

Happy to yack if you are in Christchurch. I'm pretty unfamiliar with other cities.

Could someone help me understand why this was flagged? (I have no affiliation and I never heard of them until I saw this post)

Because it's saying 'enough is enough and it’s time for Europe to grow balls and try do a startup initiative that one up’s the US'.

I don't know who flags that, but since the beginning of this administration, that's very obviously either extremely corrupt or working for a foreign hostile government, most of the topics detailing this obvious statement are silenced. Maybe it's bots, maybe a way for Musk employees to avoid cognitive dissonance and try to silence the opposing voices. Who knows.

But in case it's not clear, the whole Western world right now is realizing really quickly that US is no longer a viable long term partner. We're witnessing history in the making, enabled by a tech entrepreneur (or some may say a con man, both would be right), and we can't hold a discussion about it on Hacker News.

indeed

Perhaps try "A humble attempt to save the USA" and see if that gets flagged. The word naivety hardly does it justice.

You should cold message some big VC's or Founders in Europe with successful exit to start with, raising the money.

Also, you would be eligible for investment from other Non-profits later, when your fellowship starts making rounds and you can then ask other Non-profits to invest along you as well.

We've reached out to the VCs and big founders we know but indeed it's a good idea to simply cold reach out. Will get on that

You could try to contact Xavier Niel's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_F

  Give them 150k no strings attached

This is going to be your biggest problem in this fine idea.

Of course :), however unfortunately that's how we make a statement that this program competes with US alternatives. It's also how we avoid leaking the top talent to the US and end up with a non elite cohort

I doubt US elite but no-exit talent can make $150k just to prototype random ideas.

Thiel fellowship gives 100k

Silicon Valley/San Francisc/New York have insane cost of living.

> and end up with a non elite cohort

You don't have to worry about this. Ideas are what matter - American startups aren't spun from any special cloth or unique talent. That's jingoist hoo-haa.

Having worked for a few US-based startups, I can't help but roll my eyes when people venerate our business culture. At the bottom, startups are built with the cheapest foreign labor and shipped with the shittiest minimum viable product. Widespread success is attained less through iteration on innovation, and more through exploiting moral ambiguity and offshoring better than your competitors. You're not in a race to disrupt Apple and Google, you're in a race to find something equally as lucrative as an advertising or service monopoly. To beat America at it's own game, you'd have to import our own ignorant politics. Even China can't fully embrace that level of contradictory stupidity.

I guess that's not really a new opinion, and I'm sure HN will drag me for bringing it up. My $0.02 is that you don't want an American economy, and Europe will work very hard to ensure startups don't reprise the mistakes of America's most lucrative (and harmful) success stories.