The discussion in the "What's the lowest offer you'd take" thread gave me an interesting idea for a related question:
Suppose you've just been accepted to the SFP. In addition, you have someone else offering each founder $N to turn down YC and abandon the startup. You're allowed to go straight on to starting some other startup, but you're not allowed to work on any related idea or work with any of your current cofounders. What's the lowest value of N you'd take?
I have three things going for me and my startup right now: a good idea, a great cofounder, and a uniquely low opportunity cost because I'll be graduating from college right before I start. Together, I value those things at about $250k. Having YC's offer in hand would increase that but only by maybe $100k, because I reason that if I can get accepted once, then I can probably get accepted a second time given a similarly good idea and cofounder.
What a strange question, perhaps I've missed the point.
"If you were accepted to the SFP how much money would it take for you to turn it down?"
For me SFP isnt about money, its about the experience. I want to build something great and be a part of a community of people who enjoy doing this. After seeing the YC dinner on Justin.tv and talking to people I've met on news.yc I'm more certain than ever that this is what I want to do. If I was offered a place in the SFP, no amount of money would stop me.
I'm not asking how much you'd have to be paid to throw away that experience forever. My answer to that question would be a lot more than $350k. I'm just asking how much you'd have to be paid to throw away your current progress and roll the dice again. If you're confident in your abilities, then that shouldn't be all that frightening.
Also, if you're in it mostly for the warm fuzzies, then YC is not the only game in town. You could find a similar experience by going to a top grad school, or mentoring at Mathcamp (http://www.mathcamp.org), or interning at Google. I'd rather do the SFP than any of those things, but not by such an enormous margin that I can't put a dollar value on it.
Suppose you've just been accepted to the SFP. In addition, you have someone else offering each founder $N to turn down YC and abandon the startup. You're allowed to go straight on to starting some other startup, but you're not allowed to work on any related idea or work with any of your current cofounders. What's the lowest value of N you'd take?
I have three things going for me and my startup right now: a good idea, a great cofounder, and a uniquely low opportunity cost because I'll be graduating from college right before I start. Together, I value those things at about $250k. Having YC's offer in hand would increase that but only by maybe $100k, because I reason that if I can get accepted once, then I can probably get accepted a second time given a similarly good idea and cofounder.