Video interview from Silicon Valley. Max Skibinsky - serial entrepreneur, business angel and incubator mentor 500 Startups

Max Skibinsky is a fairly well-known person, a successful serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, a business angel and mentor of one of the world's best start-up accelerators, 500 Startups. In 2010, he sold his company Hive7 for $ 5.7 million, and also passed YCombinator - a top business accelerator. In addition to his business projects, Max helps prepare start-ups to go to the leading business accelerators: YCombinator and 500 Startups. The main question of the interview is: at what stage in the life of a startup / project do you need to apply for a business accelerator and look for investments?

In general, I wanted to meet with Max not to discuss superficial issues, but to communicate on deeper topics that are interesting to me as an entrepreneur. And since the discussion may be of interest not only for me, I decided to share with everyone and suggested that Max talk in the interview format on camera. To add action, I presented a real Internet project to Max, which is at an early stage of development (you should not do this at all, attention, do not repeat this at home!) - see clearly what comes out of it.

The interview turned out to be rather long, but dynamic and positive. Below is a list of questions, so that there is an idea of ​​what the conversation is about.

Tell me what you do?
You said you want to create your accelerator?
What percentage of Russian startups of those with whom you work?
By what criteria do you decide whether you will work with this stepmaster?
Can you name the main mistakes of young startups?
Is the start-up boom going on, or is it going to decline? Why did YCombinator take less startups?
At what stage is it best to apply to the accelerator?
Are recommendations important when submitting an application to the accelerator?
Let's take a look at a specific example, show a real project at the development stage.
What do you focus on when you provide mentoring assistance?
The main reason to get into the incubator is money or time saved?
Roughly speaking, do you put a "=" sign between the incubator and the accelerator? "
To get into the top-level incubator, you need to do a working business and prove the possibility of its scaling?
YCombinator accepts startups that already have some investors?
What do you mean by saying “Russian startup”?
It turns out that the Russian startup in all respects loses to American startups, and the only chance to achieve something only through hard work?
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One of the main conclusions: no one cares (with rare exceptions) start-ups / projects that are not at the “working business with customers” stage. No one will give investments, will not accept a project at the idea stage and even at the prototype stage in the accelerator / incubator. First you need to build a business on your own, and then look for investments.

This is my first interview, there are some shortcomings, let me know if such interviews are interesting in principle. I occasionally visit Silicon Valley, meet interesting people and can do many more such interviews. Who would you like to see the interview with? What topics? Write in the comments. Subscribe to the channel if you want to follow the updates (new interviews).

PS: please let me know if someone wants to help with the text decoding - I simply don’t have time for this, but it would be great if someone could do it.