Should you join an incubator such as Y-Combinator, the Founder Institute or TechStars? Or just go out on your own and raise money like Brian Wong (Kiip) just did at the sweet age of 19? That was the topic of the Incubator panel at the Founder Conference, with Ivan Kirigin of TipJoy (YCombinator Alumni), Lecole Cole of Skydera (Founder Institute Graduate) and Emily Olson of Foodzie (TechStars Alumni).

Beyond discussing underage drinking and how good the food is, we covered more serious topics such as: is giving away equity worth the experience, what you are really gaining in return, and more.

Enjoy the 45 minutes of open discussion.

More videos of the Founder Conference coming soon.

If you are like almost everyone else, you didn’t make it. Now what? Exactly what did you lose by not making it to one of those two prestigious startup accelerator programs?

Money

You didn’t receive $15,000 in funding. Big deal. There is nothing that $15K buys that will make or break your startup.

You could have bought two months of fancy Web 2.0 PR (Public Relations), resulting in three articles bringing you 4,000 visitors to your site. You can do the same at no cost in about 30 minutes of effort.

You could have paid a graphic designer to make a flashy new home page for your site with lots of transparency effects. Instead of signing a fancy contract with a design house, you’ll have to be more creative and find a good graphic design student who will work for spare change.

But in the process you’ll learn a valuable lesson: “Cash is king” actually works against “ramen profitability“, meaning that when you have the cash, all kinds of service providers will happily take it from you and tell you how wonderful you are. It’s when you don’t have any cash and you need to convince people to stick their neck out that you find out who your real friends are.

Notoriety

Also known as bragging rights, it always looks good to say that you are part of a happy few. There is only one problem: your customers couldn’t care less. The VCs will care. Your entrepreneur buddies will revere you. All in all, it’s a small group of people.

What about those glowing articles in the New York Times? Only a handful of the 50+ companies that make it to such programs are actually featured with any significant visibility. If you were one of those, you’d learn something surprising: print media generates very little traffic.

Advice

Both Y-Combinator and TechStars will give you a lot of advice covering extensive aspects of starting a startup, from accounting to PR to term sheets negotiations. It’s great if you are the kind who learns by sitting passively on a chair listening to someone [EDIT: Paul Graham corrected me about YC's program: "Nearly all interactions we have with startups are about their specific situation: things like what features to build first, when to launch, what to say on the frontpage, how to deal with specific investors they're talking to, etc"].

If instead you have developed a habit of googling a topic to death, you probably can do without the classroom. There is so much information available online, you can quickly catch up on the topic you don’t know, on your own.

In the worst case, you an simply watch taped versions of those classes, since they are usually recorded and made available online.

Contacts

Frankly, in my opinion the best value is the contacts you make during and because of the program. You’ll meet people unexpectedly that will contribute and improve your startup in ways you couldn’t predict.

Maybe it’s an angel who loves your idea and writes you a check – a common fantasy. More likely, it’s a fellow entrepreneur who makes a side remark that changes the way you think about your product or market. Or a serial entrepreneur who makes an introduction to setup a key partnership.

Again, you don’t need a YC or TechStars badge to establish those contacts and foster those serendipitous moments. If you are truly motivated, a trip to Silicon Valley can be very cheap: find some friends, stay with them for free, and attend every party and function you possibly can find. Over two weeks, you will have met more people and made more contacts than you would during an entire YC program.

Again, success is under your control. You can make it happen.

Conclusion

Do you feel better yet?

The best advice I ever got: whenever you have the choice between worrying about what will happen, applying to a program, preparing a presentation, or making progress on your product… always choose the latter. Keep coding. Ignore the distractions. You’ll end up ahead.

That being said, I wish you the best of luck. It is great when you do get selected to one of those programs!