> Not really a reason to pick techstars over another program

When was this a debate about picking techstars over any other program? The article relates to picking nothing as opposed to joining TechStars. I think these perks are a little harder to come by when you turn an accelerator down for the no op as opposed to "I picked accelerator B instead of accelerator A".

I'd tell you that if you wanted to do an apples to apples comparison of accelerators we should save that for another thread lest we get too off topic, but that hasn't stopped others in this thread from turning the article into a TS vs Other Accelerator debate, so why should it stop you?

It is always a debate about picking from the choices available. Just like the equity portion, it's all baked into the decision even if it's discussing the specific equity offer.

Not sure why you feel so passionately about this.

Disclaimer: I work for Google on Cloud Platform.

Yep, TechStars is just one of many incubators and accelerators we've partnered with (and we're happy to take more):

  https://cloud.google.com/startups

Why is it you focus specifically on accelerators? It seems to me that this both fails to help the start-ups that could most use the help and misses many of the very best start-ups that eschew accelerators altogether.

that is true of most of these programs.

I guess it's to avoid having to vet each request individually.

Accepting them without any check means I'd create a new "startup" for each random page I put on the internet just to get free stuff, but having to verify each request may become a pain point quickly. Being part of an accelerator means that the work has been done by someone else.

That's true.. but Amazon and BizSpark do not have the accelerator requirement* . Considering that those are Google Cloud's direct competitors, it's a fair question why they have that requirement when their competitors don't.

* (both programs give addtl resources if you're in an accelerator though - amazon portfolio package and bizspark plus respectively)

I agree this seems too be missing the largest percentage of startups who are no less deserving for this kind of help. Many good startups could use this help. It's not hard to figure out if it's a legitimate startup. Just make sure they're registered to do business (i.e., FEIN, tax ID, state license, etc.).