It's the "wild goose chase" business model. You tie up a bunch of capable guys/gals with some money and prevent them from working on something that might harm some of your other investments and/or prevent them from getting into the hands of other angels/vc's. If the idea fails you then pivot the team into one of your other investments. If the idea succeeds you make a profit off of that. So in essence tie up the team. Companies have been doing this for years, tying up the best legal minds so their competitors don't get to use them.
After all, YC will invest even if you don't have an idea. So what's the big leap if you have a mediocre idea and they manage to tie you up and then steer you to another idea with a little investment?
This is such a cynical and negative comment. The only purpose it serves is to belittle the founder's motivations, as well as belittling YC's tireless efforts. Ugh, just thinking about such a negative comment has put me in a bad mood :(
"prevent them from getting into the hands of other angels/vc's."
I'm going to pay you a complement here to get you out of your bad mood.
Your team is a perfect example of what I meant. I went and took a look at clutch.io. It looks beautiful and it's obvious you and your co-founder are very talented and will create something great even if the market for clutch.io isn't that large (I don't know what the market is, I'm just saying "if" it isn't that large). So if you pitched me and said you wanted funding you would be exactly the type of person that I'd want to "tie up". Nothing wrong with that.
But it does look like a great idea. My question as an investor would be "how large of a market is there" but the fact that you have talent means any investment will pay off in the long run.
On the other hand, I think this is a wild goose chase in a different way. It is a talented team that is solving a genuine problem. Today for me to share large files I need to use dropbox. The problem with dropbox is that it needs a sync based solution, that counts towards your quota. Agreed, you can share and then delete once received. But something lightweight like kicksend is a breath of fresh air to use.
Anyway, the wild goose chase here might be that there might never be a business model here, but if the team can solve certain problems then they align themselves to be bought over by a 'big one'. Some of the problems that the team could be genuinely solving:
- Ease the sharing process
- Optimal data compression and bandwidht reduction on the server side
- Privacy
etc...
I would not for once think that the team is doing this 'cos someone else wants them to.
After all, YC will invest even if you don't have an idea. So what's the big leap if you have a mediocre idea and they manage to tie you up and then steer you to another idea with a little investment?