Incubators are now an industry segment in their own right. Before starting YouWeb Incubator in 2007, I began to explore the idea of an incubator with friends and colleagues. Most people told me that Idealab and CMGI had tried the model in the 1990s and didn’t really work out (with the exception of Overture, which spun out of Idealab). CMGI imploded in the dot-com bust.

However, I noticed one model gearing up: Y Combinator by Paul Graham. At least in Silicon Valley, YC was pretty much the only well-known incubator. Today the total number of incubators (broadly defined to include incubators, accelerators, and “seed starter funds”) must be in the hundreds, each one slightly different from the other — versus a few years ago, when the space had YC, TechStars, YouWeb, Idealab and a couple of others.

To read the original article: 90% Of Incubators And Accelerators Will Fail And That’s Just Fine For America And The World | TechCrunch