Yipes, these guys are even worse plagiarists than Techstars. There are whole chunks of near verbatim text.

http://www.iventures10.com/funding.html

The deadline was in Feb though. How can I have never heard of this? Did they even go ahead with this thing, or did they build the site and then change their minds?

Maybe because it's in Illinois? I just happened across it following links from the 5 posts jtame just put up.

I was involved in this competition, although I got accepted to interview with them, I wasn't accepted for the summer.

I got sidetracked with a fairly crazy idea and went out on a whim. I should have done something closer to my own expertise, and didn't build a prototype. Very difficult to pitch without a prototype.

My actual interview was a disaster. I had 3 backups of the PowerPoint, but they were all old copies (LOL). I had to give the presentation from Contingency Plan #4, hand-outs ;)

Way too eerie. It's like that Bizarro world episode of Seinfeld -- things are the same yet completely opposite.

Did they even attempt to copy YC's team structure?: http://www.illinoisventures.com/ourteam.html

I don't know how competent their application makes them seem...

"Week 9: Business model stuff"

The CS community, at least in my opinion, hates business jargon. They're trying to make it as CS-friendly as possible, I believe.

"IllinoisVENTURES is a seed and early-stage technology venture capital firm focused on research-derived companies in information technologies, physical sciences and life sciences, with a particular emphasis on those deriving from research conducted at the University of Illinois and other regional research institutions."

Also, look at their portfolio companies. I wouldn't say they are as software oriented as programs such as YC.

Regardless, they come off rather unprofessional.

Guess they failed at that.

That is some impressively bad 1990s style frame usage.

They get bonus points for asking for the application in plain text though.

I'm sure if they hadn't plagiarized the YC form, they would have asked you to submit a crappy Word document.