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Not sure if it's beneficial to spend 1 month in SV or not. It's probably not where you'll build your company as an international early-stage founder. It's more of a distraction than anything.
Agree, sounds like an expensive and time consuming distraction.

You could live in Eastern Europe for a year for less than a month of SV costs. A least that's what's I'm doing.

But I assume the goal here is to try to build a unicorn and network for raising VC funds.

yep, it's safe, has fast internet and cheap. A founder buddy of mine found a tiny office in downtown Budapest for 90 euros a month, he moved in there and slept/worked out of there. Almost infinite burnrate on a shoestring budget.
Actually somebody should figure that out. Start a fund that stations it's founders in some cheap locale to build.
"48,840 is the current score required for Pioneer review."

Looks like a tall hill to climb if you are just starting. How is a new contestant supposed to compete with old contestants?

Don't know if SV specifically makes a difference but my lasting relationships from when I was in 500 startups were the in person fellow founders/startup folks that were grinding day in and day out.

Literally visited one that I befriended 10+ years ago that is back in Europe/Germany!

We're actually trying to recreate the experience by doing a yearly remote retreat where we all pitch in and get a nice Airbnb in an amazing location to work, eat, play (nights and weekends) together.

I'm the submitter, but I'm wondering: "spend a month together in Silicon Valley" sounds like for meeting potential investors. But dont we have Covid preventing people from meeting face to face?
P.S. If Silicon Valley is inaccessible due to Covid, we will re-create the IRL period in another startup hub, such as London. We will try our damnedest to make Silicon Valley work.

Taken from https://pioneer.app/blog/announcing-pioneer-3/

I like to think that pioneer.app (by former YC alum Daniel Gross [0]) is going back to the roots of the early YC model and a rethink on YC's Startup School program. I've seen some pretty great products built by "pioneers" over the years, though I must say, the gamification aspect of it isn't for everyone.

Link to Pioneer 3 announcement: https://pioneer.app/blog/announcing-pioneer-3/

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841429