I doubt there's any endgame. For the price of some unused office space they get smart people to bounce ideas off, free introductions to anyone the founders know who can help their business, and a bunch of publicity. It's the same reason why already established people often like to cowork.
Hmm... I understand the coworking benefits, and the opportunity to either sell Red Gate products or invest in a later stage that babul mentioned, but this is still a huge investment.
Living expenses for 10 weeks and meals for however many people, plus high-profile speakers? This is going to be expensive, even with the benefits you two mentioned.
Just a note: I'm not "suspicious" of Red Gate's motives (I believe them when they say that this is catch-free and that they made this program to help others); I'm curious as to who is funding this and why.
I think this is a great move, and I know and can happily vouch for the people behind it. Neil has been a big fan of Y-Combinator and that is clearly part of the inspiration.
As for their motives, I see part of it is about 'real-world karma', and part of it is that it's really not a huge cost to them with a range of benefits.
Providing (presumably spare) office space and canteen meals (albeit in their nice company restaurant) to a small team for 10 weeks isn't going to be a huge cost to a company that employs 160 people.
If the startups they have fail, but they have smart people, then it's potentially cheap recruitment for them (it costs about US$10k on average to recruit an average software developer in Cambridge via agencies). If the companies succeed, at least to the point of getting a promising product, then presumably it provides a range of commercial opportunities.
I think this is a great move, and something I hope other companies might follow. Red Gate are in the fortunate position of being profitable and not having external shareholders to worry about, which has perhaps made this easier for them to do. But if they can demonstrate the model can work, then it will make it easier for others to copy.
