If the Shoe Fits: Rarely Heard Truths about Accelerators
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
One question I constantly hear from entrepreneurs is “How do I get into an accelerator?”
My response is along the lines of, “Don’t!” And then give them all the reasons I believe that, in most cases, it’s a bad idea.
Few believe me, so I am hoping this TechCrunch post from Ashwin Ramasamy will convince them/you or at least make you think twice.
So a top accelerator [Y Combinator] states that it is a new form of funding. That begets a question “What are they not?”
If the goal of an accelerator is to get a startup funded, then the irony is telling. The goal of a startup is to grow rapidly from an idea to a sustainable business that solves a problem at scale while making money or building usage base. Funding does help in the “grow” part and/or the “rapidly” part. However many startups don’t grow. Here’s where accelerators could and should play a role and most don’t.
I’m on the advisory board of ZOOMPesa, a Toronto, Canada startup, and was very negative when the founder said we had been invited to join an accelerator called MaRS, assuming it was similar to the accelerators here.
Wow; was I wrong!
MaRS is a non-profit, NGO that provides resources beyond anything I’ve seen.
By supporting entrepreneurs and their new ventures, adapting their products & services to larger organizations, and working to make systems more receptive to innovation, MaRS performs a key role in generating positive economic and societal impact, helping improve our daily lives and allowing us to compete as a city, province and nation.
As far as I know, US accelerators have a (typically American) short-term focus of three months, while MaRS is in for the long haul.
- It recognizes that a startup has little chance of becoming a full-blown enterprise, even if it receives seed funding (only around 27% do).
- MaRS mentors have solid backgrounds in various areas, including law and finance, and are available to do more than pass out advice; that’s in addition to the mentors assigned permanently to each startup to provide coaching and a sounding board as needed, as opposed to the “hazy cloud of mentors” that US accelerators offer.
Read the post and compare it to the MaRS website to see the overall differences.
US accelerators seem to deal mostly with startups that are pumping out consumer-focused apps; not exactly things that will bring great benefits to society.
Sadly, I know of no US accelerators comparable to MaRS—if you do please enlighten me.
I ask you, why not here?
Image credit: HikingArtist
