The Accelerator Conundrum: Navigating Your Path to Startup Success

The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!

Alright, let’s cut through the noise and get to the brutal truth of the startup accelerator world. Many entrepreneurs, starry-eyed and naive, leap headfirst into 3-month accelerator programs without truly understanding the long-term implications. It’s time for an incisive commentary, a necessary dissection.

1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Financing

Raising money to build a startup is a huge challenge. To be able to raise any money at all, you must first understand how investors think. We have developed the following courses catering to entrepreneurs in different stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to David Cohen, the founder and CEO of TechStars.

Irina: Hi, David. Let’s start with a brief overview.

David: I’m the founder and CEO of TechStars, which is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator for Internet companies. Tech Stars funds 10 companies at a time in each of four cities each year. The cities are New York, Boston, Seattle, and Boulder. The mentorship program is three months long. At the end of the program, the companies get to pitch their ideas to investors. About 70 percent of the companies go on to raise outside capital after the program. >>>

Featured Videos

AngelList, CapLinked, And Financing Marketplaces

AngelList has been generating  a lot of buzz recently. Today, Business Insider has a piece claiming that they are scaring VCs to death. Really? I have a hard time believing that! In any case, I thought this would be a good time to give readers my perspective on AngelList, as well as other fund raising services that are coming into the market like CapLinked, which has recently raised money from star investors like Peter Thiel. Other related services are SecondMarket, Kickstarter, ProFounder and Invested.In, the latter three specifically focused on crowd funding (not CapLinked’s approach), while the first is more of a brokerage.

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Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Dr. Tom O’Neal, Executive Director, University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program — Orlando, Florida (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

I am talking to Tom O’Neal, executive director of the University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program which is a University-driven community partnership that provides training, infrastructure, and professional services for entrepreneurs in central Florida. >>>

1M/1M: VCs, Angels, Incubators, Accelerators – What WE Do With Your Rejects

Last week I wrote the post VCs, Angels, Incubators, Accelerators – What Are You Doing With Your Rejects? following which I had a number of significant private discussions which I curate here for the benefit of others who have the same kinds of questions. Overall, I think it will help the ecosystem better understand how we simply supplement existing resources and add value. Existing resources include incubators, accelerators, financing marketplaces like AngelList, and of course VCs and angels. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Skip Simms, President And CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK — Ann Arbor, Michigan (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Skip Simms, president and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK, a nonprofit business development consortium in Michigan that works in partnership with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), the state’s economic development agency, to help early-stage entrepreneurs and growing companies. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Tim Cartwright, Chairman, Tamiami Angel Fund – Naples, Florida (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Tim Cartwright, chairman of the Tamiami Angel Fund. Created in October 2010 in Naples, Florida, this member-owned and -operated fund, offers early-stage capital in the range of $250,000–$750,000 to high-growth companies located anywhere in the state of Florida. There are 30 investors in the fund, who each put in $50,000. Tamiami Fund is the first angel fund for southwest Florida. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Chris Heivly, Executive Director, LaunchBox Digital (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Chris Heivly, executive director of LaunchBox Digital, an accelerator program for  entrepreneurs based in Durham, North Carolina. The program structure and workings are similar to Y Combinator and TechStars. >>>

An Interview With Debera Johnson, Founder And Executive Director, Pratt Design Incubator For Sustainable Innovation (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Today I am talking to Debera Johnson, founder and executive director of the Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation. The incubator is a part of the Center for Sustainable Design Studies at Pratt Institute, which is an art, design, and architecture college in New York City.  Since its inception in 2002, the incubator has supported the launch of 15 companies, of which 12 are still in business. In 2010, its companies generated more than $4.2 in revenue and are currently employing 36 employees. >>>

An Interview With Danny Robinson, CEO, British Columbia Innovation Council (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Today I am talking to Danny Robinson, CEO of British Columbia Innovation Council. The Vancouver-based BCIC is dedicated to developing entrepreneurial talent and commercializing technology in British Columbia, Canada. >>>

The Third Frontier In The Midwest: An Interview With John Glazer, Director, TechGROWTH Ohio (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

In this interview I am talking to John Glazer, director of TechGROWTH Ohio. This Athens-based, state-supported program has offered resources and funding to early stage, technologically innovative companies in the state of Ohio since 2007. >>>

1M/1M: A Policy Suggestion To President Obama

Now that President Obama has used his State of The Union address to turn the spotlight on innovation and entrepreneurship, and his CTO, Aneesh Chopra, just wrote a post on TechCrunch with some concrete steps, I’d like to reiterate the call for a tax policy that would really help bootstrapping entrepreneurs:

As I keep on saying, 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected for a set of specific reasons, mostly because they are too early for even angel financing or SBA loans. They need to bootstrap. >>>

An Interview With Ankur Jain, Founder And President, Kairos Society (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Today I am talking to Ankur Jain, a 20-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and founder and president of the Kairos Society. (Kairos, in Greek, means “the right moment.”)

Ankur’s vision is to shift students’ perception about the business world – to not depend on others for employment but to shape their destiny and the destiny of others through sustainable entrepreneurship.

Kairos Society members are students from all disciplines who are creating entrepreneurial and sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems in healthcare, education, nutrition, and energy. >>>

1M/1M: Alternative Financing For Startups Using A Sales Channel Partner

In this post, I want to discuss today’s news: 1M/1M Announces Partnership With Persistent; CrowdEngineering First Beneficiary, and explain the thought process behind it. It is a creative sales channel strategy that acts as alternative financing to mitigate some of the severe limitations of early stage startups.

In my experience, building a marketing channel/sales channel is one of the most expensive pieces of a startup P&L, and a notorious contributor to small companies running out of cash and going out of business. Typically, this happens for a number of reasons: >>>

An Interview With Joe Migliaccio, Manager Of Innovative Programs, Maine Technology Institute (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the fifty-second interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. We are talking to Joe Migliaccio, manager of Innovative Programs at Maine Technology Institute (MTI), an industry-led non-profit corporation that offers early-stage capital and commercialization assistance in the form of competitive grants, loans, and equity investment for tech entrepreneurs in Maine. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Jason Stoffer, Principal at Maveron (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

This is the fifty-first interview in our series on financing for entrepreneurs. I am talking to Jason Stoffer, principal at Maveron, a venture fund founded in 1998 by Howard Schultz, the founder and CEO of Starbucks, and Dan Levitan, the banker who took Starbucks public in 1991. (The name “Maveron” was coined from the words “maverick” and “vision.”)

With offices in Seattle and San Francisco, Maveron manages $750 million in capital and invests only in consumer-facing business, mainly in Web-enabled consumer services, education, and health and wellness. >>>