Yoav Vilner‘s article on Entrepreneur.com What I Learned From Mentoring Startups in the World’s Best Accelerators has four takeaways for startups in the accelerator phase. As always read the original post for full details.
- Don’t be swayed by big names – he’s referring here to cases where major brands are behind the accelerator – not the names of those who run the accelerator or mentor to its startups. Just like product-market fit, you need to find startup-accelerator fit for your company. That being said there are some big names behind a number of accelerators, like MIT, that may be worth being swayed by.
- Focus should be the focus – the lesson here is to make sure that the mentoring sessions offered fit your needs.
- Start planning your hiring – as in my post Talent tracking, you almost can’t start your hiring too early, as the team is the key success factor in almost all startups.
- Leaving early – if you are growing fast you may be outgrowing the accelerator
There are at least a couple of dozen accelerator/incubators in the Boston area (see my post Accelerators and incubators in Greater Boston area for a chart of many of them). David Chang, who created this chart, did a nice job of categorizing the accelerators/incubators as corporate (see Vilner’s point #1), university, independent, and co-working. (Now if only David would author a new, updated version, with live links to each accelerator/incubator!
Mentorphile 