How Startup Accelerator Can Advance Your Business

The function of an accelerator is to provide a startup company with funds, mentorship, working space, a network of other entrepreneurs, and an opportunity to pitch to potential investors, all in exchange for equity in the company.

Hundreds of thousands of passionate entrepreneurs get accepted into various accelerator programs every year, where they spend the first few months growing their business. Besides the funding, networking and mentorship, entrepreneurs are taught how to convince potential investors that they have a solid business idea and plan.

Read on and check out the Tech.co article as well to find out how exactly a startup accelerator can help you advance your business.

The process

Creating Connections

A startup accelerator offers entrepreneurs an opportunity to connect with like-minded investors and entrepreneurs in their local area. Many entrepreneurs at the end of the program leave away with friends, possible investors and potential partnerships, all of which serve as a great boon to their startup.

Imagine working beside other entrepreneurs who think like you. Their ideas alone are enough to take your business to a whole new level. You could benefit from their creativity intelligence, or take a lesson or two from their persistence and hard work. Some of the people you meet during the program would someday end up as your employers, employees or that important link to a company or investor.

Expanding your viewpoint

These programs are filled with people who are NOT afraid to drive some new insights into you. These are the people who’ll look at your original idea from all possible angles, analyze them, and thereafter help you think bigger if you haven’t been doing that already.

They are the people you need to free your startup from the limitations in your imagination.

An accelerator will look at your company and help you find answers to questions like:

• Who’s your target audience?
• Does the product you sell have any value to your audience to make them pay for it?
• Is the product priced right?
• Are you headed in the right direction? Or is there a better way you should be doing this?

An Opportunity to Practice Your Pitch and get critiqued beforehand

Whatever you do, don’t let potential investors be the first people to draw holes in your idea. Not when an accelerator can offer you an opportunity to pitch your ideas in front of proficient investors and entrepreneurs.

If NOT for anything else, you could greatly benefit from the unbiased feedback you get from the ‘mock’ investors.

An Opportunity to Checkout Competition

An accelerator will offer you a unique opportunity to look into the competition closing in.

Whether you’re planning to participate in person or remotely, an accelerator program will help you watch and evaluate the pitches from other startups, as you take valuable lessons from the various ways by which they tackle the tough questions.

This is how startup accelerator can advance your business. But still, you have to bear in mind that the program doesn’t guarantee funding. An accelerator may NOT be your ultimate solution, but there’s a whole lot you can benefit if only you made that first step that involves enrolling in one.