

The curious case of accelerators - hai2ashwin
http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/01/are-all-accelerators-decelerators/

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porter
To me it seems odd that the goal of an accelerator is to get a startup funded.
This just perpetuates short-term pressure to get a company sold within a 7-10
year window so investors can achieve their IRR projections and get another
round from their LPs.

Maybe there needs to be an accelerator that focuses on creating singles or
doubles rather than homeruns. If the end goal was to build a sustainable and
profitable business that took a long-term view, then perhaps this would be
better for the entrepreneurs themselves, who are after all, the heroes in the
story.

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jacques_chester
> _Maybe there needs to be an accelerator that focuses on creating singles or
> doubles rather than homeruns._

The thing is that most new businesses fail anyway. Batshit crazy businesses
fail at a higher rate, but some of them pay out so insanely highly on the
investment that the overall outcome is slightly better than more sedate
investment options.

Mind you, lots and lots of investors will go for the middle-of-the-road stuff.
We just don't talk about it much. There's not much drama in "local citizen
opens new franchise restaurant with bank loan", except for the local citizen.

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mongemalo
Although I agree with many points of the article, let's review YCombinator
funded projects and we'll see they are no joke.

It all depends on the needs of the project.

The promotion that some projects may get from being in an accelerator can be
enough for some. For other it will be the little or big seed money they
receive. Other will learn things that wouldn't have learnt otherwise.

And for the majority, as it always happen in business, it will be useless even
if they happen to have the best mentors.

