Basically, the ODX accelerator was a startup itself.
Startup should thoroughly vet accelerator programs they apply to, because most are a waste of time in the best case or kill your company in the worst case.
One needs to understand the business model and the KPIs of each accelerator (just like with investors and customers) to figure out if there is a fit.
To expand on your assertion, I’m sharing a link to a framework that I drafted a few years back for evaluating an accelerator (referred to as an incubator in the paper):
Most VCs and most accelerators are bad. Nearly all of them are pile ons. Hope the downturn wipes a lot of them out. Randos became "VC"s in the bull market.
Because the competition becomes primarily about raising money and less about building a successful product or business. In that environment, being scrappy and doing more with less gets you crushed by overfunded competitors with slick decks.
It’s not strictly better if your goal is to raise money and take some off the table, but it does create headwinds to building a stable right-sized business when investors mentality is full bull-market swoon.
They prey on people with delusions of grandeur who need the identity of "entrepreneur", since "unemployed since you quit your first job out of college after two years" doesn't have quite the same prestige. "The others, you see, they just don't get it. This is about scale, Zero to One! I'm my own boss!" It's really sad to watch.
Startup should thoroughly vet accelerator programs they apply to, because most are a waste of time in the best case or kill your company in the worst case.
One needs to understand the business model and the KPIs of each accelerator (just like with investors and customers) to figure out if there is a fit.