Connect with us

Archives

How Accelerators Make Money To Manage Operating Costs

Published

on

How Accelerators Make Money

There are over 500 startup accelerators in the US and over 1000 worldwide. Most accelerators are aligned with Universities (at over 35%), some are government funded (local government mostly) at 29% and some (15%) get grants from rich individuals and institutions such as Kauffman Fund. The remainder (21%) are privately funded accelerators such as 500 startups, Angel Pad, etc.

First, the definition of a seed accelerator, so we can understand the scope of the program:

A fixed-term, cohort-based program, including mentorship and educational components, that culminates in a public pitch event or demo-day.

While there is no reliable data on how many of these accelerators are doing well, graduating great companies and surviving, there is some data on how they are managing to stay afloat and “keep the lights on”.

Most accelerators, raise some money to invest in the startups they fund. Many (over 61%) offer some form of space to their startups to operate in during the cohort. Accelerators also have a staff of 1-5 people (some even more, but the average is 1.8) to manage the program, support the startups and recruit, select and engage the local community and ecosystem of entrepreneurs.

All this costs money. In the US, that’s usually upwards of $400K (that’s the low bar) and in other countries, more than $250K per year.

Typically the cost of the space and maintenance is about 30% to 40% of the budget, the cost of people about 40% – 45% and finally the cost of programs, marketing, etc. tends to be about 20%. This excludes the investment in the startups.

While investors in the accelerator are willing to fund the startups (and take a % stake in them), most are unwilling to pay a “management fee” for running the program.

Having interviewed and talked to many accelerator programs, over the last year, I have a list of 9 different ways programs have tried to raise the operating costs of the accelerator. I thought I’d document these so it would be useful.

Sponsorship: The most frequently used means to raise operating funds, is to have large corporate sponsor. Some local government organizations also sponsor these accelerator as a means to be connected to the community.

Many accelerators also raise sponsorship from local legal, accounting and real estate firms who benefit from the startup community or wish to target entrepreneurs and startup talent with their products and services. Nearly 60% of companies and 30% of all operating budget funding is sponsor driven for the 15 accelerators I know.

Events: Many accelerators run events that aid future entrepreneurs, community participants and local businesses. These events are typically networking opportunities and charge attendees a nominal amount of money to cover the costs, enable marketing for the accelerator and pay for the “marketing resource” at the accelerator.

Some accelerator programs also put together hackathons and still others run large industry events to generate operating cash. Typically the problems with running these events is that they take up resources and time, but if you can generate enough cash from these events, you can support 1-2 resources who can help with other activities at the accelerator during the non-event days.

Entrepreneur-in-residence programs: A relatively newer program is the EIR, where employees at large companies or those at smaller ones who want to learn how to be more entrepreneurial, end up spending time at the accelerator in exchange for a fee. Typical fees are between $25K to $50K in the US.

These EIR programs are full immersion programs and last 6-12 months or 1-2 cohorts. During the program, the EIR is going through the entire process from start to finish and “learning on the job”.

Many of the participants end up becoming investors or entrepreneurs at the end of the program and return to their companies, learning about lean methodologies, innovation approaches and how to build on an idea and bring it to market.

Grants: Both government and private donors typically give grants (no strings attached usually) to accelerators to support entrepreneurship, which promotes local jobs, makes a city more attractive to larger companies and also helps the local economy.

Rentals: Many accelerators charge a portion of their investment as a fee for the space during the program per seat. So, if the accelerator invests $100,000, and the startup has 3 founders and employees, then $5000 might be charged per month of the startup for the 3-4 months they are in the accelerator space. This is more of the domain of co-working spaces, but many accelerators are starting to do this as well.

Research Reports: Few accelerators I know write research reports based on their startup data for larger companies. These companies pay for the syndicated research reports so they can use them in their internal presentations.

These research reports tend to be focused on a particular area of expertise and also a market domain. It is not unusual to see companies pay $50K for a syndicated report for the year about the startups within a specific area of their interest.

Code Academies and Hacker schools: Many accelerators have also joined with coding schools, which teach programming to new and interested talent. This serves two purposes. First, the accelerator can raise cash by conducting training and second the graduates become good source of talent for the accelerator startups, who pay a fee to recruit the talent.

Innovation scouting for larger companies: Many larger companies are also looking to recruit talent, acquire companies and learn about new disruptions and innovations. These companies are willing to pay a little money to scouts who can help track, recruit and manage a startup pool of entrepreneurial talent. Many accelerators provide this as a service to larger companies.

Distribution, Sales, Design and Marketing consulting: A few early stage accelerator are also providing the equivalent of the “coding” school for non developers by running marketing and sales training programs. The difference is that the graduates are employed by the accelerator program and they end up being consultants to the startups who charge a fee for their services.

These are the various programs I have seen, and I’d love your input on if I have missed any that you have seen.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Archives

Creating Artificial Constraints as a Means to Innovation

Published

on

By

Artificial Constraints

Many of the entrepreneurs I know have created new innovative startups thanks to real constraints they had. For example, I was hearing AirBnB’s Brian Chesky, on the Corner Office podcast and he mentioned that when he and his cofounder were trying to get some money to get started and the only way to keep afloat was to “rent” their air bed they had in their room. That, then led to Air Bed and Breakfast, which is now AirBnB.

This was a real constraint they had – no money to “eat” so they had to make it happen somehow.

I have heard of many stories of innovation where in the protagonists had real constraints of either financial, technology, supply, demand, economic, social or any number of other characteristics.

The interesting story that I have also recently heard of how Facebook has “pivoted” from being a desktop offering to getting a significant part of their revenue from mobile is how they were given the arbitrary constraint of only accessing Facebook via the mobile phone.

So there are ways that you can create “artificial” constraints to force innovation to happen.

Most larger companies and some smaller ones as well, have to constantly find ways to create artificial constraints – to find a way to innovate and be more be a pioneer.

While some constraints are good – lack of funds at the early stage for example and lack of resources, there are entrepreneurs that are stymied by these constraints and those that will find  a way to seek a path to go forward.

I think this is a great way for you to think about innovating in a new space. If you have constraints, find a way to use it to your advantage.

Continue Reading

Archives

The Great Mobile App Migration of March 2020

Published

on

By

Mobile App Migration

Over the last few weeks as many in the world have been in lockdown, there has been a temporary “mobile app migration” happening. There are new apps downloaded and they replaced existing apps on the “home screen”.

While some of these apps are likely temporary use, for e.g. I have 6 “conferencing apps” – Zoom, Uber Conference, Webex, Google Hangouts, Blue Jeans and Goto Meeting. That is because of the many people I have conference calls with – each company seems to have chosen a different web conference solution.

Other apps seem like they will have staying power – Houseparty, for e.g. which has games, networking and video conferencing all built into one app to keep in touch with friends and relatives.

Houseparty

The apps that have moved away from my “home” screen, which I expect will come back once the crisis will be behind us include – Uber, Lyft and all the airline apps from Delta, Alaska and United.

Continue Reading

Archives

Perseverance with the Ability to Pivot on Data: 21 Traits We Look for in Entrepreneurs

Published

on

By

Perseverance with the Ability to Pivot

There are 5 key inflection points I have noticed which makes founders question their startup, to either make a call to continue working on their startup, pivot to a new problem or quit their startup altogether.

It is at these points that you really get to know the startup founder and their hunger and drive to be successful. I don’t think I can characterize those that choose to quit as “losers” or “quitters” because of many extraneous circumstances, but there is a lot of value that most investors see in entrepreneurs who face an uphill part of their journey to come out on the other side more confident and stronger.

These five inflection points are:

  1. When you have to get the first customers to use and pay for the product you have built after you have “shipped” an alpha / beta / first version. Entrepreneurs quit because they have not found the product-market-fit – because the customer don’t care about the product, there is no market need, or the product is really poorly built, or a host of other reasons.
  2. When you have to start to raise the first external round of financing from people you are not familiar with at all. Entrepreneurs quit because while it is hard to get customers and hire people, it is much more harder to get a smaller set of investors to part with their money, if you do not have “traction”, or “the right management team” or a “killer product”.
  3. When you have to push to break even (financially) and sustain the company to path of being self sufficient. Entrepreneurs quit at this stage because they have now the ability to do multiple things at the same time – grow revenues and manage costs, and many of them like to do one but realize it is hard to do that without affecting the other. So, rather than feel stuck they decide to quit.
  4. When you have to scale and grow faster that the competition – which might mean to hire faster, to get more customers, to drive more sales, or to completely rethink their problem statement and devise new ways to grow faster. Entrepreneurs quit at this point because they are consumed by the magnitude of the problem. They overassess the impact the competition will have on their company, give them too much credit or focus way too much on the competitors, thereby driving their company to the ground.
  5. At any point in the journey, when the founders lose the passion, vision or the drive to succeed. Entrepreneurs quit a these points because they have challenges with their co founder, they don’t agree with the direction they have to take, or encounter the “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome.

While I have observed many entrepreneurs at these stages at  discrete points in time, I have also had the opportunity to observe some entrepreneurs in the continuum, and I am going to give you my observations on 3 of the many folks I have known, who, have quit.

Perseverance separates great entrepreneurs from good ones
Perseverance separates great entrepreneurs from good ones

One went back to college to finish his MBA after getting a running business to a point of near breakeven, another found the business much harder than he originally thought he would and got a job at a larger company and the third was just unable to have the drive to go past 11 “no’s”‘ from angel investors.

Over the last 8 years, if I look at my deeper interactions with over 90 entrepreneurs, who I would have spent at least 100+ hours each, I would say that of the 24 people that are not longer in their startup, the one thing that stands out among the ones that persevere is that it is not “passion” or “vision” at all.

It is the inherent belief that they are solving a problem that they believe is their “calling”. They also don’t believe that there is any other problem that’s worth solving as much, even though there may be easier ways to make money.

So most of my questions of entrepreneurs to test whether they will pivot or quit are around why they want to solve this problem (which I am looking to see if they know enough about in the first place) versus any other one.

The answer to that question is the best indicator I have found to be the difference between the pivots, the leavers and the rest.

Continue Reading

Trending