What is the problem accelerators are solving?

There is a fourth problem they solve: very early stage companies are willing to raise quick money on terrible terms as long as it doesn't actually set a valuation for their real seed round. Accelerators are positioned to do this because they can maintain a pretense that the shitty terms are made up for in mentoring and other services.

It would be much harder to raise a seed round on a 4M cap if you had just given an investor effectively a 1M cap 3 months before. But with accelerators that's not an issue!

9 out of 10 accelerators out there are bad copies of ycombinator made by greedy (and cheap) investors trying to ride the startup gravytrain like in the dotcom years and/or desperate politicians trying to get some of that sweet gentrification SF complains so much about.

I was unfortunate enough to land in a combination of BOTH: the accelerator was made by investors with literally ZERO experience with technology companies who were extremely cheap, and a local government that wasted taxpayer's money on it. I say waste because most of the money went to friends and family of the investors/organizers who didn't put a dime out of their collective pockets but went ahead and hired each other (and each other's acquaintances) to fill mentor roles within the accelerator.

What a joke that was, we got literally nothing out of the experience, we lost precious time having to deal with all the bullshit they made us go through. Contacts? they were nobodies, so no rolodex magic for us. Press? again, a bunch of nobodies, all press we got was BYO, in fact the accelerator mooched off our existing contacts with tech blogs and got some coverage for themselves.

Because the "investors" were cheapstakes along for the ride nobody got any investments from that network, only one team which secured a line of credit from a local no-name bank thanks to the local government (again more taxpayer money).

There should be a tripadvisor for accelerators, there was no way we could know what we were getting into.

Thought it was an article about particle accelerators. Dissapointed. yawn

"Unlike college, it is extremely hard to know which programs are adding value and which ones are wasting everyone’s time." Ha.

The actual source URL: http://whoyoucallingajesse.com/past/2013/11/07/problem-accel...