Why Sponsoring a Startup Accelerator is a Good Idea for a Corporation
Disruptech for Maritime series — issue 3
This week I had great conversations with several industry players in Maritime and I feel we need to understand clearly what a Startup Accelerator is and how it helps its sponsoring companies as well as the industry.
Corporations can benefit from accelerators in 5 different ways:
- Launching a program quickly and cost-effectively: by partnering with accelerators, corporations can quickly enter the acceleration business and adopt best practices developed by accelerators over years of operation.
- Enhancing deal flow: by accessing an accelerator’s marketing power and network.
- Staying up to date: by having access to an accelerator’s deal flow, they receive insight into the innovation pipeline in their market. Corporations have learned that competitors now often come from the startup world.
- Building an innovative corporate culture: by placing their corporate executives as mentors in the accelerator or by enabling their own corporate executives to innovate. In the latter case, the new product could be placed into a separate company that is then accelerated by the accelerator.
- Building a more innovative brand: by aligning with accelerators and their startups which have become symbols of innovation in the eyes of the public.
An interesting dynamics is the specialisation of accelerators happening in the last years. Accelerators choose to specialise, as Startup Wharf did by becoming the first Maritime-only accelerator, for some key reasons:
- Establishing core competence: accelerators have realised that it is hard to attract and choose high potential startups when they are a ‘jack-of-all-trades’.
- Responding to corporate clients: the expertise of a corporate sponsor or partner is confined to the industry in which it operates.
- Brand building: in order to offer more “concentrated” value to startups and attract the best founders, accelerators need to position themselves in their ecosystems and attract more experienced mentors and investors.
It looks that we at Startup Wharf are doing something right!
Read more about the evolving accelerators landscape — there are almost 600 accelerators globally and almost 1000 startups were accelerated just in the UK last year– in the Global Accelerator Report 2016.
Disruptech for Maritime series — earlier issues
We are building the London Maritime Startup Accelerator. Interested industry players, potential sponsors and startups can get in touch with us at Startup Wharf. Where Digital Disruptors and Maritime meet.
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