Incubators verse Accelerators — what’s the difference?
Ask anyone what they think an incubator is and they will most likely envisage newly hatched, fluffy yellow chickens huddling under warm spot-lights in a cardboard box. Ask them what an accelerator is and they will probably think of a pedal which, when pushed flat to the floor, quickly accelerates a car.
While these two thoughts are wrong in relation to the world of startups and entrepreneurship, they do provide apt analogies for understanding how incubators differ from accelerators. I’ll expand on these analogies below, but first I want to state from the outset that there is a lot of overlap between incubators and accelerators, and there is still a good degree of confusion among industry experts regarding the differences between them.
In this article I will highlight and explain two key differences between incubators and accelerators. The first difference has to do with what stage a startup is at: That is, incubators typically accept startups (i.e. founders) at the idea-stage, whereas accelerators only accept early-stage startups, i.e. startups who are beyond the idea stage and have some kind of prototype or product made. The second difference I’ll explain towards the end.
Incubators — what are they are what do they offer?
