Seriously, How Did We Get In?
I heard a few comments after my last post that asked for some hard “to-do” items that will help make sure you get into the accelerator of your choosing. Take this with a grain of salt. I haven’t been on the selecting side of the equation, but I’ve been through this a few times (accelerators and business competitions) and have listened to a lot of feedback. Here’s what I’d suggest:
Prove you’re getting traction. Yes, traction. Is that a cliché word yet? Probably, but in case there’s any confusion, I mean this, not this.
All (bad) jokes aside, you have to be creative as a young company to show traction and you have to define what traction means for your company, rather than let someone define it for you. For us, as a medical device company, early sales traction was next to impossible, so we defined traction as customer interviews and prototype tests.
My friend Kela has been incredibly creative in getting traction for his hardware startup by listening to customers/industry trends and getting pre-orders. While their prototype develops, they’re launching an app to test other value propositions their customers ask for. He’s also helping our Startup Weekend company (I’ll write more about this later) generate traction through simple user growth because it’s an app-based company.
The point is, each company can show traction differently and still be valid, but only if it can prove why their unique traction metric is valid.
Show that you know where you’re going, but still need help. Accelerators aren’t good fits for companies that aren’t going to learn during the program. They work best when a company has identified a trajectory but needs guidance to reach the end goal.
If the possibilities for how well you understand your business trajectory are on a sliding scale from zero (clueless) to 100 (fully understand and achieving previously identified milestones), you probably want to show the accelerator that you’re around 75 to 85. Why? Clueless companies take a lot of resources before eventually dying. Middle of the road companies will take up even more resources because they’ll take longer to die. Perfect companies are lying and will die dramatically (but not adorably dramatically like this dog). Solid B companies have enough confidence to be aggressive, but are humble enough to learn and grow. They’re the ones who will thrive in an accelerator.
Be ready to jump when told to jump. At least with this current accelerator, we were given very little time to react to news and prepare for meetings. The whole application and selection process was waiting anxiously for long periods, followed by short bursts of more anxious rushing around.
That’s not a knock on the accelerator, but just a fact of life for the system that most accelerators seem to operate within. The managing directors need to know that you’re willing to prioritize the accelerator for a few months and will probably test you.
Control that which you can control and accept what luck falls your way. You won’t be able to control much of the (luck surrounding the) selection process and you need to be comfortable with that. Focus on yourself, your company, your product, and your application. Everything else is not worth your attention.
One of our web interviews prior to getting to meet the managing directors in person was an absolute bomb; we weren’t energetic, our connection was unstable, the committee was in a room where they couldn’t show much reaction, my jokes were worse than normal… It was all bad. But one of the committee members fell in love with our product and pushed us through to the in-person meetings.
We got lucky. Somebody else didn’t. We moved on, did our best to control our in-person meetings to prove our worth, and got in. I’m sorry unlucky team, all I can say is that we’ll take advantage of our lucky draw, I promise.
Controlling what you can also means that you should be fairly persistent. Make sure that the program directors know that you want to join. After our terrible web interview, I sent an email acknowledging that we bombed, but explained how bad we wanted the opportunity to prove ourselves. Did it work? I’m not sure, but at the worst it showed that we really cared about our application.
Recognize that, like investors, most accelerators look at the people in the startup first, second, and third before looking at the market and product. When you think about your startup, do you think first about your co-founders and yourself? If not, change your perspective.
Before you begin applying, internalize the concept that your idea isn’t as new and shiny as you think, your market is more challenging than you’re ready for, and your customers probably don’t care. You and your team are the only things about your startup that are special. Now it’s your job to prove that to the accelerator. You’ve made sacrifices for your startup, right? You’re passionate about your product, right? Your co-founders are kickass, right? Show that.
Have “the talks” with your co-founders. Make sure everybody is on the same page and has similar expectations. You should all know what each other can and will contribute. You should have your equity situation sorted out. You should have no questions about your co-founders’ commitment. You should be able to speak at length about why, of all the possible co-founders in the world, you choose to work with your team.
If the accelerator you’re applying to is worth anything, they’re going to dig into your team and try to figure out where the weak spots are. Why? Because the people matter more than the product, market, etc. If you have all these conversations before applying, you’ll be more confident in your team, which will show in your application and in-person meetings with the program directors.
Get a few quality recommendations. Recommendations probably aren’t critical to success, but they prove a couple things that you can’t otherwise. First, they help show that you’ve been working on your company long enough to have people interested in your success. This means you’ve probably overcome a few challenges (these should be mentioned in the recommendation) and aren’t a complete novice.
Second, quality recommendations let the accelerator check the “plays well with others” box for your company. You’ll meet a lot of people in the accelerator that the program directors have worked really hard to build a relationship with. Recommendations help prove that you won’t totally screw those relationships up. They also show what kind of people you’ve worked with in the past. If all your recommendations come from people your age, it’ll probably send a red flag that you’re not willing and able to take mentorship from grey-hairs.
Finally, keep working. Yes, you will get more and more anxious as you go through the application/selection process. Don’t focus on that. Focus on knocking out more (meaningful) milestones so you’ll have progress to report each time you talk to the program directors.
If you enjoyed this, follow me for more. I’ll be writing a weekly recap of lessons learned during this new program, along with some occasional more general posts about medical devices, startups, healthcare, etc.
