My experience with Startup Accelerators

Hi my name is Neeraj and I am the co-founder of RockYourPaper. It is a platform to search, manage and publish relevant research articles in Open Access environment in an affordable way. You can see more on www.rockyourpaper.org

My experience with Startup accelerators started in July 2012, when our start up got selected for Startup Chile program . At that time I had never worked with an accelerator before, neither I had any clue about how the system works. Anyhow, Startup Chile was giving $40,000 as a grant money and to be honest it was the money which was an attraction and extremely important for us, as we were right in our “idea” phase, with no product, no proper team, not even a basic website. Startup Chile program gave us a head start, but due lack of one on one mentoring or advice and lack of a proper team our product development didn’t go too far in Santiago De Chile. 6 months were over and it was time for us to head back home, without achieving anything significant. But, here’s what Startup Chile gave us,

1. Learning opportunity – Startup Chile is a program which brings entrepreneurs from all over the world.

2. Networking – Since it was a government initiative, we had the privilege of meeting many known personalities who’d visit us time to time. Networking though also depends mostly on your own self.

Once back in our respective countries India and Sri Lanka (yes…me and my co-founder Nadeera Nilupamali are from two different countries) we got back to work and managed to create our website with a very simple search function. To develop our idea further we had to find technical people, who could code, since both of us were non technical founders. Recruiting a tech person required money, which obviously didn’t had. we were also losing out on time and progress on the product, it was then we started looking for startup accelerators. Startup accelerators because

1. It gives seedfund

2. Offers mentorship from industry experts

3. Offers free co-working space for 3 months, and other benefits which include investors demo day etc.

So, we applied to a few and got selected for Startup Wise Guys based in Estonian capital Tallinn. It is one of Europe’s prestigious accelerators, which offered a standard 15,000 euros for a certain percentage of equity in our startup along with mentoring and demo days including one at Google campus, London. We were happy to take the offer as it had some of Europe’s best known business mentors and more importantly it offered 15,000 euros which we needed desperately to keep floating and also develop our product further. This particular accelerator was entirely different than what we had experienced at Startup Chile. It was more personal and much more intense, with everything attached to a deadline. The program was in such a way that every startup would have to come up with a minimum viable product in 3 months. It was a busy program, with everything from workshop on lean methodology to mentorships thrown in a quick succession. We were better prepared for the program because we had a basic, but a functional product ready. Lean workshop helped us a lot to focus and have a direction as in where we wanted to head off. we successfully completed our acceleration program, launched our search engine, where students and researchers can search and download open access articles for free.

Here’s a few honest learnings which I would like to share with my fellow startup entrepreneurs…

1. Early stage seed money – Accelerators are also a business, and every business has a business model, accelerators too have it. Giving 15,000 euros and taking a certain percentage of equity is where they get a bargain deal. Don’t expect them to really invest in you, unless you become big, they will not show any interest to further invest.

2. Mentorship – Mentors are also entrepreneurs. With few exceptions, mentors have something to gain or to propagate their own interest. We met a lot of mentors who were there just to promote their own interest and services. In any case mentors really don’t matter too much, it’s your business and you should be knowing it better. You will even forget the names of your mentors. In our case we interacted with more than 50 mentors and believe it or not, only one helped us genuinely, rest forgot us and we forgot them as well.

3. Investor demo days – Frankly, investors demo days are a fad and if you are excited to have a deal by the end of it, sorry, nothing of that sort is going to happen. What you may get, is some investors coming to you, asking more details and then disappearing. It’s better to get one on one help from the accelerator and approach the angel fund or VCs on your own.

We fared quite well during our acceleration program. Response was overwhelming for us immediately after the release. Within a month of release of our search engine we were getting 4000 to 5000 visitors every day. Today we have more than 3 million open access, cutting edge peer reviewed articles in our repository. We have indexed more than 12000 journals across various subjects. The numbers are growing approximately 1000 everyday.

In short, if you are in or thinking of joining an accelerator program,

1. Focus on your product development; it is going to be only and the single most important factor to get early traction.

2. Don’t get disheartened when a mentor says your business idea is not going to work, most of them have no clue about your business. You had a 5 minute interaction with them. It is humanely impossible to understand each and everything of your business and give an expert advice.

3. Don’t focus too much on investors demo day, focus on building one on one networking angels and funds, accelerators are a good place to do that.

4. Keep in touch with your accelerator, even after the program is over. Our accelerator helped us and got us in touch with many funds. We did receive investment term sheets from few funds. It was a combined effort much after the demo day. Key is to be in touch with the accelerator after the program is over.

I hope you will find this article interesting enough and it would help you perform better in an accelerator program. Please do share your feedback with me.

Originally published here.  

My email id – neeraj@rcokyourpaper.org

Twitter Handle – @imnentrprnr