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10 Startup Accelerators Based On Successful Exits

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Global accelerators are fueling entrepreneurs and startups with supportive ecosystems and plenty of fresh funding.  These programs provide mentorship and capital in return for equity. This is put in place to help a start-up grow over a three to four month period.

Besides the investment, accelerators typically offer their startups free office space, business and management consulting, feedback on the product, and access to investors in the form of a demo day.

During demo days founders would present their pitch deck to an audience of angel investors as well as representatives from Venture Capital firms. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here).

Staff from accelerator programs take into consideration many common themes when reviewing applications, such as addressing a large market, having a bold and crazy idea, showing some form of traction or signs that the company will be able to hit a milestone while in the program – but the most common, and debatably most important, is the team behind the company.

Getting into some of these programs is very difficult as acceptance rate can be as low as 1.5%. In such case, for every 7,000 applications there will be only 106 spots available. For comparison, Stanford has a 5.1% student acceptance rate and Harvard’s acceptance rate is around 5.9%.

Rounding out the most active 20 accelerators are firms in Shenzhen, Sofia, Buenos Aires, New York, Brussels and Toronto. This shows that while Silicon Valley may be the most established VC and startup hub on the map, it now has an intense amount of competition from all types of locations around the globe.

Success Based on Number of Exits

According to data from Crunchbase below are 10 accelerators based on successful number of exits. 

1) Y Combinator

Number of investments: 1,834

Number of exits: 192

Location: Mountain View, California, USA

About:

Y Combinator is a pioneer in the startup accelerator space. Each year the accelerator funds a group of new startups with $120k. A number that was lowered to reduce friction between founders. So far, the companies it has been involved with have a combined valuation of over $100B. Some of the most notable include: Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit, Twitch, Coinbase, and Weebly.

2) 500 Startups

Number of investments: 1,694

Number of exits: 162

Location: Mountain View, California, USA

About:

500 Startups is a seed and early stage venture capital fund, consisting of 4 major funds and 13 micro funds which have invested in startups in at least 60 countries. Funded startups include Udemy and Credit Karma. Exits have included sales to Google and Rakuten. 500 Startups recently took in equity from Abu Dhabi Financial Group, giving the firm one of its only two board seats.

3) Techstars

Number of investments: 1,557

Number of exits: 134

Location: Boulder, Colorado, USA

About:

Techstars funds, mentors and accelerates startups. Its accelerator program has produced over 1,000 companies valued at over $8B. Techstars is the name behind Startup Week and Startup Weekend, which spur entrepreneurs to kick procrastination to the curb and  launch new ventures in a matter of hours.

4) Plug and Play

Number of investments: 731

Number of exits: 60

Location: Sunnyvale, California, USA

About:

Plug and Play Ventures has put 51% of its investments into pre-seed ventures, achieved 8 exits in 2017, invested in 262 new startups last year and holds networking events every day. The accelerator’s in-house VC is reportedly willing to write checks from $25,000 to $500,000. It’s portfolio companies have raised a combined $7B.

5) MassChallenge

Number of investments: 1,387

Number of exits: 39

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

About:

Although based in Boston, MassChallenge has accelerator programs around the world, with locations in Israel, the UK, Mexico and Switzerland. In the past 8 years the accelerator says its startups have created 80,000 jobs. The program appears to be heavy in Biotech and Fintech.

6) SOSV

Number of investments: 1,152

Number of exits: 23

Location: Princeton, New Jersey, USA

About:

SOSV closed its own third round of funding for $150M in January 2017.  The ‘accelerator VC’ started by Sean O’ Sullivan prides itself on creating real products, not just digital ones. With access to real labs and makerspaces it appears to be popular with food-tech and biotech startups.

7) Startupbootcamp

Number of investments: 424

Number of exits: 21

Location: London, UK

About:

Startupbootcamp runs IOT, Fintech, Insurtech and Foodtech programs around the world from Singapore to London, Mexico City, Mumbai, Dublin, Dubai and Amsterdam. To date Startupbootcamp has accelerated startups with an average funding amount of 1.168M Euros.

8) Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF)

Number of investments: 335

Number of exits: 21

Location: Moscow, Russia

About:

The accelerator specializes in startups in Cybersecurity, Retail, Adtech, Edutech, Big Data and IOT. Over 4,500 startups participate in the basic online program every year, with 20,000 attending events and hackathons.

9) Wayra

Number of investments: 960

Number of exits: 18

Location: Slough, Buckinghamshire, UK

About:

Wayra began in Latin America, then expanded to Spain before launching in the UK. The accelerator is financially backed by one of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world, Telefonica. Wayra invests up to $50k in startups and boasts that 45% of its ventures have female founders.

10) Start-Up Chile

Number of investments: 837

Number of exits: 16

Location: Santiago, Chile

About:

Startup-Chile appears to be one of the most active, unique and fastest growing accelerator programs in the world. It was launched by the Chilean government to spur investment and attract entrepreneurs. Accepted entrepreneurs can receive up to $80k in equity free funding and $100k in perks. Start-Up Chile also offers a pre-acceleration program just for startups led by female founders called The S Factory.

Success Based on Aggregate Amount of Dollars

I recently came across the data of Seed-DB which provides information on seed Accelerators and their portfolio of companies.

According to data from Seed-DB it is worth stating that if we were to take into consideration the success by aggregate amount of dollars in exits, as opposed to number of exits as outlined above, the ten accelerators worth mentioning in this category would be the following:

  1. Y Combinator - $5B
  2. Techstars - $1B
  3. AngelPad - $493M
  4. DreamIT Ventures - $397M
  5. fbFund - $359M
  6. LaunchpadLA - $185M
  7. SeedCamp - $137M
  8. NYC SeedStart - $130M
  9. Amplify.LA - $57M
  10. Wayra - $44M

With the above in mind, it is important to highlight the fact that AngelPad has been able to generate $493M with a fraction of the portfolio companies that other top tier accelerator programs have.

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