Startup accelerators, incubators, and studios can be helpful for first-time startup founders.
But there’s a problem with the accelerator business model that is frustrating to a growing number of savvy SaaS founders.
More and more software startup founders aren’t playing the old drunken funding game.
These savvy tech entrepreneurs are creating real and valuable tech businesses with little or no outside funding when they get started.
These bootstrapped, self-funded, and customer-funded startup founders feel out of place at accelerators and incubators.
The measure of success of accelerator programs is big funding right away, not growing a sustainable and efficient tech business with your own investment or sales revenue.
Accelerators take a small slice of equity, so they need their startups to grow fast, sell for a great price, and reward those invested.
This is why the main goal of accelerators and incubators is for their startups to immediately raise outside funding and keep getting funding forever.
As if that’s that’s the only way to grow and create a valuable company that rewards owners. It isn’t.
This year, 30-40% of growing SaaS startups on Gregslist.com are self-funded to start with no outside investors funding. Most are growing just fine and some are exiting for strategic multiples too.
This growing crowd of efficiently-funded founders needs help and advice, but they don’t need accelerators pushing VC funding as the only measure of success.
So I have this question for you:
Do you know of a successful accelerator or incubator that doesn’t rely on equity incentives and future funding rounds to succeed?
Where are the tech accelerators that help self-funded startups?
