Whether a startup is B2B, B2C, industry-agnostic, industry-directed, in the idea stage, or post-earnings, the purpose of accelerators is the same: to help start-ups become investment-ready.

Increased competition

The main challenge that accelerators face when it comes to helping startups find funding is that there are more startups and accelerators than ever before. Accelerators need to differentiate themselves because start-ups have a lot of options in the market today.

The strong technology collection, interesting product features and functions, and attractive pitch deck were enough to attract investors. To help start-ups meet the needs of the current fund-raising landscape, accelerators need to rethink their approach to the services they provide.

For upcoming ecosystem-based accelerators, it is crucial to move away from local wealth aspects and bring it into the venture asset class. This is done by speaking more directly in the language of traditional wealth investors: through milestones, systematic customer and revenue growth. This investor profile is interested in customer and revenue traction.

Traction

The cost and complexity of building a product will never go down, and the availability of trained and experienced product developers will never be widespread. Accelerators will empower their founders with a systematic approach to attracting investors for their services (in order to fund their programming), gaining customers, and increasing revenue.

Often, accelerators conduct a customer development week or sales week. It's hard to help a company increase revenue within a week. They present customer interviews and other high-level go-to-market ideas, and leverage their network of advisors for inspiring conversations and customer connections.

But they lack a comprehensive go-to-market framework that empowers founders with the knowledge, skills, tools, and training they currently lack to do the real work of systematically growing customers and revenue in a repeatable and scalable way.

Accelerators tend to over-rotate to investor conversations rather than acquiring users.

If a startup can find customers, it means they can save the runway. Similarly when they go for fundraising, they are not doing it for survival but to increase the brand power.

The sequence of actions for accelerators and start-ups should be:

1. Creating an MVP.
2. generate revenue and customers.
3. Take advantage of market traction to gain venture capital

In the early stages of any venture, investors are most concerned about execution risk. Founders need to be able to attract and retain the team needed to perform the tough task, and they need to be able to do what they set out to do on their pitch deck.

The returns demonstrate that a startup solves a significant problem in a sustainable manner. If no one is paying for the solution, it may not change even if more funding is received.

Pitch decks are especially important for accelerators to attract top founders, get funding for their programming, and investors for their startups. Accelerators can empower founders with the knowledge, skills, tools, training, and experience needed to move beyond ideas, theories, canvases, and occasional mentor sessions, systematically identify their target market, and gain customers and revenue.