Help! Is demo day or investment the only/best outcome?

[abbylyn78]

Looking at startup accelerators, but it seems like they only accelerate the starting up!?!?!

My company is a little further along. We have a team, a product, paying customers, but we want more; more faster. We have discussed it internally, but r not sure a demo day is worth giving up 6%. Now, obviously there are connections and learnings and beer and such. but what we really want is deals.

One option we are looking at is the UpRamp program. http://upramp.com

They seem to be focused on deals, and not the fluff. Has anyone worked with them or does anyone have insight on the program? We have a mobile app for customer service and I am sure there is a need in that cable world to solve their shitty customer service. thoughts?

 

[613jono]

@abbylyn78 Never heard of this accelerator but we went through TechStars last summer. It was a great experience and definitely had a wide range of companies from super early (no real product yet) to companies with 20+ employees and 500k in yearly revenue. It all depends what you expect to get out of the program.

Some use it for fundraising, others will use it for publicity bump, some just need mentoriship on scaling, others need help all around. It is a significant amount of equity. But the right program can definitely help you re-evaluate your direction and focus down. We went in with 4 customers and came out with 43 and a much more clear product path.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

 

[pete51]

@abbylyn78 I agree with ZSR5. We also went through Techstars last year. It was a fantastic experience and we came in with one product and ended up completely pivoting and starting fresh. We ended up having revenue afterwards and really helped in getting help from the brilliant minds and access to the network.

Now we moved to SF, and were able to get a lot of connections from the various Techstars founders, staff, and mentors. I've never heard of Up Ramp, but I can say that TS and other accelerators like YC, 500 Startups, and AngelPad are worth 6%.

 

[leastservant1979]

@abbylyn78 I just finished running and organising an accelerator in Silicon Valley with Google so I'm coming at this from a different direction.



Accelerators work best with small teams that can quickly iterate on their business. We had teams that had been working on something for over 2 years that were generating revenue and they still found our programme useful as we concentrated on the validation of their entire business model.



Every accelerator though will have a different focus. With Google Launchpad Start, it's validation through a 5 day sprint of 1-to-1 mentoring through product, design, tech, marketing & strategy. With Techstars, Seedcamp, YCombinator you're looking at a much longer programme 3-6 months.



Ultimately my questions to you are:

• How big is your team? ( 2-5 in an accelerator work best from experience)
• How willing are you to changing your business?
• What do you want out of an accelerator? Growth?
• As someone who mentors in product & growth, how are you trying to grow your company and what is working for you?