How to Make a Big Impression in Front of an Accelerator
Strategies to help you maxmise your impact
As a COO of ReaktorX, a pre-acceleration programme, I’m always very inspired when scouting startups.
While our primary goal is to select the best international teams for the program, it’s a unique opportunity for me to come across so many astonishing solutions — and it always proves to be insightful and motivating.
But the process of making a good impression when your startup is only an idea on a piece of paper, can be difficult, and daunting. Luckily, there a few strategies you can deploy to maxmise your impact, and potentially win yourself a spot on the program.
Can we jump on a call?
Rather than do their research on accelerators, many eager entrepreneurs jump straight to the cold email. Please understand that its highly unlikely we can find the time for everyone, especially if your message reads:
Hey, I’ve got this wonderful idea and I was wondering if I might join your accelerator.
Yours sincerely, Jake
Really, Jake? This gives us no insight into your ‘wonderful idea,’ and it’s clear that it’ll costs us lots of time to get all the details from you. The best way for Jake to join an accelerator is to follow the accelerator’s activities and be aware of when the scouting takes place. That way, Jake will get the right channel to dive into his idea, with relevant details for the organisers to decide. They can use VestBee (it’s pretty popular), but you may come across other ways as well.
Also, it’s always great to see startups actively searching for help during networking events or conferences. When we see you there, we know you’re engaged in the growth of your startup, especially at the early stage (we know that the further you go, the less time you have for it).
Did you come ready?
The very first mistake we see is a lack of readiness for a conversation with the founders. It can be during a conference or on a call that we schedule, but we often feel that the only side that is ready is the acceleration team.
Don’t worry. We know you have weaknesses, and we’re never expecting the best pitch deck on earth from you, nor the most detailed financial data. But what we do expect is:
- a brief description of the solution,
- a timeline (when you launched, what stage you are at, etc.),
- areas of your struggle or topics to master,
- goals and vision for the future (rather a closer one),
- preferences of the mentors that you can work with — oh, that’s so cool!
You see, it’s not rocket science, just a bit of prep before we meet so that during a 15-minute meeting, we have enough time to listen to you and ask some questions.
Don’t let us embarrass you, shine
Our conversation with you is our first chance to get to know you, so we may ask many questions. A good rule of thumb is, the more you can tell us about your startup, the less we dig deeper.
The scope of questions is always different. We can ask both about your potential as well as about your challenges and red flags. We can elaborate on the market you’re planning to disrupt or focus on the team’s background. If your business operates in a huge market, make sure you get ready with answers to why we should believe you’ll make it. On the other side, if your product operates in a total niche, we need to understand it.
Remember, we don’t do it because we don’t like you or the concept. Instead, we want to make sure that we understand your needs and provide you with enough help.
Prove we should become friends!
When you make friends, you don’t proceed without knowing anything about the other person. Would you trust somebody you don’t know? We wouldn’t. As you’re probably a first-time founder, we want to help, not only during the program but also throughout your entrepreneurial journey. For this reason, before we shake hands, it would be beneficial for you to know a bit about us.
It’s easier for regional startups to know the accelerators but even if you’re not from the region, look for the accelerator’s history of working with international startups.
No matter how you’re reaching us, make things easier for both sides: check what stage of startups we support (mainly early-stage and a bit later), in which areas we specialize (we’re rather open) and who stands behind the brand. It’s practical to know the rules of our collaboration as well.
Of course, if you ask us these questions, we’ll answer and direct you to our website and social media, but why not spend these extra few moments on a substantive discussion?
Quick lessons for the accelerator
Make sure we meet each other: Don’t sit and wait for what opportunities to come to your startups. Actively look for help, using events and your direct connections. And reach out to accelerator’s representatives, they’re there for you.
This is an audition so get ready: Never join a meeting without preparations. The minimum plan is to explain your startup’s concept in an understandable and brief way; check the guidelines to find out what answers we need to get.
Get rid of question marks: It’s you who develops this idea on a daily basis so there’s no one more informed than you. Think about some pain points and red flags that your listeners could have, we likely have the same.
Done your homework?: It’s wonderful to be surrounded with founders who know exactly why they reach out to THE accelerator. For this reason, please take a closer look at the accelerator’s website and any content they produce.
