It doesn’t help that there are different types of business accelerators, and even the definition of an ‘accelerator’ isn’t set in stone. We gave it a shot anyway, and wonder out loud whether there’s an over-abundance of startup accelerators operating in Europe today – or vice versa.
Y Combinator blazed a trail that has been walked by many, including in Europe
Inarguably, Y Combinator was the first of its kind when it started in March 2005, and its success has inspired many to follow into its footsteps, often by outright copying its modi operandi.
First things first: what makes an accelerator?
Startup accelerators are a relatively new, ‘modern’ breed of for-profit business incubators, which typically attract small teams through an open application process and provide a select number of fledgling technology companies with seed funding, mentoring, training and more, for a limited time. After ‘graduating’, startups are supposed to have used the capital, mentorship and feedback to gradually evolve into a viable business, or at least to a point where the team is able to convince more deep-pocketed investors to make a bet on them.
In such a relatively small part of the world, a total of just under 100 active startup accelerators appears to be an extremely high number and the number actually runs much higher if you define the concept more loosely.
Ultimately though, the quality of the accelerator in question is what matters, and whether entrepreneurs are better off joining them rather than going it alone or by other means (e.g. crowd-funding). Next week, we’ll go deeper into what differentiates accelerators from one another, and add some industry perspectives from insiders to the mix.
Source:
Wauters Robin (2013): „It’s getting crowded: with roughly 100 startup accelerators across Europe, how many are enough?“http://tech.eu/research/29/there-are-roughly-100-active-startup-accelerators-europe
