![pb-rankings-.png rankings](http://www.innovationamerica.us/media/Editor/pb-rankings-1507508724.png)
AUSTIN, TEXAS – (March 11, 2016) – Eight seed accelerators -- 500 Startups, Alchemist, Amplify LA, Angelpad, Chicago New Venture Challenge, MuckerLab, Techstars and Y Combinator -- landed the coveted top spots in the 2016 annual Seed Accelerator Rankings announced today at South by Southwest (SXSW) by entrepreneurship and management experts from Rice University, MIT and the University of Richmond. The Seed Accelerator Rankings Project uses a variety of metrics, including the valuations of participating startups, the amount of funding raised by participating startups, startups’ survival rates and ratings provided by program graduates. The project is the brainchild of Yael Hochberg, an entrepreneurship professor at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business and researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Innovation Initiative Lab for Innovation Science; Susan Cohen, an assistant professor of management at Richmond's Robins School of Business; and Dan Fehder, a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management.