Startup accelerators make sense in theory, but how effective are they at actually improving the economy or encouraging the growth of emerging businesses?
From one of the earliest known accelerator programs, Y Combinator, to the thousands of incubators now found throughout the country, most startup accelerators share a handful of common traits. Throughout the course of an “incubation period,” accelerators recruit a handful of entrepreneurs with great ideas or the makings of an emerging business and gather them in one open space for collaboration, work, limited mentorship and development. In exchange, the accelerator typically receives a piece of equity in that company. At the end of this few-month-long period, entrepreneurs are then cut loose, or sometimes the entrepreneurs compete for a special round of extra funding.
