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Startup Accelerators are programs that invest a small amount of capital into early-stage companies while providing programming and mentorship over a period of 3-6 months.

While startup accelerators have become wildly popular among early-stage startups, the answer to "What is an accelerator?" has morphed quite a bit over time. We hear about startup accelerators providing seed capital, mentorship with the business model, and ultimately introductions to venture capital at a "demo day" but how much of that is truly valuable?

Let's dig into what accelerator programs actually do, who they help, what benefits they provide, and what are some of the cons to joining them - and some new alternatives to the traditional startup accelerators.

What's the Bus...

Before we spend a dime on building anything, we’re first going to learn how to assess the feasibility and viability of our startup idea to see whether we should forge ahead with confidence, pivot, or go back to the drawing board altogether.

This should always be the first step for every Founder who is considering pursuing a startup idea. Broadly, this process is called idea validation.

Intro to the Business Idea Validation Process

As a Founder, chances are you’ve experienced the “eureka” moment — that feeling of capturing lightning in a bottle when you suddenly strike upon an idea that has you running to tell your friends, family members, and baffled strangers you encounter on the street (but probably not your target audience).

Nine times out o...

Entrepreneurs know the truth of the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” The right relationship can make the difference between a struggling startup and an overnight success.

But there are a lot of people in the world, and most of them don’t know who you are. You can’t sit back and wait for your audience to find you. To help your company succeed, you need to make the first move.

Savvy founders know that thought leadership is the first step to earning trust among a specific audience. And the trust you earn through a thought leadership strategy can help you build valuable partnerships, attract amazing talent, secure funding, earn press, increase sales, and more.

Grow Your Business Through Thought Leadership Content

Thought lea...

As a Founder, no matter what I've ever accomplished I've never been OK with where I am. It's weird, too, because I started out with so little that accomplishing anything was a huge win. And yet, I find that my anxiety exists in nearly ever Founder I meet.

It almost seems like the very drive and ambition that makes us great Founders also makes it very difficult for us to just kick back and enjoy the status quo. It's as if we're Kevin Arnold constantly reaching for the car door handle of accomplishment while our asshole older brother Wayne keeps hitting the gas pedal when we try.

"Why wasn't my last accomplishment enough?”

When we had nothing but a dumb idea and a dream, the idea that this could turn into our day job was a massive milestone. ...

In the early years of my first startup we totally ran out of money. I remember sitting in my apartment staring at the ceiling thinking "how do we possibly recover from this?"

Then I had a (then) silly idea. What if I just took the whole staff down to just a couple of people and we ran "bare-bones" for a while? I recognized it was a big step back, but I was also thinking "I'd rather be alive and breathing than dead and bloated" (the former being a Pearl Jam reference, the latter being a Stone Temple Pilots reference — RIP 90's).

We made the hard decision of letting basically everyone go. We moved the office back to my apartment. We sold off furniture and office equipment. It sucked.

And then something really interesting happened.

All of a su...

Even dietitians know it’s healthy to have a beer or a donut once in a while. Without wiggle room, a strict diet can harm health in other ways, like creating stress or limiting social interaction.

Until a client prescribed otherwise, our company struggled to take a break from something that was supposed to keep us strong: our process. This client loved our work, but he felt that we’d become too married to our own way of doing things.

A look back at our client data showed that we had, indeed, taken our healthy habits too far. We did our best work when we eliminated VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), empathized with our clients as well as their users, and pushed toward consistent shipping.

So we broke our mold.

We starte...

What happens to funded startups that can't raise any more funding?

We enter the funding "No Man's Land" where startups go to linger and eventually die a very long, unceremonious death. No one talks about it — certainly not the Founders who are left with the breathing corpse that was their once-hot startup. Certainly not the investors who have written off their investment long before anyone else.

Yet everyone knows we're digesting in the Sarlacc pit for a thousand years without any idea what to do about it.

Having been in this fiery wasteland more times than I care to admit, I learned that at some point Founders have pretty much three options to escape, and "we'll just hold out for funding" isn't one of them.

Buy it Back

Let's start with per...

Imagine sitting in a room where every person across from you is dealing with the same crazy startup shit that you are.

Everyone is worried about making not only payroll but their mortgage payment. Everyone is wondering how to deal with annoying investors. Everyone feels like a total fraud, not just you. And most importantly — everyone is willing to talk about it — honestly.

Welcome to Founder Therapy.

There's a growing trend among Founders to begin talking openly and honestly about the issues we face, beyond online rants and in private spaces where we can get back to being real people.

I've been hosting these sessions for over 20 years all around the country, mostly in my home, and have sat with over 1,000 Founders in that time. What I'...

We all know what it means to give equity away. But what does it take to get it back?

There are a few different methods we can use to begin clawing back some of our hard-lost equity, but all of them require quite a bit of effort — and aren't nearly as easy as giving it away!

Will investors incentivize us with additional stock?

When we look at future funding rounds, if things are going well, we may be able to negotiate some additional stock awards based on the next financing.

This is only an option if the company is doing well and we can point to a significant track record that we've demonstrated to get it there. It doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen.

Oh, and if we don't negotiate hard for it, no one is ever going to suggest it for u...

We’re living in a world where customer expectations are higher than ever. The traditional one direction advertising flow has been replaced by audiences that demand highly personalized content and valuable experiences.

To answer this demand, create more relevant messages and foster a two-way dialogue between a business and its customer, more and more marketers are implementing interactive content in their strategies.

Here is what you need to know to jump on the interactive content bandwagon and start creating content that increases engagement, generates more conversions and provides valuable customer data.

What Is Interactive Marketing?

NG Data points out that the term interactive marketing encompasses dynamic and personalized content and l...