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U.S. Seed Accelerator Rankings Yael V U.S. Seed Accelerator Rankings Yael V. Hochberg and Kristen Kamath Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University The goal of the U.S. Seed Accelerator Rankings, now in its second year, is to begin a larger conversation about what makes seed accelerators successful, and to provide startups with a tool to help them decide which seed accelerators are a good match for their needs. The rankings below evaluate the relative success of accelerator programs in the US based on our ranking criteria: Rank Overall 1 Y Combinator 2 TechStars Boulder 3 KickLabs 4 i/o Ventures 5 Excelerate Labs 6 AngelPad 7 TechStars NYC 8 TechStars Boston 9 Launchpad LA 10 500 Startups 11 DreamIt Ventures 12 TechStars Seattle 13 NYC SeedStart 14 Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator 15 The Brandery For the purposes of this study, we define an accelerator as a program that offers mentorship, office space, and a small stipend in exchange for equity. To be included in the rankings, an accelerator program must have defined cohorts and hold fixed duration sessions of less than 1 year, culminating in a demo day for potential investors. This study does not include accelerators that require entrepreneurs to have affiliations with specific universities or minority groups. These accelerators provide young companies with mentorship and help achieve the declared goal of building a powerful network in the early stages of the start-up’s development. Affiliation with the top accelerator programs can also provide a strong branding and certification mechanism for young companies. Evaluation Criteria The greatest benefit of an accelerator is to position start-ups for long term success. As many of the accelerators that are evaluated in this ranking are only in their initial years of existence, we systematically study and evaluate accelerators on a variety of factors that we believe are leading indicators of their success. Our rankings are based on a weighted average of scores in 6 categories: Qualified Financing Activity, Qualified Exits, Reputation with leading VCs, Alumni Network, Equity Taken and Stipend. Qualified Financing Activity occurs when a portfolio company raises an aggregate of at least $350k within 12 months of graduating the accelerator program. We believe that a company raising a significant amount of money in the year following the accelerator program is an early indicator of its potential long term success. The $350K threshold represents a sum of money that exceeds the guaranteed investment capital typically made available to any particular accelerator’s graduates through convertible notes. The ranking utilizes the percentage of program alumni companies that have had a qualified financing activity. Qualified Exit occurs when a portfolio company either issues an IPO or is acquired for an amount such that the founders earn at least $1M. A qualified exit indicates that the company has matured to the point where the entrepreneur and other investors can cash out if they wish. The $1M threshold represents a sum of money that would materially affect an entrepreneur’s life. The ranking utilizes the percentage of program alumni companies that had a qualified exit. Reputation with VCs was determined by systematically coding interviews with VCs; for each VC participating, the coding scheme assessed and scored the accelerator based on the level of VC awareness regarding the program and the VC’s assessment of aspects of the program such as the quality of mentorship or usefulness of alumni network. Multiple VCs across the US were interviewed in order for this portion of the ranking, as well as to understand their perspective of what makes for a successful accelerator program. Alumni Network is the number of companies that have graduated from the program; a strong alumni network serves as a significant asset and offers an important base of contacts and resources for future business development. In this study, we evaluated accelerators that had a minimum of 10 alumni by the end of 2011. Equity Taken by the accelerator is the percentage of company equity that the startup gives to the accelerator in return for the stipend and program participation. Stipend is the dollar amount of cash provided by the accelerator to the entrepreneurs to support their activities and living expenses during the program. Category Rankings A number of accelerator programs are distinctive in particular categories. TechStars Boulder and KickLabs had the highest percentage of qualified exits. TechStars New York and Kick Labs had the highest percentage of companies make qualified financing events. In the eyes of the venture capitalists we interviewed, the Y Combinator program stands out as having the highest reputation and quality among the accelerators, with a number of our interviewees viewing them as being in a league of their own. Other include TechStars Boulder in this top echelon as well. Both Y Combinator and TechStars Boulder are perceived to have outstanding mentors to help companies build high potential businesses. However, the VCs we interviewed also expressed concern that this same reputation can build a hype around demo day that can sometimes create artificial demand and overly-high valuations that can impose difficulties for startups in follow-on rounds of financing. Y Combinator also has the largest alumni network among the accelerators ranked in this study. Founded in 2005, Y Combinator has nearly three times the number of alumni of all four Tech Stars locations put together as of year-end of 2011. TechStars has also seen explosive growth over the last few years. Originating with the very successful TechStars Boulder in 2007, TechStars has since launched TechStars Boston in 2009, TechStars Seattle and TechStars New York in 2010, and TechStars Cloud in San Antonio in 2012. Notably, however, not all of the top fifteen accelerators have such large alumni networks. In fact, about half of the top 15 accelerators were founded in just the past two years, with alumni networks of less than 25 companies. Additional Observations and Insights The following are observations and insights from the ranking process that are not formally included in the metrics above, but noteworthy information for both entrepreneurs and accelerator programs. 2012 has seen a proliferation of accelerator programs across the US. Many of these programs are too early in stage to rank, as they have not yet produced alumni classes that can be used in our evaluation. The VCs interviewed in this study mentioned a number of notable new programs that they believe will ultimately become successful. These include TechStars Cloud in San Antonio, Launch Pad Ignition, and The Microsoft Accelerator for Kinect. Another emerging trend in the accelerator world is a focus on industry verticals. Many of the new emerging accelerator programs have a strong bias toward a specific industry (e.g. Healthcare, Energy, Big Data & Cloud, etc. ). This contrasts starkly with the more generalist model adopted by earlier accelerator programs. Notable accelerator programs in this category include: a) Healthcare: Healthbox (2012), Blueprint Health (2012), Rock Health (2011) b) Energy: Surge Accelerator(2012), Green Start (2011) c) Big Data & Enterprise: TechStars Cloud (2012), Acceleprise (2012) Another example is a new accelerator program in which Microsoft has partnered with TechStars to mentor startups that will build creative applications using the Kinect for Windows platform. This partnership model is interesting as it helps start ups build viable businesses around an emerging technology backed by a large enterprise. Finally, this study observed that location is another consideration for both entrepreneurs and accelerator programs. Nearly all the accelerator programs examined in this study require the entrepreneur to be located in proximity to the accelerator program location, or to relocate there temporarily for the duration of the program. Entrepreneurs may be tempted to choose among accelerator programs located in their near vicinity. However, some of the VCs who participated in interviews for this study mentioned they primarily choose to attend demo days based on physical proximity and convenience. Graduates of accelerators located in areas that do not have active VC communities may thus be at a disadvantage from an awareness standpoint, relative to those located in active VC clusters. Disclaimer Information on the ranking criteria inputs was not available directly from the accelerators for five of the accelerators ranked in our study: AngelPad, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Capital Factory, Launchpad LA, and Y Combinator. As a result, the inputs for these accelerators in this ranking are compiled from publicly available information and proprietary databases available to the authors. The accelerators included in this ranking project were 500 Startups, AlphaLab, AngelPad, Betaspring, BoomStartup, The Brandery, Capital Factory, DreamIt Ventures, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Excelerate Labs, i/o Ventures, Jumpstart Foundry, KickLabs, LaunchHouse, Launchpad LA, NYC SeedStart, TechStars Boston, TechStars Boulder, TechStars NYC, TechStars Seattle, Tech Wildcatters, and Y Combinator. About the Authors The primary research for this study was conducted by Kristen Kamath, a second year MBA candidate at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, under the guidance of Prof. Yael Hochberg of the Kellogg School of Management. These rankings represent the views of the authors, and not those of the Kellogg School of Management or Northwestern University. .
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