Accelerators are often thought of as only being helpful with early stage companies* but founders of seed stage companies* have found our program helpful.
Here's how we helped seed stage companies:
Growth
To become seed stage companies, they likely had strong growth early on. To keep that going, a seed stage company needs to be able to do 2 things and in the right proportion.
- Build on Existing Growth – It's often difficult to know whether you've barely scratched the surface or exhausted the channel. We help seed stage founders figure out which it is and if it's the former, what to do.
- Identify New Growth – At some point, you'll need to find a new growth channel because you've either exhausted your existing channel or you're going after a new group of people. In our experience, a company will try a dozen different ideas to find the one channel that really works and throw away the best. We help seed stage founders get there faster by helping them generate and prioritise those ideas based on our experience.
Organization
Once a company grows to 15 or 20 people, it needs to go from a small tight-knit band of people to an effective organisation. In our experience, it's quite a significant shift internally and often feels like a different company afterwards. As a founder, being able to make that leap successful is often the difference between a promising young startup and a $1B business.
- Becoming a CEO – When the company is young, a founder is still mainly an individual contributor. As the company grows, that changes. That leap is something all later stage founders remember needing to make.
- Hiring – As the company grows, you will increasingly need to hire more specialists or hire for roles that you don't have experience with. As a founder, you need to learn how to be comfortable hiring people who are better at a job than you are and how to tell if they are.
- Roles and Responsibilities – For an organisation to be effective, there needs to be clear roles and responsibilities. Without them, you end up with misalignment and at worst, infighting. We work with founders to debug their organisational structure.
Fundraising
Series A fundraising is very different from all the other fundraises before it. It's a clear turning point where investors no longer will invest in just hopes and dreams. They want to see a great business. We work with seed stage founders on what they should work on now to get ready for their Series A fundraise and how to craft a Series A pitch.
If you're a founder (early stage or seed stage) and working on something, we'd love for you to apply.
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Notes
*Early stage companies = companies with no funding, maybe an MVP, etc.
*Seed stage companies = companies with over 100K in annual revenue, over 20 employees, etc.
