Designing Accelerators: Founder or Venture Focused?

In 2018, I joined a newly formed entrepreneurship department at a Scottish university. Our flagship offering was a startup accelerator, backed by over £1.2M in philanthropic funding. It was an exciting, unprecedented venture for the university.

I remember being a few weeks into the role when the team went offsite to a hotel for a big planning session. I remember laying out the post its. Putting up the flipchart.

After we settled in with our tea and biscuits, the first question posed was deceptively simple: 'So, what exactly is a startup accelerator?'

At the time, 'accelerator' was a relatively new concept. We grappled with fundamental questions: Who would join? How would we run it? What would it teach? Was it a university course, or something entirely different? Was the client the founders or the new businesses?

This fundamental decision — whether to prioritise the founder or the venture — profoundly shapes every aspect of an accelerator's design and delivery. Understanding this distinction is critical for crafting truly effective startup programmes.

Founder vs Venture

In a university environment, the client for a course is nearly always an individual. Empowering them with the skills and knowledge they need to go on to a successful career - isn’t an accelerator the same?

It could be, but the impact we’re trying to create is around new companies created, revenue generated, jobs created - these are outcomes of the business unit, regardless of who the individual founders are.

Which left a challenge, are we designing a programme to build entrepreneurs (regardless of their idea) or are we accelerating promising business ideas (regardless of if the founders change)? While a pure focus on one or the other might seem appealing, most successful accelerators operate somewhere along a spectrum between these two poles. The key is to intentionally design your startup accelertor with a dominant philosophy that aligns with your overall goals.

The Founder Focused Approach

Startups are driven by talented founders - and often their first idea is not perfect. Programmes that invest in founder development create impact not just if the founder’s first idea succeeds, but also if the first and second idea fails, but the third is a huge success - your programme empowered the team, not the idea.

Even if the startup has an amazing idea, it may fail to deliver based on founders not having the capabilities to adapt, pivot, learn, and deliver. Founder-focused programmes that support new entrepreneurs to find and connect with potential co-founders can also create stronger businesses. This model may also be better suited for scaling ventures to upskill startup founders competencies as they go from small and scrapy venture, to global enterprise.

The focus of founder-focused programmes is often around self-awareness, coaching, finding and solving problems, testing ideas, and leadership. Due to these broad topics, these types of programmes can often bring together diverse sectors and backgrounds as sector specific knowledge is less critical. The delivery model for these types of programmes may include residency-weeks, bootcamps, team forming workshops, or training workshops. If you chose this type of programme design, some aspects that will impact the programme design include:

• In assessment, focus on interviews with founders and testing their passion, capabilities and determination - rather than the business idea

• In content, build competency based sessions on skills like leadership, negotiation, public speaking, idea testing - rather than specifics of the business

• In mentorship, connect founders with expertise in competencies they struggle with - rather than based on the mentor’s industry expertise aligning with the idea

• In providing support, the programme team will need to manage relationships to help new co-founders get on and consider interpersonal challenges that might arise - rather than depending on pre-established teams to already know each other.

Examples of these types of programmes include: Entrepreneur First, Antler Residency, Carbon 13, or Deep Science Ventures.

The Venture Focused Approach

The success of a startup depends on a solid idea or technology. The value being created in intellectual property, sales, customer traction all comes from the business unit. Programmes that focus on the venture follow it’s progression, even if the co-founding team changes. The mission of the programme is to advance the business to it’s next sale, investment raise, prototype, or new hire.

These programmes may have different founders engaging at different times based on their focus areas - for example the CTO attending sessions focused on product, technology development, intellectual property, while the CFO attends sessions on investment, fundraising, accounting.

The focus for venture-focused programmes is to integrate sector specific expertise into the learning - mentors from that industry, successful startups in the field, or knowledgeable professional services supporters. Due to the technical focus, these types of programmes can benefit from limiting the type and sector of startup to ensure content is relevant. The delivery model for these types of programmes would include hybrid online training sessions, group peer learning, cohort-based accelerators. If you chose this type of programme design, some aspects that will impact the programme design include:

• In assessment, focus on pitching and written submissions detailing the credibility of the idea and innovation - rather than on the co-founders capabilities

• In content, design sessions focused on mechanics of running the startup - marketing, sales, finance, human resources, operations, branding for the business - rather than on general skills

• In mentorship, connect businesses to experienced professionals from their sector who have lived experience relevant to the venture - rather than general competencies

• In providing support, the programme team will need to focus on making connections and introductions for the business to progress such as with investors, potential customers, suppliers - rather than on supporting the team’s internal relationships

Examples of these types of programmes include: Y Combinator, TechStars, Plug and Play, or 500 Global.

Summary

All accelerators will have a mix of both - it’s a scale from founder to venture focused, but the design of the programme should reflect the focus of the programme.

Founder-focused programmes are best when the startups are very early stage, without a solid idea or are seeking co-founders, or when the startup is scaling and the business model is established and growth relies on the founder’s leadership. If the focus of the programme is broad across sectors - then skills and competency based programmes align with their needs more.

Venture-focused programmes are best when the startup has a pre-established team and an idea with initial traction. If the focus of the programme is sector specific then double down on specialist sessions and expertise relevant to the audience.

For our university accelerator programme, our mission was squarely focused on driving economic impact through the creation of new, high-growth companies. This clear objective led us to opt for a venture-focused approach, where we rigorously judged the innovation within the business ideas themselves and designed sessions specifically to accelerate the advancement of those ventures.