San Antonio has a growing number of startup technology companies. Many cities rely on accelerator programs that provide numerous services to help a startup develop successfully. A new San Antonio accelerator will be launching Wednesday night and it could have quite an impact.
In little more than eight years, technology accelerator programs have proliferated and more than 700 self-described of them exist across the country. These programs have become important in growing technology sectors but there is a lot of confusion over what they do and when they are appropriate.
“It’s not surprising to me that there is a lot of confusion around not only what accelerators do about their effectiveness.”
Ian Hathaway is an economist for the Brookings Institution, and he says of those 700 accelerators, only about 180 of them measure up to his and other prominent researchers’ definition. Accelerators offer early funding, intense mentorship, they’re for a fixed period and they occur with a group of companies going through simultaneously.
Essentially they’re trying to whip a company into shape and get them ready for a demo day – where they can pitch investors…and early evidence says they work.
“There is a small body of research that shows leading programs do in fact achieve their stated aims,” he says.
Hathaway also says there is evidence these programs attract more investors to an area. So it was disappointing when San Antonio lost its only accelerator program last October. Techstars—a leading program out of Boulder Colorado—closed its San Antonio office after 5 years.
Now a new accelerator called RealCo…