Surprisingly, there are underutilized opportunities for founders, boosters that can increase a business’s survival rate since it has become increasingly overbearing to saddle – alone – the responsibilities and the pains of managing a new business or product. There are Accelerators who can help them learn the ropes and imbibe in them the necessary knowledge required to successfully run their startup, there are also incubators who provide them with the initial support so they can find their feet and there are venture builders who take them in and collaboratively work with them for a longer period.
Accelerators take in established startups that have been developed to an extent and already have a minimum viable product (MVP) through a very short phase (typically lasting for about 3-6 months) of intense training. This aims to speed up what would have been years of growth into just a few months. They are educated and provided with mentorship on how to promote their business and rapidly scale their growth. There are also opportunities to get capital and network opportunities that aims to acquire potential partners who will further facilitate development. They deploy a systematic approach to solving all operational and strategic difficulties that may have become a pesky bottleneck to the startup.
Think of Incubators as a mother who breastfeeds her child. The breastfeeding process will continue until the child has attained a certain age. Unlike accelerators who take in fairly established startups, incubators will help you establish yourself. They provide the support needed for entrepreneurs to stabilize their new venture. Support which includes but not limited to mentorship, training, access to service facilities, networking events, coaching are provided for as long as 2 years, way longer than accelerators but then venture building is a different ball game which offers better.
Instead of just providing support to starting-out entrepreneurs, venture builders essentially become part of the team. They jointly create the startup from the bottom-up with the business owner by generating in-house solutions to identified problems. They are responsible for aggressively marketing the venture for maximum visibility and raising of the required funds to fortify the startup. All these equips their ventures with better durability when compared to other regular startups. The development journey is longer than with accelerators and incubators. In fact, it is the venture that gets to decide to leave the program after having felt enough confidence to stand alone.
So, either you are an entrepreneur with a MVP looking to scale your business or you just need people who’d push your business early on or perhaps, you decide to take it a notch higher with a ‘forever’ partner that’d hold your hands all the way, you should know where to pitch your tent by now.
