7 Tips for Applying to an Accelerator

Posted on February 11, 2019
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By The Venture Center Staff

If you are interviewing with an accelerator or seed investor, the first thing you need to do is stand out among all the noise. Below is a list of tips on how to stand out based on conducting hundreds of founder interviews.

How to Stand Out During the Accelerator Application Process:

  1. Make sure your application or initial contact form is complete, thoughtful and concise. Poorly written responses mean you don’t understand the importance of the question, or worse, you are lazy. Always look to convey the “So What.”

  2. Prepare for your interview & presentation well in advance. You probably can’t do it on the fly. If you have already been working on your pitch, you likely just need to reflect on how you can relate it to the investor or program you are applying to. If you are making it up as you go that will be apparent and unimpressive.

  3. Sell it. It’s clear when you are in sales mode…and it’s good! It says you have the skills to sell prospective clients and employees as well as evangelize your company to people you encounter. But don’t oversell and don’t lie. “I don’t know, let me get back to you” is 100x better than a lie.

  4. Be passionate about the solution and company you are building. If you have a personal connection to the problem you are solving then include that in the narrative. That always makes your story more compelling and a good story is important.

  5. Be coachable. If you start to get defensive about your deck, design or business model when we start challenging assumptions that says we are going to have problems down the road. We like to avoid those.

  6. Keep your pitch straightforward, simple and educational. We might be wrapping our heads around 4-5 business models in a single day, which is fun but mentally challenging. If you over-complicate your pitch in order to sound smart, the audience will focus on your communication problem instead of the problem you’re solving.

  7. The 10-slide outline plus appendix is a good place to start for pitch structure. It presents components in a logical order and has been proven to work. Focus on content over design.