At Montreal StartupFest 2019, I led a roundtable discussion on Building Startup Accelerator Communities, accompanied by industry colleague Tariq Haddadin of Techstars. Thanks to the StartupFest team for putting on a solid event!
Discussion Notes: Montreal StartupFest 2019 – Building Startup Accelerator Communities Roundtable Discussion
Led by Jeffrey Donenfeld of Boomtown Accelerators and Tariq Haddadin of Techstars
Opening
- Accelerator model and Accelerators Networks
Round table
- Local vs global networks
- Startup partners (AWS, Google for Entrepreneur, etc.)
- How your accelerator can be a part of the network and a catalyst for corporates
- You are building a social network for your accelerator but more importantly for your companies and founders and alumni
- GAN
- Building a network for your accelerator (pipeline, investors, etc.)
- How to use corporate relationships with accelerators to apply their network to your accelerator companies + alumni
- Benefits of creating a global network of partners
- Community events
Managing founder<>Mentor relationships and setting expectations – do staff manage mentors or do you setup separate person for managing these relationships?
- Asking questions rather than doing work. (Bob, Innova Corp)
- Educating mentors on how to mentor effectively (Tariq) and setting up initial Mentor Madness meeting
- Weekly update emails from Mentors on what they can do
- (David F)Building mentors network through tiers. Give first and divide of giving vs selling (Jeffrey)
- Hybrid local/remote mode (Alex Reid ) zoom meetings and quarterly reviews, planned meetings – tech to engage folks
- Mentor company vs mentor entrepreneur – mentor the person for longterm (robert)
Connecting accelerators around the world
- Look for synergies of founders for prioritizing connections (tariq)
- GAN (Jeffrey)
- Build local network first
- Used to enhance dealflow synergies (jeffrey)
Using network to build investor relationships
- Rise of pre-venture community
- Seattle angel conference, rockies venture club
Corporate Accelerators
- Corporate resources that an accelerator can’t necessarily provide (tariq) pushing give first
- Learning how to deal with corporations (jeffrey)
- (Vivek (loreal)) – do boomtown/techstars compete on comcast – find unique strengths for each program
Great seeing @Jeffzilla at #Startupfest in #MTL representing @Boomtown pic.twitter.com/v5SwA5XnSQ
— David Smith (@DENVRDave) July 10, 2019
https://twitter.com/Jeffzilla/status/1148729065538383872
https://twitter.com/Jeffzilla/status/1148684776653692928
Being an entrepreneur is challenging in many regards and one of challenges is managing the ups and downs that come from starting and running a business. While the media loves to focus the successes of startups – winning rounds of funding, acquiring smaller startups and achieving unicorn status, the less glorious tales of entrepreneurs’ struggles to overcome challenges, the pain and scars of failure, rejection and loss of confidence tend to be glossed over or completely ignored. Great character is forged in the fire of adversity and many entrepreneurs and startups have risen to meet these challenges and achieve success. This panel of entrepreneurs will share some of the challenges and market flounders they faced as startups and how handled them.
