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Ask HN: Do startup accelerators have any correlation with success?

2 points by untilHellbanned ↗ HN
I'm not seeing the ROI from startup accelerators including YC, Techstars, etc. As I see it reasons for possible failure of startup accelerates include:

1. Focus of accelerators of picking founders based on gimmicky characteristics like their age over vital characteristics like their domain expertise.

2. Emphasis of accelerators on coding rather than sales solving all problems. Maybe this is unfair and rather, accelerators simply don't do a good job of realizing which founders want to code vs sell their way out of the trough of sorrow.

3. Accelerators picking startups based on some insider connection. I'm no financial guru but shouldn't you NOT let emotion control your money?

2 comments

[ 22.3 ms ] story [ 429 ms ] thread
ig1
Not sure what data you're looking at but YC is likely the most successful seed stage investor (in terms of ROI) at scale in the world.
bbcbasic
In addition YC is very systematic in how they choose what to invest in. I doubt there is much bias towards.the wrong things.

Success rate as a discrete count is low, but in $ terms one unicorn pays for many dead mules, and then some.