acceleratorsscore: 5
I haven’t come across any other yet. But I wonder why they have these programs? Is it because they want to acquire highly potential companies before they become multi billion dollar companies? Or do they really want to help out startups? Why?
They also don’t seem to be adding too much but I’d want to hear that from someone who has participated in something like this.
I feel like this is the case.
Providing free access for developers - at a small scale - is one way of getting a competitive advantage over your rivals, because the platform which has more developers who are familiar with it will get used more in production.
It’s the same reason that Adobe gives out very-cheap copies of Photoshop to design students - they want it to continue to be an industry standard, and to make that happen they need a large base of people who know how to use it.
I’m sure the PR and the potential access to acquisitions doesn’t do any harm either. ;)
In my opinion, they mostly do it because of down-to-earth ROI reasons: the return on their cash hoard isn’t great when it sits idle on a bank account or in US treasuries. Being able to spot promising startups when they’re still cheap comes as a bonus. And boosts the ROI further.
The idea of wanting to help might be genuine. A related aspect might be: as a service for entrepreneurial-driven employees. But this might be corporate fairy tales – I can’t say.
Here is what I found on the business and the revenue models of a business accelerator:
Typically, incubators either work in the same business model as seed funds, except they go in very early (example: YCombinator), or as non-profits supported by various agencies (Govt., esp.) and charge fees for certain services like subsidized rent.
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