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Follow-up: My Pre-Accelerator experience 👨‍🎓 & the $50k government funding 💸

I posted How I got accepted to a pre-accelerator 🎉 getting up to $50k in funding without giving up equity 💸 on IH 7 months ago. A LOT has happened at Browse AI since then that I'd love to tell you about! But I'm going to only focus on the pre-accelerator experience in this post and post the other stuff (going from $0 to US$800 MRR and from 2 full-time people to 5 full-time + 1 part-time + 3 interns) separately.

Here's an overview of what I'll go through:

  • What the pre-accelerator provided
  • What I got out of it
  • What I didn't like about it
  • After the pre-accelerator
  • Should you apply to a (pre-)accelerator?

TL;DR? Just read the bold highlights!

Browse AI Logo

What the pre-accelerator provided

My Pre-accelerator Calendar in October 2020

  1. 2 or 3 sessions/workshops every week with investors, founders, coaches, etc on various topics like: validation, positioning, fundraising, KPIs, pitching, body language, hiring, etc.
    This took 4-5 hours per week.
  2. A dedicated startup coach to meet with every other week. He helped me narrow down my target segments a bit and plan for discovery interviews. He also tried to hold me accountable and make sure I continuously make progress.
    This took ~45 minutes every other week.
  3. Referral to Alberta Innovates for government funding: Alberta Innovates just created a pilot program that provides up to $50k of funding to startups to do validation and market research and find PMF. This program requires a referral from one of the approved accelerators in Alberta.
  4. Weekly sessions with 321 Growth Academy: This came with materials provided to us through an online portal and covered topics like marketing, sales, cold outreach, operations, positioning, etc.
    This took ~2.5 hours every week.
  5. Peer group meetings every few weeks. There were 9 companies in my cohort. There were also dozens of companies at a partner accelerator in Calgary. I got very close with the other 8 co's in my cohort and we still reach out to each other when we need help or suggestions.
    This took ~1.5 hours every 3 weeks.
  6. A coworking space desk for 4 months which was later extended to 8 months. The space is really nice and has some cool amenities. I only used it a handful of times though because of COVID and because I don't want to waste time commuting. It'd be different if my team members weren't all around the world and were in Edmonton like me. I miss working with my teammates at the same office SO MUCH!
  7. Access to a studio to record audio and video using professional equipment. We used it to record our demo day pitches at the end of the program, but the plans changed last minute and we did live pitches instead of recordings.
  8. Opportunity to pitch to tens of investors, founders, and interested people in Edmonton in the demo day at the end of the program.
  9. A professional photographer took photos of us and the program paid for a couple of high res photos.
  10. 1 on 1 mentorship sessions with experienced founders and investors every month.
    This took 2 hours every month.

I think that's about it. 🤔 But I may have missed things.

What I got out of it

  1. Some of the workshops were very eye opening and useful. Mostly the ones done by folks really senior in what they do with polished materials that they had used before. I learned a lot about fundraising and market research, for example.
  2. We've received $25k equity-free funding from the government so far.
  3. I learned a lot from the weekly sessions with 321 Growth Academy. It gave me a better perspective towards my business and thought me a lot about things I thought I was okay at but I wasn't, like sales and demos.
  4. The peer meetings with the other accelerator were a waste of time because there were too many people we didn't know. But the ones with only our cohort were amazing! Because most of us were in a similar stage, we had learned a ton about each other's businesses during workshops, and it felt like we're all in this together! and we could share our learnings.
  5. I used the coworking space for a meeting with a potential partner!
  6. The professional photos turned out nice! I haven't used them anywhere yet though!
  7. The practicing for demo day and refining my pitch with two pitch coaches was super helpful. I learned that I should display far less info on slides and do better story telling. I also worked on my body language and tone.
  8. I met some really interesting folks in the program that are willing to help others and I know I can reach out to them if I can ever use their help. The network I got out of it is probably one of the best outcomes.
  9. Near the end of the program, I was invited for an interview with YC! The last time I applied I was rejected, and the main change since then was that I got into this accelerator and refined my pitch and positioning a bit. So I think I wouldn't have gotten the YC interview without this program.
  10. I loved that the organization behind the pre-accelerator was a non-profit and everyone there genuinely wanted to help us achieve our goals. There was no conflict of interest that there could be if the organization is getting some money or equity or referral commissions from investors.

What I didn't like about it

  1. Some of the sessions were useless. It was only ~15% of them though. Sometimes the speaker was just promoting their business (e.g. marketing agency), sometimes they weren't prepared at all, sometimes their material was too basic for startups our stage.
  2. Overall, the coaching was okay, but it wasn't as helpful as I was hoping, because 1) I'm used to working my a** off so I don't need someone to hold me accountable and 2) the coach didn't have any business experience himself so his advice wasn't always as practical as I needed it to be. Moving forward, I'd only work with coaches that have relevant experience themselves.
  3. Pitching on demo day was a good practice, but I got nothing else out of it.
  4. The government funding was supposed to be paid in 4 payments over 6 months. It's been 7 months and I've only received half of the funding. I'm hoping I'll receive the rest in a couple of months.
  5. Before the program, I was making a good progress on the product but very little on the business side. During the program, it was the other way around. I managed to pre-sell to two companies and sell a project during the program. But it was frustrating that we were making very little progress on the product and I had to promise future features with no accurate ETA in sales meetings. This was because the program took a significant amount of time and attention. This was WAY easier to handle for startups with multiple founders because usually only one or two would attend the sessions.

After the pre-accelerator

I tried to shift my focus towards to product again and I noticed I can't do product AND business development+sales+marketing at an acceptable pace at the same time. So I hired 3 more full-time folks in January and since then we've been making much more progress and growing our number of new signups and our MRR by 40-55% MoM.

The pre-accelerator was definitely a turning point in my journey, but I didn't hit PMF shortly after the program like I was hoping to. There is only so much a program like this can do.

I'm now trying to get into a good accelerator but I've only applied for a couple and have an interview with one next week. I'll let you know how it goes!

Should you apply to a (pre-)accelerator?

It depends.

  • If it's a non-profit, I would probably apply. Unless you really think it's not worth the time investment.
    Examples: Startup Edmonton, Next Canada
  • If they ask for money upfront, I'd definitely say no. If they believe so much in their startups and their program, why not ask for equity and even invest? I just don't like the model and think it doesn't give the organization enough incentive to do a great job.
    Example: Newchip
  • If they ask for equity and invest too, it can be a good deal. But if they don't invest capital, I'd do a lot of research and make sure it will be worth the equity. Keep in mind that your equity is your most valuable asset in your business and every percent you give up now can matter a lot later, but also, 100% of nothing is still nothing... so do your research! and perhaps talk to their graduates.
    Examples: Y Combinator, TechStars

Hope this was at least a tiny bit helpful for someone.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have!

If you're curious what we do, here's our website: BrowseAI.com

  1. 1

    Thanks for sharing! I'm thinking whether this kind of program is something we would be interested in at Adflow. However, we are based in Europe. Any tips on pre-accelerators in the old continent? 🇪🇺

    1. 1

      I don't think any of the good accelerators I'm familiar with operate in Europe specifically (except YC and TechStars). But there are A TON of accelerators out there everywhere! You can probably find a bunch of them on f6s.com

      1. 1

        Thanks, I'll have a look at it!

    2. 1

      EIT has one https://www.eitdigital.eu/venture-program/ you've only got 2 days left to apply though!

      1. 1

        Not open to Italy 😔🇮🇹

  2. 1

    Great post! Thank you for sharing.

  3. 1

    Thanks for the update, Ardy!

    I used to work at a company (EverQuote) that sold insurance leads to insurance agents and your product would've helped immensely, tbh. Being able to easily extract agent lists from insurance carrier websites = free B2B leads

    I'm curious, it seems you didn't get into YC. What was their primary concern with your business? Are you able to resolve it for the next application? Or are you done with applying?

    1. 1

      Interesting! Any chance you could introduce me to the right person to talk to at EverQuote?

      Good question. When they interviewed me we didn't have any paying customers using the software and I wasn't able to greatly differentiate us from competitors in those 10 minutes. The rejection was understandable.

      I'm trying to resolve those and a lot more (e.g. bring partner(s) onboard). I may apply again for the next batch, or I may do something else. TBH I'm more inclined towards the bootstrapped journey of companies like Basecamp than the VC path.

      1. 1

        Sure! Add me on LinkedIn and let's chat there https://www.linkedin.com/in/juli2/

        If this works out, you could add it as another potential use case: B2B lead gen

        Anyone with Sales Strategy/Sales Operations in their title would be in a support role for B2B sales and would be interested in using your product for B2B lead gen

        1. 1

          I'd really appreciate that!

          I tried exploring the b2b lead gen use case a few months back. I spoke with a handful of sales people and they were all pretty content with basic Linkedin lead gen. They didn't need to extract anything from websites.

          But I didn't talk to anyone in sales ops/strategy. Maybe that was a mistake. I'd love to get some validation through a warm intro to someone with that title if you know anyone.

          Added you on LinkedIn! Thank you!

  4. 1

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