High Level Summary of an AMA with Aly Murray from UPchieve

I just attended an AMA with Aly Murray, co-founder of UPchieve, an ed-tech non-profit connecting tutors to students from low-income background. She talked about their experience of going through various accelerators (6 in total!). I'm sharing this in case some of the indiehackers find this useful:

• Accelerators often require a big time commitment (apart from the equity/revenue-sharing agreement you get into)
• If you have a non-profit, often the accelerators don’t expect equity.
• Showing that you have some users, even a handful, goes a long way to secure a place.
• Often it takes many attempts to get into. They got into Y Combinator on their 3rd attempt.
• If you can't get in, in most cases you don’t get much feedback.
• Founder-product fit: It helps to pitch your story as a founder and why you are the right person to drive it.
• Being part of accelerators helped them to be in front of the potential clients in multiple ways: (1) They got more credibility in the eyes of the potential clients, (2) They got to network with a lot of mentors and mentors' connections through the accelerator programs, and the volume matters, (3) Often the accelerators got them into expensive conferences -- which proved to be very useful for them.
• Somewhat surprisingly, very few accelerators had detailed knowledge of the sector (say, the sell cycle at the district-by-district level).

How many of you would consider being part of an accelerator program? What would be your top-most concerns?