Houston Accelerators (issue brief)

McNair Project

Houston Accelerators (issue brief)
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Has project status
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Under the Houston Entrepreneurship umbrella.

Reference Accelerator Rankings

More Tables at:

E:\McNair\Projects\Houston\Startup Source Files\Accelerators

Google Drive Spreadsheet

Google Drive Spreadsheet Link:

https://docs.google.com/a/rice.edu/spreadsheets/d/1PLWEyBypWldls997BzWWhF9RwCo1JRPxNJPjwPNOhk4/edit?usp=sharing

The spreadsheet is made up of approximately 10 different sheets detailing different pieces of information about Houston Accelerators.

1. Overview: a broad set of information with all of the obvious information we could find on accelerators from their own page, news articles, or other websites accessible from Google
2. Scores: a simplified look at Services provided (based on whether they had office space, mentors, etc.) Competence (Was the leadership comprised of people with obvious experience running a startup and is it Market or Non-Market -which is documented in overview-) and %VC which is the % of companies who received venture capital funding
3. IndustryAveFromNVCA: NVCA has the total VC investment in each industry so our first bet at find the average VC investment per company (per industry) was in that sheet
   1. We ended up using Averages from the SDC pull of all VC invested in companies of all time
4. %ofAveVC: We looked at each company and compared its total investment to the average total investment in that industry. We then took those percents and averaged them for each accelerator
   1. We realized this would be a bit biased because new companies won't have gone through so many rounds of VC and hence won't have been able to raise as much money. So this measurement wouldn't truly be an accurate estimate
   2. We also realized that the amount of VC investment can be arbitrary unless the company is eventually Acquired or IPOs for more value than the investment
5. Acquis: The relevant Acquisition data labeled with the accelerator name. The two columns at the beginning are redundant and just a safety for sql joining
6. IPOs: The relevant IPO data labeled with accelerator name. The two columns at the beginning are redundant because of measures taken for sql again
7. Acquis and IPOs Clean: A collection of where we had enough data to have an ROI statistic. On the right side of the sheet is a summary of what's there
   1. ROI means return on investment. For our purposes it was the Acquisition or IPO value divided by total invested in the company
8. Top 100 VC A list of the top 100 VC companies from Entrepreneur's article here
9. FirmsInvested: Looking at each firm invested in a portfolio company (grouped by Accelerator) we looked at how many unique firms had interacted with each accelerator. We then used this to make a ratio of number of investments compared to number of unique firms
10. VCstats: Using the investments from the previous sheet, we simplified each of the metrics and put them here

Charts

Information from this sheet was then used to make charts in:

'E:\McNair\Projects\Houston\Acc Rank IB\Charts.xlsx'

Criteria for being an Accelerator

• Look at summary below for a simpler perspective

The main difference between an incubator and an accelerator seems to be the time a company spends in the program [1]. That being said, the essential criteria that a program must have to be an accelerator are mentors, sessions, a time limit around 90 days to 4 months, and a graduation day. Possible attributes include a small capital investment (maybe $20,000), a cost of a single digit percent of equity, and preparation specifically for the investment stage. The last one is almost essential. [1] [2]

Summary:

Essentail Criteria

• 90 day to 4 month program limit with a graduation at the end
• Mentoring & Industry Connections
• Education Sessions
• Preparation for investment stage

Likely attributes:

• Charge of ~7% equity
  • Esp. if it's a market accelerator
• Small capital investment (~$20,000)

Sources

[1] = Forbes: Is A Startup Incubator Or Accelerator Right For You?

[2] = Microventures: Accelerators vs. Incubators

Updated Portfolios

E:\McNair\Projects\Houston\Startup Source Files\Accelerators\Updated Portfolios