Startup accelerator launch

If earlier we worked on a “revolving” system and constantly showed projects to the company's shareholders, now we are planning several stages with strict timing.

Accelerator design development: Before the launch of the second wave, we organize many diagnostic sessions and workshops within the company to identify the real need for innovation. This work will help us not only to select the most suitable projects, but also to increase the survival rate of pilots at the accelerator stage.

Project scouting: in 2.5 months we hope to recruit about 300 projects on predetermined topics.

Pre-acceleration: a short period of time up to 6 weeks, during which we work closely with selected 25-30 projects, together with our trackers and internal experts, we help to form proposals. At this stage, it is important to work out the task and plan for the pilot project, calculate its cost and economic result from scaling.

The result of this stage will be a “Demo Day”, during which projects will be defended. During it, by voting, we will select up to eight pilots who will be ready to finance to confirm the hypotheses.

Acceleration: the piloting stage with selected projects will take up to 3-4 months. If the pilot achieves at least 80% of the KPIs assigned to him, then a decision will be made on its further scaling and implementation in the GloraX infrastructure.

The main difference is the focus of the new accelerator. We will work according to the Fast Track model, that is, we will select companies that are mature enough to join us for fast piloting. This will help the accelerator apply the technology and scale it across the company's facilities after the pilot proves cost-effectiveness.

We did the first launch at a very difficult time: the pandemic began, there were changes in the composition of the company's founders. However, despite all the difficulties, we got a tangible effect for the accelerator and created a new paradigm for the company's development as a digital developer. So we are preparing the second accelerator with great optimism: we will soon share the details about the selection!

Investments for technology startups

When the service, which received support and funding from the accelerator, entered the accelerator, it had already passed the MVP stage, becoming a fairly mature business. We liked that the service had a clear financial model. All processes were optimized, built, and he needed money not to get on his feet, but to scale and develop. In addition, the company had a large number of successful cases in its portfolio, which allowed us to evaluate the quality of their work and make sure the business model was effective.

The following can be summarized.

• it is not interesting to consider projects at the idea stage, because there are many thoughts on creating a product, but often there is no clear financial model behind this. In many cases, there is no team that will implement the plan. Therefore, many such ideas are simply not viable.
• For investors in such projects, the risks are very high. Companies that either already have first customers or are at the MVP stage are more interesting to us, as we can test their product.
• It is very important for accelerators to quickly reach the testing stage. If a startup is at the idea stage, then we understand that it will take at least a year. In turn, if the project is at the MVP stage, you can quickly launch pilot projects and evaluate business prospects.

As part of the accelerator, we launched several pilot projects, and it was their results that became decisive when choosing the finalists.