Accelerators target a kind of company: a few months or a couple years old; ambitious; raw. Probably founded by people who have never built a fast-growing company from scratch, but have managerial or product-building experience.
Some organisations set themselves up as places where teachable builders come to find ideas. But your typical accelerator works with founders who have a useful, usable and desirable product. Or at least a product that excites.
(I use “accelerators” as the family name for these organisations. There are some differences, as Justin Norman shows in this piece from August last year.)
What’s in the lab?
Y Combinator sets out to help founders make something people want. Michael Seibel, the firm’s MD for Early Stage told me YC doesn’t claim to be experts with answers.
Instead, YC is a set of resources: an alumni network, a set of advice, a set of accountability practices, and access to more investors. It’s up to founders to use these as best fits their business.
[ Read: Y Combinator’s MD wants to visit Nigeria and Egypt soon. What will he learn? ]
YC critics always point out that the firm has no Africa partners. It limits the local context they can apply in advising and keeping startups accountable. So do accelerators with boots in Africa have an advantage to exploit?
Founders Factory Africa claims it is becoming “the go-to innovation partner for startups, investors, governments, and corporates” in Africa and beyond. It was founded in 2018, is based in South Africa and offers separate programs for startups at build and scale stages.
Like YC, Startupbootcamp Afritech is a 3-month program. But unlike YC, they are not shy about their “expert-led sessions” and “exclusive opportunities to take part in leading Commerce conferences.”
So if you put the accelerator’s pitch in three buckets, it would be money, market mentorship and management advisory.
What’s missing?
When I asked an African government advisor his thoughts on what holds startups back, he responded with two acronyms: VUCA and BYOE.
Volatility. Uncertainty. Complexity. Ambiguity.
Bring Your Own Everything.
There are rich studies on both concepts but few focus on Africa, especially on how startups should deal with policy and regulatory risks.
This gap is yet to be filled in the African startup accelerator and ecosystem building wave; a structured approach to helping startups deal with teething public policy challenges.
Maybe it’s because business schools have not developed many case studies to inform expert opinion. Maybe it’s because accelerators have insufficient experience dealing with African regulators.
Or they don’t yet appreciate how much unilateral power some African regulators, like Nigeria’s Emefiele, have.