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The job of a startup accelerator is to take ambitious teams of entrepreneurs and shepherd them through the process of turning ideas into businesses. But this is easier said than done. Some programs choose to only accept teams with a prototype built and early market traction. Others, including industry heavyweight Y Combinator, occasionally accepting teams with “napkin ideas” or even no idea at all. But regardless of their circumstances entering a program, many of these teams pivot to entirely new business models – often multiple times – before ever launching to the public.
StartEngine, one of Los Angeles’ more prolific accelerator programs, began noticing this trend over its first four classes of startups and late last year began looking for ways to preempt the process of finding product market fit. The new approach is more transactional in that it’s about finding out if anyone wants to use technology as it’s being developed, rather than building something first and seeing if it gains traction later.
