Are we too far along to go through an Accelerator program? Or should we raise seed round?

AAnonymous ·April 15, 2014 ·1 answer

We have a SaaS, subscription product B2B.. we are in private beta now and are in the sales process with several potential paying clients. We have full MVP and a lot of interest. We’re trying to raise a seed round of at least $200k ideally $400k.

We are not going to lie about it – we need a salary, its been too long without one. We aren’t college kids who can survive on eating noodles 24/7 (no offence to them at all). There has been great comments here about how Accelerators are great to help de-risk your startup, is that worth giving up 6-10% equity for?

– $25k would get us nowhere (I know some Accelerators can provide up to $100k). Don’t get me wrong, we are NOT greedy corporate dudes… we are a little older with families and need some salary.
– we already have an office with a sweet deal, don’t need another
– we need funds to pay sales people, more developers and to pay ourselves

Any insights from people who have been through Accelerators or gone straight to seed round would be much appreciated. Can’t pursue a friends/family round unfortunately, already tried that.

1 answer from the community

AAnonymous· Apr 15, 2014

reasons to consider an accelerator:

- if you don't have an easy time raising $250-500K

- if you think you can get into a top 5 / top 10 accelerator

- if you don't already have solid MVP or product-market fit

- if you don't already have a clear path to revenue / revenue model

- if you don't already have scalable cust acq strategy or solid organic growth

- if you don't already have access to advisors / small investors

reasons to not consider an accelerator:

- you can raise next $250-500K+ (or whatever covers next 6-12 mo's runway)

- unlikely to get into a top accelerator / crappy alternatives

- you already have good MVP / product-market fit

- you already understand path to revenue / how to make money

- you already have a solid sales/mktg strategy, scalable cust acquisition

- you don't need more advisors / small investors

in general the framework should be:

- can i get into a good (enough) accelerator?

- can i raise (enough) money for next 6-12 months?

- do i need to work on product / MVP?

- do i need to figure out marketing / sales?

- do i need to work on business model / revenue?

- do i need access to advisors/mentors?

(apologies for being repetitive, this is basically the same thing 3x)

dave mcclure / 500 startups

Are we too far along to go through an Accelerator program? Or should we raise seed round?

1 answer from the community

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