Mama, What’s an Accelerator?
First, the big, exciting news, if you have not heard it – we are one of EIGHT COMPANIES IN THE WORLD selected to be part of the Boom Startup Accelerator for Educational Technology. Can you tell that I’m super-excited about this?
At lunch today, for the second time in two days, someone asked me what exactly an accelerator does.
As our CMO, Maria Burns Ortiz, said,
Until you’ve been in one, it’s really hard to comprehend all of the advantages of being in an accelerator.
Ever seen the TV show, Shark Tank? Imagine that happening every day, sometimes twice a day. You pitch your company and people ask you hard questions.
- What is the market for your product? You say your games are for students in grades 4-8. How many students are there in that market in the U.S. ?
- What is your cost of customer acquisition? For every game you sell via social media (twitter, Facebook, blogs) how much does it cost you?
- Can we see your cash flow analysis? How much money do you ‘burn’ each month (sales – costs) ?
- What is your sales strategy?
- How many games did you sell last month?
- Who are your main competitors? How much do they charge for their products?
- Let me see your Profit and Loss statement. What does your balance sheet look like?
- Do you have a financial model? What are your sales projections for the next five years? Your cost projections?
- Who is the usual decision maker on purchases of educational software?
All of these, and many more, are questions you should be able to answer about your business. Often, I would get asked a question and think,
Damn! I should know the answer to that – but I don’t.
Boom Startup has about 40 mentors, with different areas of specialization. Some are experts in finance, others are in sales. Some specialize in sales to the education sector. They ask a lot of questions, and they help you find the answers. After two weeks, I know my business a lot better (and this is coming from someone with an MBA, PhD and 20 years of business experience). I can’t imagine how much I will have gained after 12 weeks.
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If you want to see what this is all about, check out a free demo of our games here
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There is also money. Every accelerator is different. At Boom, you get $20,000 in cash, but there is also the opportunity for services which you are silly not to use. We got six months of pipe drive free, which has proved really useful for planning and tracking sales.
We received credits for Amazon web services, where we just moved our web site, free legal services to incorporate as a Delaware corporation, saved us about $1,000.
The downside? Well, it is exhausting. I’m writing this at almost 1 am and I got up at 9 am and have been working ever since. It’s a good kind of exhausting, though.