2. You just picked random companies that support your point.
3. I don't understand the logic behind "accelerators slow you down." Most accelerators encourage you to do a ton of customer validation and to pivot - or ditch your idea completely - when necessary. By maintaining a fast paced environment with a lot of mentors around, they help you move faster, not slower.
Have you gone through any accelerator programs? From some friends I hear the mentorship can very much slow you down- constant meetings. Maybe they just did it wrong, but I hear accelerator programs can slow you down in certain scenarios.
Company's are not random. They are mainstream consumer apps. The next big consumer app = mainstream. Does that not make sense?
"The next big consumer app = mainstream. Does that not make sense?"
No it doesn't, that a big consumer app is considered 'mainstream' is an artifact of the fact that app got marketshare, its a dependent variable, not an independent variable.
Your claim is similar to ones that argue college is a waste of time, spend that four years doing things instead of learning stuff you'll never use. The fallacy of the college argument, and yours, is that structured learning has benefit in information gained over time at the start which is unmatched by unstructured learning.
Consider the time spent in an accelerator at those 'useless' mentoring meetings, they are with folks who have done a lot of different things, seen what is successful and what isn't, and more importantly know what traction 'feels' like when its happening. That lets one quickly learn the right stuff without having to waste time chasing ideas which aren't really having an impact.
I noticed that you backed off your argument a bit here: "I hear accelerator programs can slow you down in certain scenarios." If you're being honest with yourself then you can understand that "certain scenarios" is not "all scenarios" and by that reasoning your thesis fails. By that reasoning you would have to change your thesis "most likely" to maybe "possible".
If you want to reason about what makes a consumer app either a good fit or a bad fit for an accelerator that would be good to talk about. What sort of problems are ill suited to an accelerator environment and why? (and trust me, meeting frequency is not a good metric) There are a lot of accelerators out there [1], why not go through their funded projects and rank them consumer/non-consumer (you will need to define consumer app fairly precisely I suspect) and then bring some reasoning to the table that lets folks know how you arrived at the conclusion you did and why you believe it. We'd love to hear about it.
Your argument is logical. I will change "most likely" to "possibly."Most likely is more sensational. Thanks for the comment. Also- I don't think mentoring is useless and I think school is important.
I have not, but I work about 200 feet from Techstars Seattle and am friends with many of the companies from many of the classes there. I also work for Startup Weekend, so I've heard about a lot of accelerators all over the world.
I'm not saying all accelerators are good. Far from it. And I'm not saying accelerators don't have a ton of problems. I just don't think the article you wrote addresses any of them.
That's more of a caricature of what you go through - going through an accelerator just means you have that buffet of support if you choose to dip into it. You still spend every waking hour working on your product - sometimes you take one of those hours to meet the C-level exec from a company you admire. (i went through an accelerator in LA and that was my experience)
As a mentor though you can tune your interaction with a company to not slow them down with meetings right? Get them to execute on an idea and build up momentum with that execution and THEN if necessary pivot and iterate.
Or is your point that accelerator programs are aimed at companies in a particular stage and consumer apps don't need help through that stage. Surely the programs aren't that long and the next big thing could easily benefit from many of the benefits like networking and exposure?
2. You just picked random companies that support your point.
3. I don't understand the logic behind "accelerators slow you down." Most accelerators encourage you to do a ton of customer validation and to pivot - or ditch your idea completely - when necessary. By maintaining a fast paced environment with a lot of mentors around, they help you move faster, not slower.