Startup Accelerators Fail Founders Too Often

Let’s talk about the dirty little secret of startup accelerators: most of them fail founders. And before anyone gets defensive, let’s be clear — this isn’t about the fact that 90% of startups fail anyway, that’s the nature of startups. What’s more concerning is that many accelerators aren’t even meaningfully improving those odds, which should be the fact that matters. If an accelerator isn’t increasing a founder’s chances of success beyond the baseline, what’s the point?

Let’s set the stage with two of the most widely distributed Startup Development Organizations: Techstars and Founder Institute. These two have scaled globally, embedding themselves into local startup ecosystems with directors, mentors, and investors running programs in cities worldwide. Unlike Y Combinator, which remains centralized in Silicon Valley of heavily online, Techstars (which by the way, does seem to be increasingly centralizing... but they're still relevant to framing my point) and Founder Institute attempt to bring startup development to where founders are — an admirable ambition, but one riddled with challenges.

The modern startup era, defined by the explosion of internet-driven business models, took off post-2005. Before that, startups (at least as we understand them today) were largely confined to Northern California. The internet changed everything, and in doing so, it concentrated the necessary talent, capital, and experience in Silicon Valley. As that knowledge spread, places like Berlin, Ireland, Singapore, and Austin began emerging as alternative startup hubs, but a learning curve existed; steep, because the local community lacked what had been going on in California for years. As a result, Founders, everywhere frankly, without access to hard-won experience struggled, and still do.

So, how does this connect to why most accelerators fail founders? If an accelerator is doing its job, its startups should succeed at a rate higher than the average 10%. Not much necessarily! Even a 20% success rate — a 100% improvement over the norm — would be impressive and result in trillions of dollars of economic impact. But many don’t even achieve that because they fail at the fundamental functions of acceleration:

1. Selection – Good accelerators don’t accept every founder. Startups are hard, and not everyone is cut out for it. The best programs curate founders who have the grit, experience, and personality capable of success. Many accelerators accept anyone, both in terms of the proposed venture and without consideration of the team, watering down resources and attention.

2. Acceleration – What does it mean to accelerate a startup? It means giving founders tangible advantages — capital, marketing exposure, connections, and resources that enable them to move faster and further than they could alone. If an accelerator isn’t providing that, what’s it doing? Coworking space? Meetups?

3. Connections – A startup’s success often hinges on access to investors, customers, and experienced mentors. If an accelerator limits founders to a closed network of local “mentors” (many of whom have no real startup experience), it’s actively harming them. Worse, some programs charge investors and mentors to participate, turning what should be a founder-first initiative into a pay-to-play scheme that benefits everyone but the entrepreneurs.

I see the consequences of these failures in my work throughout the world, where industry-specific startup ecosystems exist, yet local accelerators often fail to connect founders to the right people. If you’re running an AI startup, but the accelerator isn’t plugging you into the existing AI community and investors, worldwide, what are they doing for you? Worse, many accelerators masquerade as investment programs when their “funding” is really just a stack of AWS credits and discounted software. That’s not capital. That’s corporate swag.

The Incubator Problem

One of the biggest reasons accelerators fail is that most founders aren’t ready for them. They need incubation first — real education, hands-on development, and time to refine their ideas before stepping onto the fast track. Instead, we’ve let accelerators take on pre-seed founders, rushing them through a system designed for companies that are already viable. It’s like trying to make a chicken hatch before the egg is even fertilized.

Incubators serve a distinct role in the startup ecosystem: they teach, research, and refine. They exist to develop ideas and entrepreneurs to the point where they are ready to be accelerated. But in many cities, incubators are non-existent, leaving accelerators to pick up the slack, and they do, because sponsors, the city, or worse, the founders themselves, pay for it. That’s a problem because accelerators aren’t designed for early-stage education. If your city lacks incubators and expects accelerators to fill that gap, it’s setting founders up for failure.

No, let me correct that, if your city and investors aren't supporting an incubator so that founders develop meaningful opportunities that might lead to value through an accelerator, you should be pissed off at everyone for malfeasance.

The Local vs. Global Dilemma

This brings us back to Techstars and Founder Institute. These programs were born out of Silicon Valley’s ecosystem, designed to bring that expertise to the rest of the world. And to some extent, they’ve succeeded. But because they depend on local directors, they also inherit the limitations of those local ecosystems. An accelerator is only as good as the people running it. If the directors, mentors, and investors in a city don’t have meaningful startup experience, the program’s value deteriorates. That’s not the fault of the brand — it’s a structural challenge inherent to the model.

The Solution? Be Honest About What Accelerators Are

Accelerators aren’t incubators. They aren’t educational programs. They aren’t co-working spaces (and if they’re charging founders for desks, they’re just expensive real estate). Accelerators exist to do one thing: speed up the growth of startups that are already capable of scaling. If they’re not doing that, they’re not accelerators.

If you’re in a city with an accelerator that’s failing its founders, start by asking these questions:

• Are they selecting founders who are actually ready to be accelerated?

• Are they providing real acceleration (capital, customer connections, actual business growth) or just lectures and networking events?

• Are they giving founders access to the right investors and mentors, or just the people who paid to be in the room?

• Are they charging founders for desks, mentorship, or introductions? (If so, run.)

At the end of the day, accelerators should be making it easier for founders to succeed—not adding unnecessary costs, friction, or distractions. If they’re not doing that, they’re just another failed experiment in startup support. And we have enough of those already.