Abstract
Accelerators are specially designed entrepreneurship programs that enable startups to scale up at a fast pace through mentoring, intense consulting, training, and provision of access to business networks. To cope with the challenges of the entrepreneurial process and to access resources to achieve a quick scale-up, sustainability startups need a great deal of support from intermediary organizations. In this study, we examined 7358 social-sustainability startups and 2671 environmental-sustainability startups to understand the factors that influence the probability of a sustainability startup being selected by accelerators. Our main research question was whether previous funding (in the form of equity funding or philanthropic support) received by sustainability startups affects the selection decisions of accelerators. We also investigated how team-related characteristics such as work experience diversity, female startup teams, a team’s passion or commitment, and entrepreneurial experience influence the chances of startups being selected by accelerators. Our data were drawn from the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI), which was cocreated by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs and Emory University. The data have been collected from entrepreneurs around the world since 2013. The wave we used included a dataset covering the years 2013–2019. Our results indicate that for both social-sustainability and environmental-sustainability startups, the amount of previous equity funding and philanthropic support received from external funding providers is of critical importance for the startup to be selected by accelerators. We also found that previous funding mediates the relationship between various team-related characteristics and the probability of a startup being selected by accelerators.
Highlights
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralIn order to cope with the challenges of the entrepreneurial process and access resources to achieve a quick scale-up, sustainability startups need much support from intermediary organizations
The all-female makeup of a team increases the probability of a startup being selected by accelerators
Since understanding the passion and commitment of entrepreneurial teams is critical but at the same time difficult to achieve for accelerators, as well as other external fund providers, previous funding received by startups may mediate the relationship between the entrepreneurial passion/commitment and the probability of a startup being selected by accelerators
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralIn order to cope with the challenges of the entrepreneurial process and access resources to achieve a quick scale-up, sustainability startups need much support from intermediary organizations. Accelerators seem appropriate organizations to support sustainability startups with formal and informal education, expertise, mentoring, and networking [1]. Our knowledge on what affects a sustainability startup’s probability of being chosen by an accelerator is limited [3,4]. The factors that affect the positive selection decisions of accelerators while evaluating sustainability startups deserve attention. The research on selection criteria applied by commercial as well as socialimpact accelerators has recently increased [4,5,6,7], there are still many gaps to be addressed in the literature. Our understanding of the factors that affect the probability of a sustainability startup being selected by accelerators is very limited [3,4]. Whether with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
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