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The “typical” accelerator model as we know it – a cohort of young startups that go through some sort of curriculum and hopefully convince investors to back them at the end of it – sometimes offers mixed results. Founders may well find that the conversation they have at the end is an investor telling them to call them back when they have more revenue.
My guest today is Chris Traeger, Executive director at Boomtown Innovation (formerly Boomtown Accelerators), where he currently heads up its partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and their sportstech accelerator, bringing with him well over 2 decades of experience in the world of sports and entertainment.
Broadly speaking, the view they’ve taken at Boomtown is that instead of a normal accelerator programme lasting several weeks – which is not really enough time to produce much up by way of partnerships and commercial deals – a longer process focused on striking deals and bringing in revenue has better outcomes, not least of which is that it makes the companies more attractive to investors anyway.
Traeger talks me through Boomtown’s approach to supporting startups, how they tap into the wider investment and advisory community to scale their accelerator offering, given the difficulty of scaling the highly customised solutions for each company, the importance of making sure you figure out what differentiates your accelerator programme from others in a market that is already crowded, and much more.