At Startup Istanbul 2015 Adam Berk hold a panel of 3 accelerators representatives - Enis Erkel from Koç university, Eric Anderson from Startup Wise Guys and Ozan Sonmez from KAUST - and one VC Baris Aksoy from 37 ventures. He asked them what problem they were solving and talked about the future of accelerators.
What are the accelerators currently solving?
They offer great networks of mentors and investors and connect the startups to those players. They accelerate the funding, the sales and the time-to-market with tools and tested curriculum. To achieve that, they have to go through harsh honesty from both sides and “accelerate” the teams which sometimes means accelerating its destruction. The role of accelerators is also to make sure the startups have a good market understanding and know how to acquire customers and communicate with them efficiently.
They also help raising local entrepreneurship ecosystems to the level of the regional and international competitors through adapted sales solutions and the promotion of the local technological solutions.
Adam Berk applied the words of Steve Blanks to the accelerators saying that they need to accelerate learning.
What’s next for the accelerators?
If the panelists seemed to agree on the fact that startups are the future we heard different point of views on the accelerators as Baris Aksoy has a different perspective on the topic. If he claimed that they need to invest more money on their winners to be profitable and is not sure that they will be part of the future, others said that the accelerators need to work with the corporations and show them a new mindset and provide them faster and cheaper solutions. Eric Anderson talked about specialised accelerators - in sales, marketing, growth…- to add to the startup experience and said that the future will be made of multiple tiers and multiple verticals and maybe no more big corporations.
Every accelerator program is different so if you want to hear more about the particularities of each one that was represented on the panel and 37 ventures Watch the full video here.
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