The motivation behind this research is twofold. First, the desire to explore the accelerator model originates from the author’s previous experience working for both a non-profit, university-affiliated business incubator and an international startup in the United States. Having seen firsthand the operational, managerial, and program inefficiencies apparent in incubator programs, the author sought to understand the limitations of the incubator model. Some of those limitations include the length of the incubation program, a lack of selection process, and the opinion that public funding is not the most efficient business model for incubating startups. Disenchanted with the business incubation model of traditional non-profit and publicly funded incubators, the author sought out this thesis topic as an exploration for a model to improve business assistance programs and accelerate the entrepreneurial process.

Second, the author was inspired by the Seed Rankings project initiated by Yael Hochberg and Susan Cohen to start a wider discussion into the value of accelerator programs and how they influence startup development. While their project has benchmarked the various measurements of accelerator characteristics and success, the author had a deep desire to understand how, exactly, entrepreneurs experienced the accelerator program and how the model might be a best practice model of initiating and supporting a startup. This thesis is the result of these interests and curiosities as well as the lack of research in these areas.