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How to get into 500 Startups and why you need it

500 Startups is one of the most famous startup gas pedals in the world. Twilio, Sendgrid, Grab, and many other companies you’ve heard of or used their products grew out of here. Grab was the first unicorn gas pedal. It is now capitalized at $3 billion, and Sendgrid, from a startup that was accelerated here, has become the curator of the new streams.

We went to the company’s office and talked to a few of the founders of startups that have been accelerated here.

How to get into 500 Startups

You have to go through a serious selection process. There are a lot of applications and the competition is high. To pass it you must have a strong idea (not necessarily an ideal one, you will be helped to work it out and develop it) and a team. There have been cases when startups came in without a ready prototype, but during acceleration, they developed the idea, got interest and raised investment rounds, creating a finished product in the process. But that’s more of an exception to the rule.

There are some funders who use outsourced teams to implement their idea. But that’s also more of a big exception. Outsourcing is difficult to work with, because a product is a living thing. It has to be changed according to the conditions that the market and the outside world dictate. When you have your own people in the team all the time, the work goes faster. People from the outside have to be constantly brought up to speed.

Advice from those who have already undergone acceleration in 500: If you do not have money for the team that will develop the idea, first find money for the team, and then start the project.It is very desirable to have a client base. A startup that already has revenue or at least a good model of how revenue will be generated in the future makes a good impression.

The 500 startups give preference to faunders with a product, a team, and revenue. But in Silicon Valley there are gas pedals of different levels. For example, at Y Combinator, they only look at founders in the selection process. And even if his particular idea is not very successful, but he has a good profile, there is every chance of getting there.

500 Startups is aimed at a slightly different level and their program is designed in such a way that the startup will develop sales and set up work with clients.

When selecting funders, preference is given to technical specialists. But if a sales or marketing person makes it into the Fortune 500 family, that’s OK; there will be no disrespectful attitude.

What will they teach?

The accelerator program is 90% focused on business development. The remaining 10% is focused on technical stuff and flexible non-specialized skills.

Every day high-level people from large companies come into the office and talk about how to build and develop a business, covering different topics. At first, this takes place in a lecture format, and then escalates into Q&A – questions and answers. The lecturers who come from companies have office hours, when it is possible to sit down with them in one of the talks and discuss for half an hour, an hour or even two hours specific personal questions that need to be solved by a founder. These professionals give very powerful feedback and easily share their years of experience.

Since this is not a school in the traditional sense, but rather a gas pedal, everyone understands that each company and each specific startup is unique and requires a specific approach.

There are no obligatory events and classes. Startups decide for themselves which lecture to sign up for and where to come. But to sign up and not come is considered very ugly.

Each startup is assigned a mentor. The project can also pick up a mentor from some large company that has already been accelerated in 500 Startups and has had some success.

In the case of TechStars, the incubator is not connected to the program, but there is no question that it is very important to the incubator. For most, it is revenue. But there are projects that analyze the number of clients or how often a product is used. The main thing is for the project to have some growing key metric that can be measured. Some companies can’t generate revenue all at once. For example, all blockchain startups are now focused on showing the first use of the technology, attracting the first customers. It’s too early to talk about revenue for them.

Toward the end of the gas pedal training, they teach people how to talk and present their projects to investors. There are hours of acting, proper speech and diction.

From the very beginning of the acceleration program, startup founders talk to investors all the time. Among them it is believed that if a founder came here, it means he is already worth something and counts this as a powerful pre-moderation.

Gas pedal enrollment is done in batchs – streams or classes. For example, in Batch20, which ended a year ago, there were about 40 teams. One of the founders (by the way, he is from Russia) of this thread told us about his project:

“We were part of Batch20. We are building a platform that collects various services for the elderly in one place: home caregivers, doctors, etc. We came to 500 Startups with this idea. The program as a whole really liked it because for the right moment of the company, when there are already customers and initial revenue, they provide a lot of resources to set up sales properly, run the company’s growth and fundraising. After the program, we raised a round. We closed a $1 million syndicate and now we’re still growing.”

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