Overall the past two decades, startup accelerators have exploded in popularity. Of the many geographically dispersed accelerators around the world, the five most success – at least when measured by investment dollars – include Y Combinator, 500, Techstars, SOSV, and Masschallenge. Here’s a review.
Looking at Stars by Region for Top Six Accelerators in 2012
The first look is the share of investment activity counts by region for the top six accelerators in 2012. Can you guess which country is the large orange, accounting for over 80% of company counts? The answer is the United States. In second place was “Other” countries at 6.7%, followed by Canada at 3.8%. No other geographic area accounted for more than 3% of company counts. Amazing!
Looking at Stars by Region for Top Six Accelerators in 2022
The next look updates year to 2022 for the company counts by region for the top six accelerators. With the United States dominating activity in 2012, would you guess the United States continued its dominance in 2022? The answer is yes, although to a much lesser degree. In 2022, the share of companies headquartered in the U.S. dropped to 58%, down over 22% from their 2012 figure. Which countries saw their share increase? Interestingly, 15.3% of company counts went to the “Other” countries not listed in the legend. In third place was the United Kingdom at 5.3%, South America at 4.1%, and Canada at 3.8%. No other country managed to surpass the 3% threshold.
Looking at Exit Value by Annual Cohort
The next figure (and the last for this write-up) is a look at the cumulative exit value for the top five accelerators (you might need to zoom in to see the graphic better). Of the top five shown, Y Combinator comes out on top for the highest exit values, with an almost $100 billion in value coming out of the 2012 cohort year. Other good years for Y Combinator cohorts included 2013, 2014, and 2015.
In second place for exit values was MassChallege. The best cohort year for companies going through MassChallenge was 2010, with almost $20 billion in value created.
Rounding out the top three was TechStars. The best cohort year for companies going through TechStars was 2011, with around $10 billion in value created.
Summing Up
Overall, interest in accelerators has grown enormously over the past 20 years. Interestingly, though, the success of accelerators is largely concentrated in the top five or six accelerators. Will the coming years see some more distribution of success for startup founders? Time will tell.
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