Mobility Accelerator

Learnings for similar accelerator programs 

1. The accelerator should conduct interviews for the potential startups, perhaps with help of advisors so that it is able to choose the best startups and especially those with a product already in the market. Early stage ideas without a product are difficult to accelerate. 
2. The program should communicate clearly to the startups on the expectations and what the entire acceleration process entails e.g., seed capital and any other financial support.  
3. Access to the acceleration facilities like the meeting or working spaces (C4DLab) should be unlimited, if possible, of working time extended and on weekends. 
4. Design the programs in a way that will help startups to think differently and develop more superior solutions as well as increase their capacity to collaborate, merge and commit to a long-term vision. Expose them to more validated learning and industry experts. 
5. Develop a strong follow up process for progress monitoring after the acceleration period by creating an alumni program. 
6. Strengthen go to market, product development and management understanding for the start-ups to achieve product market fit. 
7. Increase the accelerator period to 12 months. 6 months is too short a time to realize the much needed take off results. 
8. Provide minimal business funding to startups that is easily accessible to finance their most urgent needs as identified/verified by mentors. The accelerator can work with mentors/ advisors to review/ evaluate which urgent affordable items the accelerator can pay for to give impetus to the startups. 
9. The age of a startup needs to be considered before allowing them into acceleration, if a startup has been in existence for over 3 years, and is not solving a terminal problem and is not post revenue then chances are they are more interested in pitching than in working on their business.  Also, where the founder has a separate profitable business then they are unlikely to take the acceleration program seriously unless there is evidence that they have invested in the new startup with more than the use of idle resources from the existing established business. 
10. Make attendance of workshops mandatory for all startups in the program and failure to attend and participate in a specified number of sessions should be sufficient grounds for elimination. 
11. The accelerator should in addition to focusing on mentorship, support the startups in actual business development to link to the accelerator partners or networks to form a pipeline for the startups. The accelerator should also emphasise on technical assistance for instance to share technical knowledge with technical partners with CISCO on how to improve startup technologies.  
12. Support from the accelerator in terms of facilitating pilot runs of the startups solutions within the University ecosystem can be able to validate the offering the startups are proposing as well as form a basis or learning tool for them.  

Challenges 

1. Many of the startups were still at idea stage and were not ‘working’ on the ground and therefore it was difficult to discuss certain concepts away from general theory.  
2. All the startups in the program had existing solutions which had received accolades in other forums which they seem to have mistaken for a validation of their business models. This made most of the founders resistant to being objective on reviewing their business models. 
3. A similar challenge was the mind-set problems. Mind-set problems are like biases, a money driven approach as opposed to a value driven approach. Short term vision as opposed to a long-term vision which compromised the level of empathy, patience and the quality of the solution. This was a serious challenge because most innovators had week justification of the problem and solutions they were offering. 
4. Conflicts of timing between appointments and seminars by the various startups/ advisors; and choice of meeting venues between mentor’s office/ or C4DLab as some mentors preferred to hold meetings in his office which was not always easily agreeable to the startups. 
5. Having the seminars on Thursdays and Fridays each week was quite heavy to some startups who recommend, if possible, reduce the frequency to allow flexibility.  
6. Positive challenge: Most Mobility concepts are based on initiatives by Cities and not by private sector. This required further research and inquiry into how the private sector can enable transformation of the urban mobility sector in developing cities.