Research Outline

U.S. Accelerators

Goals

To understand the accelerator landscape in the United States by compiling a list of accelerators including name, website, location, number of companies accelerated per year, and equity investment.

Early Findings

  • The exact number of accelerators in the United States is not published, however, estimates state that there are over 200 accelerator programs operating at any given time.
  • We have compiled a list of 92 accelerators in the attached spreadsheet.
  • Y-Combinator is an accelerator located in Silicon Valley, California. The accelerator helps startups develop their ideas, provides seed funding, and helps connect startups with other invetors. Participating startups receive $11,000 + $3,000 for each founder in seed funding from Y-Combinator in exchange for 7% equity. Since it began in 2005, it has worked with over 1,800 companies including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, DoorDash.
  • Airbnb received a total of $5.4 billion in funding. Stripe received $1.6 billion in total funding. Dropbox recieved $2 billion in total funding. DoorDash recieved $2.07 billion in total funding. Unfortunately, a search to narrow down follow-on funding was not successful as much of the data is hidden behind paywalls.