At this year's SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Yael Hochberg, a professor at MIT and Rice University, announced the Seed Accelerator Rankings. The list was developed based on performance as determined by valuations of participating startups, the amount of funding raised by those startups, survival rates, and ratings provided by investors and program graduates.
In a proud moment for Pennsylvania, two of the state's accelerators made the list — AlphaLab in Pittsburgh and DreamIt Ventures in Philadelphia.
To qualify, programs need to be a fixed term, cohort-based program that includes both a mentorship and an education component; and they need to culminate in a demo day.
“Part of our goal in setting up these rankings is to provide and encourage more transparency,” said Hochberg in a release. “There are many data points accelerators and startups are afraid to have floating out there — valuations, fundraising numbers and so forth are sensitive and can have negative impacts on the startups competitive situation if widely known. As an independent, non-partisan research entity, we are able to gather together this sensitive data in confidence, distill it down, and provide some information on the relative success of the programs and of the phenomenon as a whole – without revealing details on individual startups.”
Check out the complete list:
1. Y Combinator
2. TechStars
3. AngelPad
4. Launchpad LA
5. MuckerLab
6. AlphaLab
7. Capital Innovators
8. Tech Wildcatters
9. Surge Accelerator
10. The Brandery
11. Betaspring
12. BoomStartup
13. Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator
14. JumpStart Foundry
15. DreamIt Ventures
LEE STABERT is managing editor of Keystone Edge and Flying Kite Media.