For the last year and a half, I’ve been working with one of Europe’s top accelerators, HackFwd, as their marketing geek. But now it’s time to make the entrepreneurial leap: I’m founding Vuact, a platform for finding and delivering interesting video to the right audiences. Suddenly being outside the accelerator world means I’m starting to look at what I’ve gained over the past 18 months — and having seen loads of startups, pitches and early-stage investments, I wanted to share what I’ve found out.
So what have I seen?
The fact is that accelerators and early-stage investment programs, particularly in Europe, are not really very differentiated yet. As the market matures we’ll see more vertically-focused programs. In fact, this is already starting. The U.K.’s Springboard, for example, just launched Springboard Mobile. There’s also GameFounders in Central and Eastern Europe, which focuses on the games industry.
