This week, the popular podcaster Florian Kandler, of Startup Milestones, published another video with a pair of StartupYard Alumni from 2015: Jakub Ladra, of Claimair, and Ondrej Sedlacek, of Satismeter. Through the course of the talk, the two founders focus on the core value of acceleration at StartupYard, what their personal experiences were during acceleration, and what advice they would give to other founders thinking about joining.

The pair also jump into a discussion of what to look for in a good accelerator, and other tips for pre-accelerator startups.

StartupYard Alumni Talk Acceleration:

Key Takeaways:

• Ondrej Sedlacek (Satismeter)
  • You need to find an accelerator that has the appropriate focus for you.
  • Mentorship is about recognizing patterns between different conversations, but also about learning how to communicate your ideas more clearly.
  • The biggest single value is simple: great advice. The impact of that advice from mentors, investors and the SY team is increased because of the compressed timescale of acceleration. You are forced to make decisions quickly.
  • Setting clear goals for yourself also helps you to use the advice of mentors and advisors better: focusing them on what you need.
  • Good accelerators attract investors who look at every startup in the program. Your chances for investment rise thanks to your participation.
  • The StartupYard program helped to narrow the focus on the product, and think in terms of execution and milestones.
• Jakub Ladra (ClaimAir)
  • Mentoring is uniquely intense and important for building your network. Connections made there can last and change your business over time.
  • You talk all day about your value proposition, and this is a big challenge. We had no idea how intensive this repetition and iteration can be.
  • Management team meetings at StartupYard reinforce learnings from mentors, and bring up new unexplored ideas.
  • The act of prioritizing between ideas during “mentoring madness,” was deeply valuable. The ongoing discussions were a big challenge, but worth the time to go through.
  • The accelerator is especially important in helping a startup scale: laying the legal, technical, and strategic groundwork for sustainable growth.