"Accelerators, Networks and Venture Capital Financing"

Accelerators are meaningful in different ways: speeding up the learning process of startups teams, improving startups’ business models, enhancing the social capital of their founders, accelerating the time and increasing the chances of raising Venture Capital. Scholars suggest that the improvement in the financing performance of accelerated startups is explained by the positive impact the Accelerator Programs have in the social capital of the founder teams. However, there are no previous empirical studies that confirm this suggestion. Using a unique dataset built with information extracted from AngelList, Seed-DB, Crunchbase and LinkedIn, and using a network graph approach to measure social capital, this paper confirms that startups that go through Accelerator Programs increase the chances of receiving VC financing. The study also proves that accelerated founder teams increase their social capital, measured in terms on degree and centrality of their networks. However, it also proves that this increase in social capital does not explain the improvements in financing performance. In fact, the increase in chances of receiving VC financing is partly explained by the social capital of the founder teams prior to entering the Accelerator Program.