Reports & Publications
GALI releases one major publication each spring focused on the impact of acceleration on early-stage ventures. The team also produces shorter reports and data summaries throughout the year. In addition to our own research, we actively encourage others to publish original research using this data. You can request the full data set here.
What's Working in Startup Acceleration
Insights from Fifteen Village Capital Programs
Mar 2016
Despite the emergence of hundreds of accelerator programs around the world, we know little about their effectiveness or how differences across programs influence venture performance.To address this gap, Social Enterprise @ Goizueta at Emory University and the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) launched the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI) in collaboration with a consortium of public and private funders. GALI builds on the Entrepreneurship Database Program at Emory University, which works with accelerator programs around the world to collect and analyze data describing the entrepreneurs that they attract and support.
Village Capital – a seed-stage accelerator that runs programs for entrepreneurs in impact-oriented sectors – was the first to work with the Entrepreneurship Database Program, starting in 2013. Application and follow-up data have now been collected from fifteen different Village Capital programs. These data provide a unique opportunity to examine the performance of ventures accelerated by these different Village Capital programs compared to those that applied but were not selected.
This report is divided into two parts:
- The first section reveals differences in venture performance among accelerated versus non-accelerated ventures based on one-year changes in revenue, employees, and investment. This information is then used to identify the highest and lowest performing Village Capital programs and presented to a panel of experts who suggest potential reasons for these differences.
- The second section tests these predictions using qualitative and quantitative research methods, revealing several key insights for Village Capital and other early-stage venture accelerator programs.
This report is the first in a series of annual reports to be published on data emerging from the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative. For previous analysis on broader findings from the initiative click here.