Lots of founders know that an accelerator or business growth program would be helpful for advancing their ideas, but not many can say exactly what they want to get from the experience.
If you can’t articulate what you’re looking for, it’s hard to find the right program.
Fortunately the benefits aren’t surprising, and they all start with the letter “C”.
If you can find a program with 2-3 of these, it will be well worth attending.
Even one of this list can be transformative, if it comes at the right time.

Let’s look at all six-and-a-bit, then examine them individually:

o   Content

o   Conversation

o   Community

o   Coaching

o   Connection

o   Confidence

o   (Capital)

Content

There is so much to learn in business, and what you’ve learned so far might no longer be helpful, relevant or true.
It’s important to have several streams of good quality content, which can teach you new skills, re-examine topics you’d forgotten, or can help you un-learn old mindsets and approaches that are no longer useful.
These might be new tools, case studies, processes that consistently get results, or good questions that spark important decisions amongst your team.

For example:

o   How to set helpful goals

o   Naming and targeting your customer base

o   Building clear financials

o   Approaching funders and philanthropists

o   Trends in outcomes measurement

o   Improving sales performance

o   Creating working prototypes

These can be learned from well-designed content, either in a room with your cohort, or through asynchronous audio/video.
You can also get 70% of the benefit from these topics through books and self-directed learning.

Conversation

While a book can introduce and explain a topic, what’s more helpful is to hear stories and examples from people who have actually done this sort of work themselves.
e.g. instead of “How to increase your IG reach”, you can talk to someone who has 8x more followers than you, and hear their stories on what they did and what has proven to be helpful.
This works even better when with people who know you, know what you’re building, and have a sense of how you like to work.
They can make a better level of recommendation than what a book or online course can do, since they see your circumstances and can see where you might be feeling reluctance.
 
The benefit of being in a program or cohort is the relationships you form – making real friends with people who genuinely want the best for you.
They can offer the perspective of someone who’s been there before, or they might ask you good questions that help you articulate what you truly believe.
This can inspire you to take more creative risks, make faster progress, and gives you trusted advisors to talk to on weeks when you’re feeling lost or flat.

Community

Most programs don’t sit on a little island, they’re part of an active ecosystem.
That involves lots of founders, investors, intermediaries, government groups, advisors, businesses and members of the media.
They all play a different role, but they all want the same thing – to see more good case studies emerge out of the program.
There’s great benefit in outward facing community events, where you have the chance to meet new people who are likely pleased to learn about your work.

Good opportunities can stem from chance encounters, coincidences and odd circumstances.
By actively engaging in the program’s community, you give yourself the best chance of having a random moment that becomes a lucrative lead.
This is really hard to do on your own through self-directed learning, but you can also feel overlooked in a huge cohort or program. You want to meet lots of people, but also have enough familiarity so that people remember what your business does.

Coaching

A good coach can be transformative – helping you remove the constraints that are hindering your progress, spotting opportunities you hadn’t seen, or providing a fresh perspective on where you are today.
The coaches in business growth programs are usually excellent, for a few reasons:

o   They are usually paid for by the program, not by you

o   They are usually well regarded, and have been vetted by the team

o   There’s enough time together without you needing to make a long commitment

o   The coach knows a decent amount about your work before the first session

o   There’s often a few coaches to choose from, and the program has likely paired you with someone that will be a good match

There’s a helpful level of distance and vulnerability with a coach.
You can have conversations that you might not naturally seek out with your peers or the broader community.
Your coach can be objective and honest – they want the best for you, but aren’t afraid to offer slightly uncomfortable insights.
There’s benefit in ongoing sessions, but there’s also benefit in having an intentionally short time together, and the choice is up to you.

Connection

While there are advantages of joining a larger business ecosystem, you might find that most of the value comes from 1-2 connections or introductions; to the right people at the right time.
It might be a personal introduction or a random interaction, even someone seeing your profile online.
It might be to a partner, investor, customer, mentor or future team member.
You might get the chance to join another program, to run a pilot, to sell to a much larger client, to work with a bigger supplier, or to gain more media exposure.

The tricky thing for the program is that these benefits, while very real, are hard to promise.
We consistently see incredible things emerge from deliberate and accidental connections, but won’t be able to tell you in advance which people will be the 1-2 standouts that change your trajectory.
We can promise to make the attempt, but there’s a lot of luck involved too.

Confidence

Interestingly, the greatest benefits from these programs might not actually be anything external, it might be the confidence it gives you to grow your business.
Content is helpful, the community are lovely, but you’re the one who has to show up each day to build and improve your work.
If you leave with a fresh perspective, clear goals and an excitement for the next phase, you’re going to make rapid progress.

This might be:

o   Confidence in your skills as a leader

o   Confidence in the value of your products/services

o   Confidence that your goals are do-able

o   Confidence in the market need for what you’re building

o   Confidence in the timing of your growth

o   Confidence that your work is better that you give it credit for

o   Confidence that you have good people around you

Confidence boosts all of the other C’s.

(Capital)

This is sort-of a C, but it’s inconsistent and not a core part of a program.
Some programs take equity in your company in exchange for money, which might be a great trade for you today, or expensive if you’re highly successful in the future.
Some programs offer prize money, given to a lucky few.
Some programs offer grants, to fund specific projects or growth initiatives.
Some programs focus on helping you raise money from investors.

However, if you’re purely looking for money, a program is a dreadful laborious way of getting there.
You have to do a lot of work for money that might not eventuate, and if you stop turning up you almost definitely won’t get the funding.
Controversially, most businesses who state that they just need access to capital almost always need something different.
It might be that they need 2-3 major customers, a new running mate 2IC, a brilliant sales team, some good mentors, a new strategy, a more focused action plan, etc.
Money is often the most visible symptom of an issue, but there’s usually a deeper cause that looks financial, but is more about focus, tough calls or adding talent.

How The C’s Work Together

As mentioned above, any one of these C’s is a great benefit from a program, but getting 2-3 of them will seriously upgrade your business.
You can find each of these 6-And-A-Bit outside of a formal program.
e.g. networking nights, founder meetups, conferences, working with a business coach, or talking to venture capitalists.

The surprising benefit is having the same people across each of the C’s.

o   Working with a coach who knows what content you’ve covered

o   Having other people at the network event recommend you to others, because they’ve been working with you and can articulate why someone should introduce themselves to you

o   Talking to funders who know what process you’ve gone through and what to expect for your current stage of development

o   Peer conversations with others who have been walking the same journey as you

o   The confidence of seeing good people around you take the next step in their business, inspiring you to do the same

How To Approach The Six-And-A-Bit C’s

Your job as a founder or business manager is to think about how these six or seven C’s might be relevant and valuable to your growth.
Realistically, you might only be interested in a few of them, but there might be some others that surprise you.
A good program will give you a taste of each of them, then you get to decide which of them are worth pursuing in the next stage of your journey.
There’s a cost involved, either in cash, time or energy, but the rewards vastly outweigh the price.

You can also inquire about each C when talking to program alumni – what were they anticipating, what did they get, what made the biggest difference.
Very few programs are perfect, and the ones that are will be hard to get into, but there are imperfect programs all over the place.
It might be that you’re looking for two or three imperfect opportunities to cover off all of the C’s, or use one imperfect opportunity for initial drafts, then go to the next imperfect opportunity to build on those foundations.

If you’re thinking of applying for a program, the best thing to do now is to contact the delivery team and ask all of your questions, and listen to their suggestions.
The best people to talk to are the trainers, since they’ll need to work with you directly, and will be the ones who have to deal with a frustrated participant who isn’t getting what they wanted.
That “skin in the game” encourages them to make honest recommendations, telling you which C’s they can realistically offer, and where else you might choose to look instead.
Most importantly, good on you for proactively growing your business.
Accelerators and programs can be cliché, but they’re cliché for a good reason; they consistently help people like you to get better and make more money.