How to Choose the Right Growth Support for Your Business

Rich Jones

Read • 4 min

Pre-Seed
Seed

With so many growth programmes promising various degrees of success, how do you choose the best one for your business and needs?

In this guide, we’ll look at what you should and shouldn’t be doing when it comes to finding the right accelerator/incubator and ensuring you’re asking the right questions to help YOUR growth journey.

So, you’ve woken up with an idea on how to change the world… what next?🔗

There are so many who, where, what & when questions, and where do you even start with this?

Wanting to change the world comes with its own set of challenges to overcome, way before you’ve even solved the problem you’re trying to solve!

Over the last 5 years, business support has exploded with incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces to create collaborative spaces and business support.

Choosing your “tribe” is key to ensuring success!🔗

When we talk about tribes, there’s so much to consider and ask yourself.
Firstly, ask yourself what support you need at the present time.

Could this be a desk in a shared workspace to “get yourself out the house”, or could it be more detailed, such as an incubator or accelerator programme.

If the latter, you really are spoilt for choice, so it’s crucial to maximise your time and commitment and ensure you choose the right one for your needs.

Incubators versus accelerators🔗

Incubators tend to support those founders who are still in their idea stage, or don’t have a minimum viable product (MVP), and need the nurturing to get from idea to something tangible.

An accelerator tends to focus on those founders who are already or about to launch their product or service but would benefit from the knowledge and foundations to help them grow or scale at a quicker pace, versus those who haven’t joined a programme.

Assess your time commitment and research the options🔗

Next you need to look at your time commitment; where some programmes offer weekly or bi-weekly workshops, others can shorten their programmes with a “high intensity” programme of “every other day”, dropping a traditional cohort of six months to 12 weeks.

Understanding the duration and frequency of a programme is key to seeing if this fits in with your current availability, especially if you’re not ready to quit the day job and work on your own business full time.

Once you’re worked out your time to commit, you now want to research programmes which align to your business and commitments.

This could be Googling, “tech accelerators Manchester” or “cyber security programmes in Manchester” – one thing to remember here is you’re not going to join a cybersecurity accelerator if you’re not a cybersecurity business.

Use LinkedIn to get the inside track🔗

Compile a list of the ones that fit closely to your own business and look for those company employees on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a great tool to see how the programme has been showcased recently, as well as giving you a backdoor way in to message the curator of the post with some questions you might have.

Questions could be about around when the next programme starts, the duration, types of businesses and success stories.
If those curating the programmes are genuine about the passion they exude online, they’ll happily set up a call or coffee chat to discuss their programme in more detail.

Applying for support and what comes next🔗

Once you’ve found your programme, it’s time to get your application in!

Be sure to be clear and honest on your growth plans and support needed. This helps the programme lead know which wrap-around support they can offer.

Once you’ve made it through the application process and started your programme, you’ll only get out what you put in so aim to do the following as a minimum to ensure you maximise your growth journey:

Attend all the events on the programme
Don’t expect to run before you can walk, trust the process of the programme.
- Give back to the community.
- Be open to be challenged as a founder and don’t take it personally.
Enjoy the learning!

There’s no point in joining a programme if you’re not committed and if the programme isn’t working for you, be honest, tell the facilitator or programme lead – They’d much rather know than having to constantly chase you for non-attendance.

Once you’ve completed your programme and graduated, some programmes let you do another round, so make sure you ask about this.

If rejoining, remember how you felt on your first day of the programme.
offer support and guidance to the newbies and be on hand to give back.