Why Some Founders in Startup Accelerators Do Better Than Others
•February 10, 2026
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Companies Mentioned
Why It Matters
The findings signal that accelerator participation alone won’t level the playing field; success hinges on matching founder expertise with the right program, reshaping investment and policy strategies in the startup ecosystem.
Key Takeaways
- •Pre‑entry knowledge drives accelerator performance gaps
- •High‑knowledge founders see 188% revenue growth
- •Structured programs aid novice founders best
- •Flexible tracks boost experienced founders' outcomes
- •Accelerators amplify, not equalize, founder success
Pulse Analysis
Startup accelerators have become a cornerstone of early‑stage financing, promising rapid scaling through mentorship, demo days, and network access. Yet the surge of programs worldwide masks a stark variance in outcomes, a pattern that recent research from Wharton and USC quantifies across 6,700 firms in 280 accelerators. The study reveals that the human capital a founder brings—formal education, industry tenure, and prior ventures—acts as a decisive multiplier, explaining why alumni such as Dropbox and Airbnb thrive while many peers stagnate. Understanding this human‑capital lens reframes accelerators from blanket boosters to selective amplifiers.
The authors identify two complementary mechanisms. Knowledge compensation fills basic skill gaps for novices, while knowledge complementarity lets seasoned founders absorb and apply advanced concepts more efficiently. Consequently, programs that are highly structured and generalist generate the biggest lift for low‑knowledge teams, whereas flexible, sector‑specific tracks unlock additional value for founders with deep expertise. This nuance suggests that accelerator selection should be treated as a strategic fit exercise rather than a one‑size‑fits‑all gamble, aligning curriculum intensity with the founder’s pre‑entry knowledge profile.
For entrepreneurs, the practical takeaway is clear: assess your own skill set before committing to a cohort, and choose a program whose curriculum matches that assessment. Accelerator managers can increase aggregate impact by offering parallel mentorship tracks that cater to both novice and expert founders, thereby widening the net of success. Policymakers interested in nurturing ecosystem diversity might fund pre‑acceleration workshops that raise baseline human capital, effectively pulling up the floor for under‑prepared teams. As the accelerator model matures, data‑driven matching will likely become a competitive differentiator.
Why Some Founders in Startup Accelerators Do Better Than Others
Startup Accelerators: Uneven Outcomes and the Role of Founder Knowledge
Startup accelerators such as Y Combinator or Google for Startups earn their reputations through the founders they groom and the success of their firms. Unlike incubators which provide early‑stage hand‑holding, accelerators mentor startup founders to refine their ideas, increase access to funding, and scale for growth.
But while accelerators boost startup performance overall, they do not necessarily level the playing field for founders. For every successful founder such as Y Combinator alums Drew Houston of Dropbox (winter 2007 batch) and Brian Chesky of Airbnb along with his two co‑founders (winter 2009 batch), there are multiple others who log modest growth.
Intrigued by that unevenness in outcomes, Wharton management professor Valentina A. Assenova and Melody H. Chang, a professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, analyzed the returns at firms whose founders went to accelerators. The study sample had 6,723 startups in 280 accelerator programs across 147 countries between 2016 and 2019.
The study’s findings were published recently by the Strategic Management Journal, in an article titled “Founders’ Pre‑Entry Knowledge and the Heterogeneous Returns to Accelerator Participation.”
Assenova and Chang identified three markers of post‑accelerator startup performance: revenue, employment, and equity funding. They found that a key factor that defined the outcomes was the human capital the founders had, or their “pre‑entry knowledge” levels, gained through their cumulative education, industry experience, and entrepreneurial exposure. The program design of the accelerators was the second big factor.
The study’s findings underlined the fact that joining an accelerator does not guarantee success.
“There’s a misconception that all you need to do is just join any of these leading programs and you’re immediately going to reap rewards from them,” said Assenova. “These programs are not a substitute for getting an engineering degree or an MBA, or having industry connections and prior work experience.”
— Valentina A. Assenova
Assenova’s earlier studies on accelerators focused on the benefits for participating firms and their overall impact on startup activity. “In the current study, we’re turning inwards and looking at the founding team itself and their human capital,” she said. “The fundamental question that we’re trying to answer in this study is: Who are these programs most beneficial for and what types of programs benefit whom?”
Pre‑Entry Knowledge and Program Design
The study looked at outcomes for participating founders one year after they joined an accelerator. The one‑year time frame makes sense because “looking at a shorter window enables us to more proximately attribute it to their participation in the programs,” Assenova said.
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After one year at an accelerator, founders with extensive pre‑entry knowledge and experience grew revenue at their firms, on average, by 188 %, which was four times larger than the revenue growth at firms with low human capital.
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Founders with high human capital saw a 12‑fold increase in average headcount compared with low‑human‑capital firms.
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In equity funding, high‑human‑capital founders saw an 86 % increase, while low‑human‑capital founders did not experience substantial fundraising gains.
The authors considered two mechanisms driving those returns:
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Knowledge compensation – accelerators fill gaps in basic knowledge and competencies.
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Knowledge complementarity – accelerators increase knowledge absorption and deployment.
A key implication is that accelerators will increase the likelihood that already promising and capable teams succeed, amplifying performance differences among startups.
Accelerators are thus “powerful multipliers of human capital differences among startup founders,” Assenova and Chang noted. They can “push up the ceiling” of future performance for founders who have the relevant pre‑entry knowledge, without necessarily “pulling up the floor” for others.
Founders develop their pre‑entry knowledge mainly through:
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Formal education – analytical and problem‑solving skills.
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Prior work experience – familiarity with finance, operations, marketing, and interpersonal/negotiation skills.
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Prior founding experience – pathways to validate ideas, adapt to market feedback, and make decisions in uncertain, fast‑changing environments.
“For a lot of these founders that ultimately succeed, their successful idea was not the first idea they came up with.” — Valentina A. Assenova
The role of pre‑entry knowledge is contingent on program structure and specialization:
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Novice founders benefit from “structured and generalist” programs that help them swiftly assimilate cutting‑edge knowledge and tools (e.g., product development, go‑to‑market strategies, organizational design).
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Founders with high pre‑entry knowledge gain more from flexible, unstructured, and specialized programs (e.g., AI, biotechnology tracks) that complement their existing expertise.
Wide‑Ranging Benefits From Accelerators
Accelerators also provide intangible benefits: brainstorming, ecosystem building, and cohort learning. “For a lot of these founders that ultimately succeed, their successful idea was not the first idea they came up with,” Assenova reiterated.
The study highlighted how exceptional founding teams stand out:
“One of the cool things is that we’re able to see the shift in the right tail of the distribution for some of those exceptional teams… That’s where we really see some of that divergence in outcomes between your average participant and the exceptional startup that becomes a Dropbox, or becomes an Airbnb.” — Assenova
Takeaways
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Entrepreneurs with pre‑entry knowledge should select accelerators that complement their existing knowledge base.
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Novice founders should prioritize programs offering structured learning.
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Accelerator managers could increase value by offering multiple mentorship tracks rather than a uniform structure.
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Policymakers might support entrepreneurs through pre‑acceleration training interventions.
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