Accelerator Seed List (Data)

McNair Project

Accelerator Seed List (Data)
Project Information
Project Title
Start Date
Deadline
Primary Billing
Notes
Has project status
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Pre-existing Data

List of Accelerators

Sources

(Obtained from List of Accelerators)

• http://www.acceleratorinfo.com/see-all.html
• http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators, http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/all
• https://www.f6s.com/programs?type
• http://gust.com/usa-canada-accelerator-report-2015/?utm_content=35401577&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
• https://bostonstartupsguide.com/guide/every-boston-startup-accelerator-incubator/

Source Evaluations

http://www.acceleratorinfo.com/see-all.html

1. Opened source website
2. Copied Information under "All Accelerator Programs" to TextPad, already sorted. Returned 190 results
3. Each link on parent list leads to individual home page url of accelerator

• Used sample size of 20 links, determined 16 to be accelerators, 2 to be incubators, 2 to be inactive or broken links
• Many accelerators do not include founding date, most recent accelerators from around 2013-2014 (as determined from home page)

Review

• Reliable source for specific URLs to older accelerators, not very helpful for more specific information.
• Web crawling seems improbable because information is not readily available from source. Can potentially mine staff information or contact information from associated "about" page in the home url

http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/all

1. Copied "Seed Accelerators" table to TextPad, data sorted itself into lines. Returned 235 results.
2. Clicking on the accelerator name itself links to a page with all of its associated startups, up until 6/2016 cohort

• Startup table includes:

1. "state"
2. "company name"
3. "website and CrunchBase links"
4. "cohort date"
5. "exit value"
6. "funding".

Many entries for "exit value" are missing, some values for "funding" are missing

On original seed-db webpage, each accelerator has a link to its associated home page url

• From the table, each listed entry was an accelerator, although 24 accelerators out of 235 were classified as "dead"
• Along with the home url, each accelerator table includes the following:

1. Status
2. Program (name)
3. Location
4. Country
5. Number of companies
6. Cumulative exit values
7. Cumulative funding
8. Average funding for startups
9. Median funding for startups

Many entries for "median funding" are left empty, as well as entries for all types of funding on the bottom half of the table

Review

• Reliable source for accelerators, includes list of accelerators both dead and active, as well as their associated start-ups
• Web crawling potential is promising; startup table is located within the source for each webpage. Can also mine any category from the accelerator table
• Overall very extensive data for accelerators that are included on the list, but after cross-referencing from other sources shows that seed-db is lacking many newer accelerators; list is not all-inclusive.
• Includes regional distributions for accelerator groups as well. For example, rather than just "Techstars", the group is broken into Austin, Berlin, Boston, Boulder, etc.

http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators

Very similar to "http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/all", but contains large regional accelerators as groups, rather than individual accelerators. For example, Techstars appears only once.

1. Copied "Seed Accelerators" table to TextPad, data sorted itself into lines. Returned 239 results.
2. Clicking on the accelerator name itself links to a page with all of its associated startups, up until 6/2016 cohort

• Startup table includes same information as previous source, "http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/all". However, accelerators spanning across multiple regions have their startups located under one category on this webpage.

On original seed-db webpage, each accelerator has a link to its associated home page url

• From the table, each listed entry was an accelerator, although 24 accelerators/groups out of 239 were classified as "dead"
• Along with the home url, each accelerator table includes the same information as the "http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/all" source

Review

• Reliable source for accelerators, includes list of accelerators both dead and active, as well as their associated start-ups
• Web crawling potential is promising; startup table is located within the source for each webpage. Can also mine any category from the accelerator table
• Overall very extensive data for accelerators that are included on the list, includes large groups as well as individual accelerators. It seems that some accelerators missing from "http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/all" are located here, since there are 239 returns rather than 235.