Joining a startup accelerator? Here’s the most important criterion to look at

Ray Wu is the program manager at JFDI, a startup accelerator based in Singapore. He enjoys working with entrepreneurs and loves traveling. He tweets @raywu and blogs too.

In 2013, I had the opportunity to work with 19 teams from all over Asia through JFDI, a startup accelerator based in Singapore. I got to know each of the founders personally, and worked closely with them on a daily basis.

Recently, when I saw Collabspot’s founder Jeremi Joslin and his partner and CEO, Laurent Gasser, I recalled to myself just how much progress Jeremi and Collabspot have made since I first met them in 2012. That was back in Manila.

At that time, he was living in France, and was working with Gino Tria, Adler Santos, and John – the Collabspot developers –  in the Philippines. I was introduced to them through Rafael Oca, an alumni from JFDI. Today, Jeremi lives in Singapore, with a newborn added to his family, and having tripled his team’s size.

JFDI measures its achievement as an accelerator by how Jeremi and other founders succeed. We often say if the teams succeed, we succeed. This inspired me to push the thought a bit further: what is it that makes an accelerator truly successful?

Venture capital is largely human capital: we invest in teams.

Accelerators operate in the early stage of a startup’s life cycle. As such, we seek teams with a vision, technical capability, domain knowledge, and executional skills.

We make a lot of headlines whenever our startups announce a funding round. While these are great news, they create a false perception of what an accelerator really is about.

There is so much soft infrastructure that goes into the making of an accelerator program. Our CEO, Hugh Mason, spends a lot of time helping founders make difficult decisions. They could be about hiring, firing, or dealing with personal emotional issues. At one point of our program, we even had a psychotherapist come to talk to a founder because of how he is dealing with stress.

I also saw founders that were on the verge of tears — thankfully, the last time this happened right before Demo Day, a mentor from JFDI was able to reassure the founder that everything was going to be just fine.

We care deeply about each individual, and it is this collective effervescence that makes an accelerator a special place.

Good accelerators know who and how to ask for help.

We are fortunate to be supported by many different groups of people. Accelerators like ours are heavily indebted to mentors who have been there and done what the founders are going through. They willingly share their experiences with the younger founders.

The investor community is also an important aspect to helping founders succeed. They bring great insights from working with so many different founders across multiple industries.

Accelerators are at the middle of curating and building this community. TechStars Boulder host events like Founder Dating, and offers community open hours for anyone who wants to book 30 minutes time slots with David Cohen. JFDI hosts weekly happy hours and offers coffee for the caffeine deprived.

It all comes back to good people.

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