{"id":4759,"date":"2015-08-24T02:44:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T07:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/?p=4759"},"modified":"2015-08-24T02:46:51","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T07:46:51","slug":"mama-whats-an-accelerator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/mama-whats-an-accelerator\/","title":{"rendered":"Mama, What&#8217;s an Accelerator?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/lgw_nascar-002_06172006.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4760\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/lgw_nascar-002_06172006.gif\" alt=\"racing cars\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>First, the big, exciting news, if you have not heard it\u00a0 &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/boomstartup.com\/companies\/\">we are one of EIGHT COMPANIES IN THE WORLD selected to be part of the Boom Startup Accelerator for Educational Technology<\/a>. Can you tell that I&#8217;m super-excited about this?<\/p>\n<p>At lunch today, for the second time in two days, someone asked me what exactly an accelerator does.<\/p>\n<p>As our CMO, Maria Burns Ortiz, said,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Until you&#8217;ve been in one, it&#8217;s really hard to comprehend all of the advantages of being in an accelerator.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ever seen the TV show, Shark Tank? Imagine that happening every day, sometimes twice a day. You pitch your company and people ask you hard questions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is the market for your product? You say your games are for students in grades 4-8. How many students are there in that market in the U.S. ?<\/li>\n<li>What is your cost of customer acquisition? For every game you sell via social media (twitter, Facebook, blogs) how much does it cost you?<\/li>\n<li>Can we see your cash flow analysis? How much money do you &#8216;burn&#8217; each month (sales &#8211; costs) ?<\/li>\n<li>What is your sales strategy?<\/li>\n<li>How many games did you sell last month?<\/li>\n<li>Who are your main competitors? How much do they charge for their products?<\/li>\n<li>Let me see your Profit and Loss statement. What does your balance sheet look like?<\/li>\n<li>Do you have a financial model?\u00a0 What are your sales projections for the next five years? Your cost projections?<\/li>\n<li>Who is the usual decision maker on purchases of educational software?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of these, and many more, are questions you <em>should<\/em> be able to answer about your business. Often, I would get asked a question and think,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Damn! I should know the answer to that &#8211; but I don&#8217;t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Boom Startup has about 40 mentors, with different areas of specialization. Some are experts in finance, others are in sales. Some specialize in sales to the education sector. They ask a lot of questions, and they help you find the answers. After two weeks, I know my business a lot better (and this is coming from someone with an MBA, PhD and 20 years of business experience). I can&#8217;t imagine how much I will have gained after 12 weeks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.7generationgames.com\/demo\/\">If you want to see what this is all about, check out a free demo of our games here<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.7generationgames.com\/demo\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4303\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Fish-Lake-Poster.jpg\" alt=\"Fish Lake artwork\" width=\"947\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Fish-Lake-Poster.jpg 947w, https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Fish-Lake-Poster-300x85.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 947px) 100vw, 947px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>There is also money. Every accelerator is different. At Boom, you get $20,000 in cash, but there is also the opportunity for services which you are silly not to use.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pipedrive.com\/en\/welcomeback\"> We got six months of pipe drive free,<\/a> which has proved really useful for planning and tracking sales.<\/p>\n<p>We received credits for Amazon web services, where we just moved our web site, free legal services to incorporate as a Delaware corporation, saved us about $1,000.<\/p>\n<p>The downside? Well, it is exhausting. I&#8217;m writing this at almost 1 am and I got up at 9 am and have been working ever since. It&#8217;s a good kind of exhausting, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, the big, exciting news, if you have not heard it\u00a0 &#8211; we are one of EIGHT COMPANIES IN THE WORLD selected to be part of the Boom Startup Accelerator for Educational Technology. Can you tell that I&#8217;m super-excited about this? At lunch today, for the second time in two days, someone asked me what&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-de-mars-general-life-ramblings","category-the-julia-group"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4763,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759\/revisions\/4763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejuliagroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}