Catalyzing Success : Unveiling the Value of Mentors in Startup Accelerators

In the last decade, the entrepreneurial ecosystem has seen the emergence of a new support infrastructure – the startup accelerator. These programs offer a structured developmental process to novice entrepreneurs and their startups. Although mentoring is a central aspect of most accelerators, no empirical research to date directly addresses mentors’ contribution to the program’s impact. This research proposes that accelerators provide value in six aspects crucial to entrepreneurial success: entrepreneurial human capital, network building, fundraising skills, legitimacy, psychological development, and the venture’s immediate operational progress. We hypothesize that mentoring increases accelerator programs’ effect on these aspects.Data from fully structured interviews with 779 startup founders who graduated from accelerators in Israel between 2011 and 2019 support these hypotheses. While there are significant differences in quality, type, and impact between mentors, having a personal mentor (rather than working with ad-hoc experts) has a positive and significant effect beyond other control variables for the expected types of value. These findings demonstrate the advantages of including personal mentoring as part of accelerator design rather than solely using a bundle of ad-hoc experts and common mentoring by the accelerator manager