Company builders in Germany - how to differentiate between accelerators, incubators and company builders

The VentureCapital Magazin (a German print magazine) had a head line this month, roughly translated into English: “incubators and accelerators help to overcome infancy - a market overview”.

While they actually didn’t list accelerators (just mentioned some in the article), they are listing “incubators”. I believe this list is the most comprehensive that I have seen so far. However, they are mixing up things here a bit.

Firstly, this is listing mainly company builders and for that it is a quite comprehensive list. Secondly, there is some wrong labeling - while HackFwd, Hubraum and YouIsNow are incubators, SevenVentures is a corporate VC. The parenting media group, ProSiebenSat1, does have an accelerator (ProSiebenSat.1 Accelerator) and an incubator (Epic Companies) and they are all three part of the business unit Digital & Adjacent, however, they are separate initiatives.

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The article mentions that the autor doesn’t see a clear definition of accelerators, incubators, and company builders. I would disagree and suggest an easy, non-academic differentiation (in an European context):

  • Accelerators are structured programs (with a start and an end) targeted to pre-seed and seed startups with the goal to help achieve some predefined goals (being it graduation from the program, funding, etc.)
  • Incubators help teams to develop and grow their idea or company (this ranges from university programs to company building-like structures - however, the idea comes from outside)
  • Company builders build companies. Period. No outside ideas considered (except copied).

Would you agree?

The Future of Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Great post by Steve Blank. Finally, there is someone trying to define the role of startups in the innovation process of large cooperations. I am totally hooked on this topic.

It is a recent trend that large corporations in Germany start their own accelerator and incubator programs - you can expect this topic to be well covered on my blog.

Source: steveblank.com

Zombie Startups vs. Zombie VCs

Great posts by Danielle Morrill, Co-Founder & CEO of Referly:

  • Zombie Startups - Startups that are not progressing fast enough (or at all)
  • Zombie VCs - VCs that have not made any serious investments in the last 3-6 months

But good news: she also identifies 119 investors that have been active in series A investing since March and 225 active investors since January (data comes from Crunchbase).