The vibrant startup ecosystem in India sees new passionate founders every day aspiring to build a scalable business but they also need guidance on how to achieve this goal. Accel, the marquee venture capital firm, has unveiled a new initiative – SeedToScale startup school.
Accel has had a long association with the Indian startup ecosystem having backed more than 150 startups right from their seed stage and been along with them to help them grow into a sizeable business. Examples like Flipkart, Swiggy, Urban Company, Curefit or Freshworks are some of the startups that have grown from Accel fold.
Now, Accel wants to democratise this knowledge it has accumulated over the years in creating curated content coupled with live interaction with industry experts to help founders to turn their very early stage business into venture backable startups through courses on their platform called SeedToScale.
The Seed To Scale startup school is launching with two courses in the segments of consumer tech and SaaS with sessions from top founders and operators across modules like market sizing, product-market fit, growth channels, and fundraising.
In the consumer tech course, the topics that will be covered include areas such as GTM for consumer tech, storytelling framework for consumer tech startups, tools and metrics for product growth, fund-raising mechanics for consumer tech startups etc.
These lectures will be delivered by some of the well-known names from the Indian startup ecosystem like Raghunandan G, Vamsi Krishna, Anand Daniel, Kunal Shah, Deepak Abbot to name a few.
Similarly, the course of SaaS will cover topics such as deep dive into market research, GTM and customer acquisition, cross-border SaaS, enterprise sales, among others. The experts who will deliver the lectures include the likes of Shekar Kirani, Girish Mathrubootham, Krish Subramanian, Anand Jain, Mohit Garg, etc.
Anand Daniel, partner, Accel, says, “Just like how specific MBA programmes were designed to make industry knowledge accessible to build future talent, its equally important to democratize knowledge around building SaaS & Consumer Tech companies for future founders.”
The key idea is to provide contextual knowledge and access to networks to the founders at an very early stage so that they can accelerate their business much more rapidly. There is certainly a playbook which these founders can follow and listen from the experts from their very practical experience.
In an environment where there is there plenty of information or guidance available for free to help founders, Accel has done it differently with a sharp focus on just two segments – consumer tech and software as a service (SaaS).
The reason being that each business is different and comes with its own nuances. For example, the metrics used to measure customer satisfaction for a consumer tech business is very different from a SaaS venture and the Startup School from Accel will provide all the content which are specific to each segment.
Similarly, the go-to-market approach to both these businesses is quite different. Here also the course content from Accel will provide the right guidance. In essence, it will provide contextual knowledge for the founders instead of generic information.
To stay away from the monotony of pure content, the Seed to Scale platform of Accel will also have live roundtables for discussions, meet up with the founders from the specific domains, workshops. All these will help the founders not only to build a business, which is venture backable but also create community.
The aim of Startup School of Accel is to help founders scale their business and does not have conditions or strings attached to it. The sole objective is to provide that early clarity to a startup be it consumer tech or SaaS.
Another important question likely to be on top of the mind of every founder is — whether their startup will be eligible for funding following the completion of this programme. Accel is not promising any funding to the startup which is part of the SeedToScale programme but if any business fits into their investment thesis then the option is always open.
One can sign up for the courses on seedtoscale.com/courses.