30 Best Startup Accelerators in the US Ranked

There’s no shame in getting a little bit of help, particularly when it comes to running a business. Sure, you can bootstrap a one-man company with no advice from seasoned entrepreneurs and a notable lack of experience yourself, but you know what’s going to happen? You’re probably going to fail. And all you had to do was ask for a little bit of guidance for your friendly neighborhood startup accelerator.

Can they do whatever a spider can? Definitely not. But what they can do is provide you with capital, mentorship, and perhaps most importantly, a little structure to your budding business. A startup accelerator is designed to make life as an entrepreneur easier. Well, the good ones are anyway.

If you need to evaluate your startup accelerator needs, the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project (SARP) has released their fifth annual rankings of startup accelerators around the country. In hopes of encouraging discourse about accelerators as a whole, the project ranks the top 30 startup accelerators into five categories: Platinum Plus, Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze.

“There are new accelerator programs popping up every month,” said Yael Hochberg, one of the heads of the study and a researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Innovation Initiative Lab for Innovation Science. “Our goal is to generate a larger conversation about what makes some seed accelerators more successful and help entrepreneurs find the right fit for their startup.”

While the exact metrics used for the study remained relatively under wraps for privacy sake, the authors did specify that things like fundraising and valuations played a big role in ranking the accelerators. The aim of the report was also to help entrepreneurs make a more informed decision when it comes to startup accelerators.

If you want to check out the whole report, you can read it here. Check out their accompanying infographic below or click on the websites of the honored startup accelerators below.