What an accelerator is actually for

I got into Hatch105 as one of nine from around 1,700 applicants. The company I took through it doesn't exist any more. That makes me a reasonable person to ask whether it was worth it, because I have no programme to sell and no outcome to protect. Short answer: yes, and not for the reasons in the brochure.

What did it genuinely give us?

A deadline that wasn't ours. That is most of the value and it is the least discussed.

Left alone, founders extend. There is always a reason the demo should be next week instead. A date you didn't choose and can't move compresses decisions that would otherwise drift for a month. We went from first commit to live merchant brands in six weeks, and we would not have done that on our own timeline.

Then access, which is the unglamorous kind rather than the headline mentors: somebody who has dealt with the same payments provider, somebody who can tell you in five minutes what a compliance process actually involves rather than what the documentation claims.

And being around people at the same stage, which is worth more than it sounds. The value is calibration. You find out the thing you thought was uniquely hard is normal, and the thing you thought was going fine is not. You don't get that from advisors, who are being kind, or from the internet, which is performing.

What could it not do?

Everything that actually decides whether the company lives. Nobody was hiding that, and I would have said the same at the time, but it is worth writing down plainly, because the brochure implies otherwise.

It can set a deadline you cannot move, open a door in five minutes, tell you what is normal and lend you its credibility. It cannot fix founder-product fit, make you check the economics, make you ring a customer, or tell you the company should not exist.

Three of us pulling in different directions for ten weeks is why the company ended. No programme solves that. Nobody in the building knows your co-founders well enough to see it, and by the time it is visible from outside, it is visible because the company has already stopped working.

The economics were ours to check too. Nobody asks you to open the spreadsheet, because everyone assumes you did in week one. And given a choice between selling and building, I will build. That is about me rather than the programme.

What do people get wrong about applying?

The application is not a test of your idea. Everyone's idea is roughly equally unproven at that stage and the people reading them know it.

It is a test of whether you can explain something clearly and whether you look like someone who will still be doing this in six months. The ideas that get in are not better. The founders are more legible.

So be specific, and be honest about what you haven't done. A padded traction slide reads instantly to anyone who has seen a hundred, and costs you more than the empty slide would have. "No revenue, and here is exactly what we would need to learn to get some" is the stronger answer.

Would I do another one?

Not right now. A programme is worth most when your constraint is speed, access or credibility, and mine isn't any of those any more.

My constraint is commercial, and specifically that I keep taking the technical half and hoping the other half is handled. A programme won't fix that. It is arguably the wrong tool, because it hands you a structure to be busy inside, and being busy is how I have avoided that problem twice.

I would still do it again for Presterly. It compressed ten weeks of learning into ten weeks, which is exactly what it says it does. It just doesn't say the ten weeks might teach you the company shouldn't exist. That is a real outcome, and it is worth having early.