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With a coronavirus pandemic hotspot in Seattle and global travel on hold for a whole, we’ve started Fledge16 and its matching Angel Accelerator online. 9 companies based in 6 countries: From left to right on the map above: Bricolage Recycling glass into sand. South Carolina, USA. Tilaa Honey and cashews. Talame in Northern Ghana. Agromyx Powered fruit and grains. Accra, Ghana. Build...
An unprecedented 842 applications arrived to Fledge at the start of 2020. We unfortunately can’t provide our investment and training to everyone who applies, but we can at least provide some insights that we see from our view reviewing all these startup applications. Trend 1: Traction When Fledge began in 2012, applicants for accelerators were nearly all idea-stage companies. Maybe a rough...
What do David Bowie, Jazz, and an unplayable piano have to do with the power of business accelerators? All get you out of your comfort zone, and that seems to be a secret to success. This episode of Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales explains how. Listen to the episode first. Our analysis is that one of the powers of an in-residency, in-person business accelerator is that it gets entrepreneurs...
As the 2020s begin, so do both the puns and the retrospection. Combining the two, let’s look back at the first seven years of fledglings, and learn from those 95 companies to find patterns that lead to success and which lead to failure. Failure There is a lot less to learn from success than failure, so let’s start with the bigger learnings. In no particular order: Timing really is the...