Drive Spotter’s story began somewhere along the Interstate between Denver and Omaha in April of 2014, when my then-girlfriend and I nearly fell asleep while driving home from a conference in Colorado. After catching some rest, we spent the remainder of that near-fatal ride exploring what could be done to detect and prevent driver fatigue. That car ride and those discussions were the origin of what would ultimately become Drive Spotter.

Tragedy strikes

The outcome was much more tragic a short time later in June of 2014, when a fatigued big rig driver rear-ended a limousine and severely injured Tracy Morgan, the actor of 30 Rock and SNL fame. Yet more tragically, James McNair, Tracy’s long-time friend and mentor, lost his life in that accident.

While the James’ children did receive a large cash settlement and Tracy has begun his return to public life, certain things can never be replaced. James’ two children can never again hug their dad this Father’s Day. Tracy can never go to a comedy show with James. We as a people will never again hear James on stage. Those memories and thousands of others memories that Tracy and James could have created are forever lost due to driver negligence.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) subsequently opened a call in July 2014 for businesses to propose concepts that could detect and alert fatigued drivers. We reached out to Wichita State University and, with one of the world’s leading experts on driver fatigue, collectively prepared a proposal, and submitted it to the U.S. DOT for their consideration.

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Our first accelerator journey

Around the same time as the DOT call for proposals, we met the managing director of the Global Insurance Accelerator (GIA). This vertical accelerator for insurance ultimately accepted our team and connected us with leading experts in insurance, fleet operations and driver training.

We also met the lead investor for our seed round, Grinnell Mutual, during this accelerator. Their deep expertise in the insurance industry, their core belief in our team and our approach to improving driver behavior, and their network ultimately led to us closing a seed round of $750,000 on January 31st, 2016, less than year after we launched the company in February 2015.

In addition to providing the right environment to close our seed round, the insurance accelerator provided us an environment to build a world-class team and make world-class connections. For example, our board includes Marty Ellingsworth, the former president of Verisk ISO, a leader in aggregating insurance data, along with Kurt Eaves who’s served in several executive roles across the insurance industry.

Wait, what, a second accelerator?

Somewhere during that period of self-discovery, we were nominated by Silicon Prairie News (SPN) as a candidate for New Startup of the Year in the Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri region. Through that exposure and the coverage of a number of other media outlets, we caught the attention of the folks at Techstars Mobility, who reached out to us and a number of other candidate companies, not all of whom make it through the final selection process.

Initially we were internally resistant to entering a second accelerator after Techstars reached out to us. Perhaps our biggest concern about applying to Techstars Mobility is that we’d be required to accelerate certain autonomous vehicle applications that intersect our intellectual property portfolio.

On the surface, that sounds great — of course, your team should go work on autonomous vehicles if that’s where your technology applies. The problem is that autonomous vehicles in and of themselves are nearly becoming a red ocean market, in that everyone is working on autonomous vehicles.

Since we are positioning ourselves as the video analytics software platform of choice for analyzing any object in motion—a smart YouTube—going down the path of focusing on autonomous vehicles could prematurely pigeonhole our team, especially as it pertains to future company growth.

Dream come true (almost)

The irony, and the untold story, is that I first heard about Techstars about five years ago, and at the time made a fairly firm commitment to myself that I’d someday build a company that could go to Techstars. So here we were, being invited to apply and I was unsure if that was in our team’s best interest. Even after we were accepted, we had one final round of internal checks on whether it was in our tactical and strategic best interest to participate.

Thus, we had a dilemma. Would accepting the invitation to apply to another accelerator, and in particular, Techstars Mobility, distract our team with respect to product development, distract us from the fleets with which we work, and perhaps cause us to over-emphasize autonomous vehicles?

These concerns drove deep internal discussions and two site visits to Detroit ahead of the accelerator. In both cases, we had some clear go and no-go questions and answers identified that provided us the framework to properly assess if pursuing another accelerator was in their best interest and in our best interest, which included protecting the investment made by our seed round investors and the initial investment of the Global Insurance Accelerator.

Why we ultimately chose to go to Techstars

Some young companies might simply jump at the chance to participate in an opportunity such as Techstars Mobility. That was not the case for us, in part because of my own personal bias to build a company that could participate in Techstars. Here’s some of the reasons that ultimately led us to apply and accept an invitation to be part of Techstars this summer:

• Complementary Mentorship — During the Global Insurance Accelerator we demonstrated we could assemble a team of leading folks in computer vision and video analytics via our network. We also spent nearly 80% of our time getting to understand the insurance industry. During Techstars, we’ll be challenged by some of the most technical minds in the mobility industry. While we’ve grown as a company, we must go deeper to have a remote shot at achieving our vision for what Drive Spotter can become.

• Community — We owe much of our team’s success to actively engaging with our local startup communities such as The Exchange in Omaha, Gravitate in Des Moines, and our computer vision team in Austin. These communities, and many others, such as Wichita, Iowa City, and Silicon Valley, have an ongoing role in our story. Here in Detroit, we’re deeply excited to be part of and learn from their startup community.

• Distribution — During the GIA, we intended to sell to insurance companies, and much later pivoted to selling to fleets. We had our first expressed interest in distributing our product on the second day of the Techstars Mobility program.

• Energetic Focus — We’ve experienced several technical and business pivots since launching in February 2015. While our current pitch and platform is resonating well with the fleets with whom we’re working and the folks who’ve been with us since the beginning, the ability to further validate our current vector is unmatched outside of Techstars, both in terms of raw energy which that environment provides and in helping focus the team this summer during a natural lull in our sales cycle.

• Perks — Techstars Mobility does include several other perks outside of the normal accelerator experience, such as working inside an NFL stadium and having great startup background music such as Beyoncé’s show!

• Sales Growth — During the GIA, we started with a product concept that we discarded within the first week of mentor madness. The pivot was so significant, I had to re-pitch our lead investor. During Techstars, we are closing in on a product alpha and have fleets that are asking us to get the product ready faster because they are looking forward to using our distinctively different approach to fleet management.

• Talent Recruiting — We are firm believers that people should enjoy where they live. To date, we have offices in Omaha and Des Moines, and we have contractors in a variety of places around the country, most notably Austin. To secure the talent we need to grow, we felt that Detroit was the place to go other than Silicon Valley, where we also have team members.

• Team Building —During the GIA, I mostly participated as a lone full-time founder, and my eventual co-founder occasionally joined me every two weeks for about two days at a time. During Techstars, we are both on site full-time, and we are rotating other team members during the program. Let’s just say we’ve built one of the best intern programs on the planet!

• Technical Depth — Since our goal is to build the world’s leading video analytics platform for people, machines or objects in motion—a smart YouTube for mobility—we felt it made sense to dig deeper into how we could further increase our progress towards that goal. Techstars provides us access to the right people to help build our video search platform.

These reasons and many other reasons ultimately prompted us to participate in Techstars Mobility during the summer of 2016. Hopefully this piece of our story is helpful to other entrepreneurs and investors who are considering having their company participate in a second accelerator.

P.S. Feel free to contact me via email, chris@drivespotter.com, or give me a shout on Twitter, @sendbits.

P.P.S. We would also greatly appreciate introductions to any fleet operators you may know — beverage distributors, school bus fleets, big rigs, etc. Please contact me at the same address as above if you can help, chris@drivespotter.com.

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This article was first published on Medium and republished with permission of the author.

Chris Augeri is the co-founder of Drive Spotter.