John Jackovin is the founder and CEO of Des Moines-based Bawte, an app that allows users to tag purchased items and receive product manuals or service information. In July, Bawte was accepted to Techstars Boulder‘s 90-day accelerator. Jackovin’s been writing about his experiences in Techstars and his company’s growth.
Thanks to Jackovin for letting us share his posts, which originally appeared on Medium. Read Jackovin’s previous posts here.
Five weeks remain in Techstars and I wonder if we are far enough along.
I am sure this is a question many companies ask themselves. Am I far enough along? Have I made enough progress? Techstars’, like most all accelerators, goal is to get you “ready” to exit the program. This means different things for every company. The ambiguity revolves around what “ready” means for Bawte.
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If the program ended today would I consider us “ready”? I think I could say with decent confidence, “no.” There is much more we need to do. There is product, positioning, pitch and a myriad of other words that start with the letter ‘p.’ Now, we do have five weeks left which is pretty significant. It feels like a lot less time than say the first 5 weeks, but I am pretty sure there is no worm hole that accelerates the space/time continuum on this down slope.
So back to my original question, are we where we need to be with five weeks remaining? My gut is to say “no” as well, but I am not entirely sure where we would have to be in order to say “yes.” Sure, if we had 100,000 users and 100 paying brands I would say “yes.” Maybe the best practice would just start working backwards from those numbers and see when my answer teeters from “yes” to “no.”
