--- title: Most accelerators make startups worse. What do the good... description: An NYU Stern study of nearly 750,000 startups across 329 accelerator programs found that 60–80% of accelerators leave companies worse off than if they had... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/most-accelerators-make-startups-worse-what-do-the-good-ones-do--aocvbtbje twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Most accelerators make startups worse. What do the good ones do? | daily.dev og:description: An NYU Stern study of nearly 750,000 startups across 329 accelerator programs found that 60–80% of accelerators leave companies worse off than if they had... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/most-accelerators-make-startups-worse-what-do-the-good-ones-do--aocvbtbje og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/AOCVBtBje.png og:image:alt: Most accelerators make startups worse. What do the good ones do? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Most accelerators make startups worse. What do the good ones do? **[The Next Web](https://daily.dev/sources/tnw)** · 8 min read · 2 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary An NYU Stern study of nearly 750,000 startups across 329 accelerator programs found that 60–80% of accelerators leave companies worse off than if they had never joined. The programs that do work — including Y Combinator, Techstars, and Endless Frontier Labs — appear to succeed primarily through knowledge transfer. Product-market fit expert Yann Goarin argues the core problem is that PMF is never taught as a unified discipline; instead, accelerators deliver fragmented functional expertise and expect founders to assemble it themselves. Goarin's approach treats PMF as a structured problem-solving process, emphasizing speed of learning and decision-making over speed of shipping. As AI lowers the cost of building, judgment about what to build becomes the critical differentiator, making structured PMF education more valuable than ever. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What percentage of startup accelerators actually leave companies worse off? Between 60 and 80 percent of accelerators leave the startups that join them worse off than if they had never applied, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Youn Baek and Deepak Hegde of NYU Stern, published in April, examining nearly 750,000 American startups across 329 programs. A smaller group, including Y Combinator, Techstars, and Endless Frontier Labs, raises funding, growth, and exit rates by a wide margin instead. _founders weighing which accelerator to trust with their startup can track research like this on daily.dev._ ### Why do accelerator mentorship programs fail to teach product-market fit effectively? Most programs teach in fragments, with a product expert covering product, a sales executive covering sales, and a founder who has raised rounds covering fundraising, leaving founders to assemble the pieces themselves. Product-market fit sits between and over these functions and isn't owned by any single mentor, so it rarely appears on a syllabus as its own subject, according to product-market fit advisor Yann Goarin. _founders piecing together fundraising, product, and sales advice can follow this kind of analysis on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@qwertydiy** · 1 upvotes > In other words the only ones that work are a glorified business curriculum which you can getfor free. I will avoid it then. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Founders Guide: Success may not matter if you aren't doing what you love](https://daily.dev/posts/founders-guide-success-may-not-matter-if-you-aren-t-doing-what-you-love-icmqx3dbx) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Product-Market Fit Treadmill: Why every AI company is sprinting just to stay in place](https://daily.dev/posts/the-product-market-fit-treadmill-why-every-ai-company-is-sprinting-just-to-stay-in-place-yck6smfj3) · Elena's Growth Scoop · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Product-market fit methodology for early-stage devtool companies—Martian Chronicles, Evil Martians’ team blog](https://daily.dev/posts/product-market-fit-methodology-for-early-stage-devtool-companies-martian-chronicles-evil-martians--6mcsgdyl0) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#y-combinator](https://daily.dev/tags/y-combinator) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/most-accelerators-make-startups-worse-what-do-the-good-ones-do--aocvbtbje) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Most accelerators make startups worse. 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I will avoid it then.","datePublished":"2026-07-26T15:44:39.392Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/AOCVBtBje#c-mvObqvjUJ","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Rene Yibowei","url":"https://daily.dev/qwertydiy","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--QlvtioAW--/f_auto/v1746524446/avatars/avatar_aTUl3chxFyPngKtboGisL"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/most-accelerators-make-startups-worse-what-do-the-good-ones-do--aocvbtbje#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What percentage of startup accelerators actually leave companies worse off?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Between 60 and 80 percent of accelerators leave the startups that join them worse off than if they had never applied, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Youn Baek and Deepak Hegde of NYU Stern, published in April, examining nearly 750,000 American startups across 329 programs. 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