Idea Validation for an Acceleration Program Connected with Equity-Based Crowdfunding

Abstract

Accelerators for early stage start-ups and equity-based crowdfunding are relatively recent phenomena helping young companies to raise capital. We suggest combining them into an acceleration program extended by equity-based crowdfunding campaign what could even multiple benefits which start-ups get from these tools separately. The fake door method from the lean startup methodology is used in this paper to examine if start-ups would be interested in such program what would demonstrate the existence of a demand for this service. Furthermore, the same method is used to get insights about potential acquisition costs to provide simplified business model validation. The paper begins with a review of the literature on the areas of acceleration programs, equity-based crowdfunding and the description of our idea to integrate these two tools into each other. Later sections describe the experiment that has been executed to test this idea and discuss the achieved results.