Oxygen does some magical things over the 13-weeks. Startups are getting the opportunity to focus purely on their startup no more worrying about the rent or food money, this is priceless. Startups spend 13-weeks but actually gain 12-months worth of experience, traction and progress.
Money can’t buy mentors who have been there done it and got the T-Shirt, they come with a wealth of knowledge and connections. Simon Jenner, a mentor at Oxygen says, “I am pretty sure there is not a single person on the planet we can’t get in touch with through our mentor network. PS. they are amazing.
You get to spend time surrounded by another 9 highly motivated teams going through the same experience. Peer learning is a really important benefit.”
You get office space & internet for 6-months. They may even give you a desk & chair 
Mentors at Oxygen
Simon exclaims, “All our mentors are amazing and its often not the well known mentors that deliver the most value to the startups. We find the mentors who help the startups the most are the ones who went through the process recently so maybe they got funding 6-months ago so can give them important tips on how to handle the next steps. “
Raising investment is never easy but Oxygen definitely improves your odds, those that do it on their own without an accelerator average around 1:10 who get investment. Oxygen is hitting 8:10 with its current graduates. So the odds are improved significantly by going through Oxygen.
The most important factor for startups to get through to Oxygen…
Team, team, team, teams. Balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams (Startup Genome Report). They want a nicely balanced team to apply, you must have a tech co-founder and a business person after than it is less important the exact skills of others.
Startups, both early stage or in the later can be at Oxygen
Simon tells us, “Both, we will take a couple of idea stage startups each year. That said, we deliver mind blowing progress for startups but we are not miracle workers so if we take an idea stage team it is unlikely they will be ready for investment after 13-weeks. We therefore prefer the majority of our teams to be early stage. And only tech startups, its what we do, its what our mentors do, its what our investors invest in.”
Is crowdfunding better or a startup needs to be incubated?
To this Simon told us, “Crowdfunding is dumb money and what early stage startups need is smart money, Accelerators deliver smart money in spades. If you get funded via crowd funding you are no more likely to succeed than a bootstrapping startup.”
Oxygen Accelerator inviting startups from across the globe!
They have startups from all over the planet. Last year we had applications from 34 Countries and expect to get applications from over 40 Countries this year. They have had teams/people from Russia, Romania, France, Italy, China, Poland and the UK.
Futurescope of Oxygen Accelerator
As Simon says, “We are running two programmes this year (Jun – Aug & Oct – Dec). So we want to produce 20 amazing startups and those startups go onto become the next big thing. A few 50M+ exits would be nice in the next couple of years.”
Apply Now!
Deadline: 31st March 2013
Teams can apply here: Oxygenaccelerator Summer 2013
