Startup Stories Series: Do Accelerators Really Help Travel Startups?
Photo Credit: Smart Host co-founders (from left to right) Dave Redding, Nick Persico and Evan Hammer were set to present their solutions at Techstars in Austin September 3, 2014. Smart Host
Skift Take
A startup is only as good as the real-world use case it's trying to address, and sometime it takes the support of an accelerator to discover how to do this.
Editor's Note: In our Skift Startup Stories series, we document travel startup issues, solutions, and lessons from a variety of angles, hoping to shed light on what separates the winners from the losers. You can read all the stories here.
Y Combinator released its latest tally about the fate of the 940 companies that the Mountain View, California-based startup accelerator has funded over the last decade: Eight are worth more than $1 billion, 400 carry $100 million-plus valuations, and 177, or 12.5 percent, have failed.
The failure rate is similar at another leading startup accelerator, Techstars, with offices in Boulder, New York City, Boston, Seattle, San Antonio, Austin, Chicago, and London. Techstars has funded 556 companies since its founding in 2006, and states that 75, or 13.5 percent, have been acquired and 62, or 11.1 percent, have failed.
Both of these accelerators include, but aren't limited to, travel startups. Among travel startups, Airbnb, Hipmunk, Vayable, a
