New research finds accelerators amplify existing founder advantages rather than equalizing entrepreneurial opportunity

A new paper published in Strategic Management Journal finds that startup accelerators do not level the entrepreneurial playing field, they amplify it. The study, “Founders’ Pre-Entry Knowledge and the Heterogeneous Returns to Accelerator Participation,” by Melody H. Chang and Valentina A. Assenova, shows that founders with deeper prior knowledge gain disproportionately more from accelerator participation, while novice founders see more modest benefits. Drawing on data from 6,723 startups across 281 accelerators in 147 countries, the authors find that accelerators “push up the ceiling” of performance for already capable teams without necessarily “pulling up the floor” for others.

The research team set out to understand why accelerator outcomes vary so widely across participants. Prior studies typically focused on average effects, masking the significant heterogeneity in who benefits and by how much. Chang and Assenova wanted to move beyond averages to examine how individual founder characteristics shape the returns to participation, and what that means for how programs are designed.

“Accelerators are widely celebrated as engines of entrepreneurial growth,” the researchers note. “But our findings suggest they function more as multipliers of existing human capital than as compensators for knowledge gaps.”

The authors trace this pattern to what they call the “knowledge complementarity” mechanism: accelerators deliver mentorship, investor exposure, and ecosystem access that experienced founders are better positioned to absorb and apply. Startups led by founders with extensive education, industry experience, and prior entrepreneurial ventures achieve, on average, a fourfold increase in revenue growth and a twelvefold increase in employment growth one year after acceleration compared to their less experienced counterparts.

Program design plays an important moderating role. Specialized and unstructured accelerators, those offering flexible, sector-specific mentorship, deliver the greatest returns to knowledgeable founders who can act on targeted advice. Structured and generalist programs, by contrast, provide modest but meaningful gains to novice founders by helping them build foundational skills and managerial capabilities.

“The implication is not that accelerators are bad for novice founders,” the authors explain. “It’s that the current design of most programs is better suited to those who already know a lot. Matching program structure to founder experience levels could significantly expand who benefits.”

For entrepreneurs, the findings underscore the importance of selecting programs that complement their existing knowledge base. For program managers, the results point to the value of tiered or differentiated tracks. And for policymakers, the study suggests that accelerators alone may not democratize entrepreneurship, complementary interventions such as pre-acceleration training or targeted ecosystem partnerships may be necessary to broaden access to meaningful gains.

To read the full context of the study and its methods, access the full paper available in the Strategic Management Journal.

About the Strategic Management Society

The Strategic Management Society (SMS) is the leading global member organization fostering and supporting rigorous and practice-engaged strategic management research. SMS enjoys the support of 3,000 members, representing more than 1,100 institutions and companies in more than 70 countries. SMS publishes three leading academic journals in partnership with Wiley: Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Global Strategy Journal. These journals publish top-quality work applicable to researchers and practitioners with complementary access for all SMS Members. The SMS Explorer offers the latest insights and takeaways from the SMS Journals for business practitioners, consultants, and academics.

Click here to subscribe to the monthly SMS Explorer newsletter.

Click here to learn more about the programs and opportunities SMS has to offer.