What does iAccelerator look for in a startup ?

There is no straight-forward answer to this. Why are you loyal to certain brands? Why do you make friends with some people and fall in love with others? The best we can do to answer this question is to describe the things we look for in a product and a team. We hope the list below helps.

An atypical history.

Were you the kid who went to the market bought cricket balls in bulk and sold them to your friends at a profit? Did you ever tear apart the only television in the house just to see how it worked? Have you ever done something simply because you were told it couldn’t be done?

How do you keep track of what’s going on around you ?

What are the blogs you read? What forums do you frequent? Do biographies catch your eye or would you rather read the latest Harry Potter adventure? Below are some of the websites that we think make for interesting reading:

Hacker News
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Techcrunch
Techmeme
Pluggd.in
Slashdot
Metafilter
Daring Fireball

How well have you thought out your startup ?

A good idea is a great starting point, but what about the market? How well have you researched the space that your startup is going to operate in? What about your marketing plan? Financials? How are you going to recruit people? Have you built a prototype of your product and tested it out? Do you have any research to show that a demand exists for your product?

No means no.

How focussed is your product? Are you trying to do too many things at once? Saying no to things is as important as saying yes.

The X factor.

Make us love you or your product. We’re only going to get excited about if you’re excited about it. Show us that you’re determined, show us that come hell or high-water you will succeed. Help us see this amazing new future that you’re going to create and we’ll help you get there.

What made us fund startups in the past?

Hashcube
"Deepan and Ram were super interested in the games they were making. It was not just the games they were coding. They had also figured out interesting ways of acquiring users for cents, rather than the dollars that others spent. Moreover, for the first time in my life I saw someone solve the Rubik's Cube in under 3 minutes! We felt that we could help them create a business model around their hobby and invited them to the program."

Innoz
"A bunch of four really young guys, but so full of energy that I was scared that they might triger a nuclear fusion reaction! Even before the graduated, they had creating an SMS platform and people were using that to check the dictionary meanings of words. Their "we wish to do something useful and we can do anything" spirit got us hooked."

- Pranay Gupta, Joint CEO