In this article you will learn:

• The shared challenges operators accelerator, incubator, and innovation programs face as they build and scale their offerings
• How Disco's accelerator can help you design transformative programs, manage cohorts and streamline operations

Running an accelerator program requires you to juggle many tasks that can take hours away from time spent designing your programs and providing value to the participants in your programs.

In our conversations with dozens of industry leaders from accelerator programs, startups, and learning communities over the years, we've identified shared pain points and challenges every learning business faces.

If you're experiencing any of these challenges operating your accelerator program, keep reading to learn how Disco's accelerator management software can help you and your team save 100s of hours and deliver a world-class experience.

3 challenges you may be facing running your accelerator program

Designing a tech stack that gives you maximum efficiency

Slack, Zoom, Notion, Airtable, and Google Drive are all fantastic tools when using them individually. But trying to stitch together multiple tools to run your accelerator program can be challenging from an admin and learner experience perspective.

At any point, you're likely using dozens of different tools to communicate with participants, run your programs, host events, collect payments, manage calendar invites, and more. Streamlining as many business functions as possible will free up precious time and resources you'd otherwise spend on vetting tools, setting them up, and switching between each for your team and participants.

Setting aside time for the purposeful, impactful design of immersive accelerator offerings

When you're deep in the trenches of building your accelerator program— setting up tooling, invoicing various stakeholders, and marketing to prospective participants — finding time to design transformative programs for your current participants can feel daunting.

With many accelerator programs often having lean teams, operations can be a heavy overhead to define and account for. It can be challenging to define and designate just one or multiple people to manage particular tasks when operating a company with only a few employees. For many accelerators and incubator programs, most team participants wear various hats.

Managing communications and operations for the events, programs, and content you offer through your program

There's a never-ending list of areas you need to have figured out if you want to create programs and events for your participants to enjoy and get value out of. These include (but certainly aren't limited to):

• Sending tons of calendar invites for events
• Following up with email reminders for participating participants, as well as post-event feedback and recaps
• Transferring data and information between multiple tools
• Capturing event recordings and uploading them for evergreen viewing
• Fostering conversation before, during, and after an event or course
• Handling and tracking applications, member payments, and other registration documentation
• Launching new programs and designing materials to promote them

How Disco's accelerator management software helps solve your most pressing operational challenges running your program

With Disco, you'll spend less time on administrative and operational tasks and more time curating your programs and community and delivering value to participants.

Disco's platform features several tools and integrations, so you don't have to source, set up, and pay for multiple tech solutions. Disco is your one-stop shop for event management software, member management, course creation, cohort management, course duplication, reporting, and more‍ ‍

"We are very happy with the Disco platform. It's extremely easy to use to configure programs. I love the responsiveness of the Disco team for support, and I like that they are grounded in the community to share best practices so that we all succeed." – Hessie Jones, Innovations Manager, Altitude Accelerator.

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Everything you need to operate your Accelerator Program can be found on Disco's accelerator management software:

Creating, iterating and duplicating accelerator programs

Creating transformative accelerator programs and the curriculum to support them is a key feature of Disco's platform. Our curriculum builder helps you design cohort-based experiences, and our easy-to-use UX ensures anyone, anywhere, can easily access the materials they need. 

This seamless member experience is especially critical for programs like Blackacademic's business accelerator, where design and functionality are top of mind:‍

‍"I liked that we can customize things, so it's our brand colors. It feels like our stuff. That feels premium to me. That's part of the kind of lux thing special to me. The fact that we could customize so that when our participants come in, not only do they know they're in the right place, but they know that they're in something that's been built with their needs in mind." - Takiyah, Blackademic

Plus, with course duplication, you can easily recreate curricula and create more templates for future cohorts. With a few clicks, you can select the content you want to create a duplicate and save hours building a new course from scratch.

"Disco has been a blessing in pure sight. The operations behind running a suite of 14+ incubator and accelerator programs spanning several sectors are not easy. Disco has allowed us to scale our programming seamlessly with their highly intuitive platform and an excellent support staff working with us through our needs. I recommend it to everyone!" - Nafis Ahmed, Entrepreneurship Manager, YSpace

Tracking Participant Progress

We know what operators of accelerators need to know about their participants, so we've created a solution that allows you to track daily progress, measure engagement, track attendance to programs and events, and generate reporting to measure the health and success of your program. Not only does this feature help you save time, it enables you to provide a better learner experience and gain deep insights into how your content resonates with your participants.  

Managing applications, payments, and registrations

Say goodbye to operational busywork and hours upon hours of manually collecting payments, registrations, and applications. Disco's platform integrates seamlessly with Stripe, so you'll never have to worry about invoicing or sending payment requests. You can easily create unique discount codes to support the sales and referral efforts for your accelerator software and program. Whether your accelerator program is open, waitlist, or by application, you can manage all aspects of the registration process within the platform—including creating, accepting, and rejecting participants—with one click.

Hosting engaging virtual events

Virtual events are a great way to engage your accelerator program and galvanize participants. With Disco's suite of platform integrations, you'll free up hours you would have spent logistically planning and running the event.

Disco's deep integration with Zoom lets you gather participant data and track attendance. Automated reminders and templates make managing communications leading up to your virtual events easy, so you can focus your resources on more important things. Once the event is over, you can upload recordings of each event to share with your community and with those who couldn't attend the live event.

Disco also integrates with calendar and email so your participants can choose to receive automatic calendar invites to their respective time zones. Simon Engelke, co-founder of the BatteryMBA, notes just how important this feature was for their programming:

‍"The main thing for me is really about notifications and reminders. I think that communication's a massive time sink. To always have these regularly scheduled emails to send—follow-ups are the key, right? We want to make sure that people don't forget about sessions. The calendar is a massive thing to help participants not forget. In our early days, creating these Google Calendars was an absolute pain. [With Disco], others can download it in their time zones. You found a way to integrate both Google Calendar and Outlook, which is important, especially for some of our corporate clients," says Simon.

Automated event reminders and Disco's 'add to calendar' feature means you never have to worry about participants of your accelerator program or your cohort-based course missing a virtual event.

Zoom isn't the only integration Disco offers. Learn about our suite of advanced integrations, including Slack, Zapier, and a selection of custom apps.

Dedicate more time to fostering and scaling your accelerator programming with Disco

"Using Disco for our EdTech accelerator program has been a game-changer. Its user-friendly interface and community-building elements allowed us to deliver top-quality workshops efficiently and effectively. We could track our participant's progress, identify areas for program improvement, and make adjustments on the fly. Overall, Disco has been an invaluable tool for our growth, and we highly recommend it to anyone looking to build effective and engaged learning communities" - Houtan Froushan, Program Director, UCL EdTech Labs

Transform your program with the power of Disco's Accelerator Software. Design immersive experiences, leverage cohort management, streamline operations, and deliver a world-class experience. Learn more!

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