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When your startup is very small, it’s fairly easy to gauge its health. From your vantage point as the company’s leader—and perhaps its only employee—you can readily track the arrival and departure of customers, the growth or decline of revenues, and changes in profitability as costs rise or fall. But as your company grows and its complexity increases, measuring the success of the business becomes more difficult. It is important to develop a well-thought-out set of metrics, or measurement tools, and apply them consistently.

As the Growth Manager at Gust, one of my responsibilities is to evaluate accelerator programs on the Gust Accelerator Platform to determine if they are a good fit for our community of founders. The guidelines we use for this, which were built by the Gust team, leveraging the collective decades of experience we have working with startups, can also be used to help founders determine which accelerator is best for them.

Accelerators are as diverse and varied as the start-ups they serve. While there are some universal features, such as an application and selection process and educational programming, the specific offerings can differ widely. Most, but not all, will offer networking opportunities (with the exception of programs that focus heavily on one-on-one mentorship) and most, but not all, will offer some form of funding opportunities, either through direct investment or by leveraging their network of investors for targeted introductions or a demo day-style event. Let's delve deeper into the details.

Being the founder of a startup can be both exciting and scary, particularly when raising capital from investors and managing your company’s finances. If this sounds familiar to you, a financial model is one tool you need to have in your corner. Whether you’re a first-time founder who is hearing the term “financial model” tossed around in fundraising conversations, or a serial entrepreneur who has built models of your own in the past, this post will help explain why a solid financial model has become a requirement for fundraising and scaling your startup. We’ll explain what a financial model is and how you can use it. And we’ll cover 10 reasons why you should start building a financial model for your startup right away.