I was recently asked to provide input on my experience with Newachip, a startup accelerator program located in Texas. I thought I’d was awesome that the individual valued the input of CertificationPoint prior to making a go/no go type of decision. For future inquiries we decided to provided our response here on our blog.


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Hey Isaac,
Thanks for reaching out.

Benefits: The Mastermind class I thought was cool...but the drawback was that you are paired with other founders in your same space (potential competitors). If the trust could be improved between founders or maybe the pairing with founders in totally different segments where feasible...founders may get more out of it and possibly share a little more. I personally thought that if I and a couple of the founders in my space formed a collaborative partnership we could definitely have shored up some of each others deficiencies.

The Courseware has a lot of information irregardless of the stage of your platform. I liked the area on telling your story...this helps not only when you are Pitching your platform but also when having everyday conversations about your vision. During these opportunities to tell the CertificationPoint story I have connected with a group who sold their company to Google as well as the guy that came up with Cost Per Click and several others. I ended up purchasing the Story Brand book by Donald Miller which went deeper into the telling of the story which I think they talk about during the Mastermind or the courseware.

Drawbacks? The salesmanship to bring founders onboard. I was told that after the program ended I’d be assisted to obtain a certain level of funding. The sales guys are not the same as the group involved in the accelerator. This funding was the part I doubted because each startup is at a different phase and investors are not going to see the value of every startup that enters the program no matter how much selling occurs. I think a selling point including that the founders can get the same type of training and assistance as Techstars and Ycombinator in a virtual setting but that there’s a front-end fee associated. Techstars and Ycombinator and other accelerators have applications and an phased interview process(want to see how much revenue you having coming in as a possible selection factor) and don’t let everyone in(or want you relocate to Silicon Valley)...there are also other accelerators that are more expensive and then also won’t let everyone in.

Lastly, there is a good aggregate of knowledge within their team as a whole as well as some connections to a decent number of investors/VCs. I did not participate in their Showcase as I had other engagements during that timeframe so I am not sure what percentage of the founders in my cohort received funding.

It was a good fit for me due to the flexibility.

Hope this helps.


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