Destination Accelerator

WHAT WE LOOK FOR

PROMISING AND HIGHLY MOTIVATED FOUNDERS

We work with founders who are on a mission to have an impact/create meaningful change and who are highly motivated to keep going no matter what obstacles they face on the way towards that destination. We work with a wide range of founders–from solo to two-and-three person founding teams; the founders with whom we work range from first time entrepreneurs – who need a lot of guidance, coaching and support in hiring people, raising money and going to market–to those who are more seasoned and are on their second or third ventures.

LARGE MARKET OPPORTUNITY

All of the founders with whom we work aim to solve important problems within large, addressable markets. This ensures that their company has the potential to become a large, scalable business, as well as gives them a lot of room early on to find an ideal customer sub-segment for best product market fit as they launch their product.

EARLY PRODUCT MARKET FIT

Every founder we work with has already developed an early version of their product and has had some customer validation. They are not always at the revenue-generation stage, but they do have an understanding of what their customer needs are. We help them focus at this is a critical stage, as founders often chase too many disparate customer segments and run out of money before reaching full product market fit; we zero in on the most promising customer sub-segment that can generate maximum traction quickly.

TOPICS WITH WHICH STARTUP FOUNDERS NEED OUR HELP

Goal setting and milestones outline

Go-to-market strategy and execution

Fundraising strategy and execution

Investor pitch development and feedback

Hiring, firing and other people-related issues

Outsourced call center selection and collaboration

Outsourced development team creation and management

Outsourced marketing team creation and management

OKR implementation and management

Product development process management

User / problem / solution definition and riskiest assumption

Investment banker selection and relationship management

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

Destination Accelerator employs a 12-month customized program of 1:1 coaching/mentoring and strategy that keeps entrepreneurs focused and goal-oriented, and helps them make significant progress on their business; this enables them to overcome barriers, focus on critical issues, and chart a course for accelerated growth.
Our program requires two-four hours per week from the founders, however ALL of that time is spent in hands-on sessions focused on their business.

Business Model

We work with founders over multiple focused workshops to fully define their business using the business model canvas framework.

Financial Model

We help develop a financial model over multiple focused workshops to be a tool for managing the business as well as an important asset in the fundraising process.

Branding & Content

We use a trusted creative agency to work with founders over multiple focused workshops to develop their brand and assets needed to support their go-to-market. The program includes 100 hours of agency’s design, content creation and brand strategy work.

Fundraising

We help define a fundraising strategy over multiple focused workshops, including the fundraising communications, support assets, ideal process and diligence room.

Coaching

We conduct weekly 1:1 coaching sessions with founders to ensure they are focused on the plan towards their destination, and to help resolve the obstacles that come up along the way.

Strategy Reviews

We meet monthly with founders to review and re-assess the company’s go-to-market and fundraising strategy based on most recent customer validation and fundraising results.

DESTINATION ACCELERATOR MANAGEMENT TEAM

The Destination Accelerator management team has over 40 years of combined startup experience. We provide consistent, hands-on support to entrepreneurs to help them overcome barriers, and to mitigate risk, inherent in growing early stage ventures.

Grigoriy Rublev

Managing Director

Greg is an angel investor and a limited partner in a number of funds, including One Way VC fund I and II, Dipalo Ventures, OPAL Fund and CrowdLending. He is a serial tech entrepreneur with two successful exits in both B2B SaaS (ZoomInfo) and consumer legal tech (CompleteCase). He is now leveraging his startup experience as a coach to startup CEOs by helping them identify and reach their most ambitious goals.

E. Frits Abell

Managing Director

Frits has helped found and build several companies in Boston, Buffalo and New York City over the past 18 years; these include digital media company (GFN Financial), a business consultancy (Northside Advisors), an investment bank (Progress Partners), a green technology company (Viride Parente) and a materials informatics company (materialsIn). As such, Frits has developed deep experience in marketing, corporate development and operations for startups and mid-stage ventures, for which he managed all aspects of new business formation. Frits has a deep contact base that ranges from financial and strategic investors to entrepreneurs of early stage ventures to strategic acquirers, and is also an angel investor.

Our approach

Focus on the destination

We front-end our work to help you clarity the direction in which you are headed, keep focused as you head in that direction, thereby saving you time, energy and money.

High tech focus

Technology has been the foundation of every business we have worked on. Over the years we have developed many methods and tools for building a business online and we use them to work with our partner companies to ensure that they leverage their proprietary technology to embolden their competitive advantage.

Consumer & B2B experience

We draw from our experience building a diverse set of industries–from legatech, corporate wellness, investment banking, marketing technology, advertising technology, green technology, chemical research, social networking and hospitality–for our partner companies’ benefit.

Investor-interaction support

We will immerse you in investor psychology, help you look at your project through their eyes, and explain how to get fundraising off the ground. This knowledge will come in handy in the implementation of your current and future ideas as well as become the foundation for your development as an entrepreneur.

Learn-from-failure mandate

Failure can be a powerful learning tool. We cannot promise you a smooth and error-free path, but we can guarantee that, together, we will turn your mistakes into valuable lessons; this will shape your unique experience and help you become a more multifaceted business leader.

Anti-burnout focus

We know the feeling when something that we sincerely believed before no longer brought us pleasure. This burnout led us to fail in some of our earlier businesses despite all the effort we were making. Working together, we will focus on more than WHERE? (destination) but also WHY? WHAT FOR? (the path itself).

Our values

YOU-CENTERED APPROACH

Your startup is about your principles, visions, and goals. This is what we put at the center of our work, helping you to fully optimize yourself and reach your potential. We do not provide universal solutions and do not simply transfer or transpose our experiences to your business. Your startup is unique, which means it requires unique solutions to which we will come together.

JUDGEMENT-FREE SUPPORT

When we started our careers as entrepreneurs, we needed people who would listen and accept our ideas, doubts, and even fears without disparagement or criticism. This is the kind of people we will be for you.

HONESTY AND OPENNESS

We strongly believe that the more sincere you are with us, with your business partners, colleagues, employees, and with yourself, which is the most important, the more chances you have to be successful and achieve your goals.

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

We want to help you avoid some mistakes on the way of starting a business and we will share our experiences to inspire new ideas and solutions. But, we will never impose our past decisions on you and your business.

METRICS DISCIPLINE

We will measure any assumptions, actions, results, successes, and failures using metrics that make the most sense for you. This approach will make every step to your destination significant, balanced and conscious.

EXPERIMENT TO WIN

There are no 100% good or bad ideas - that's why it's important to understand what works for your business. To do this, we will test your ideas, analyze their results, and make adjustments if necessary. Some of them will definitely become the basis of your success story.

Doing well and doing good

The Accelerator team is deeply committed to the development of social ventures, and firmly believes that building a successful business and benefiting society go hand in hand.

What our partners say

“I have found Greg Rublev and Frits Abell to be the most effective professional coaches/advisors that I have worked with during my career. In addition to bringing vast direct company leadership and business start-up experience, they approach coaching/advisory from a point of passion. Destination Accelerator holds CEOs to task and keeps you on point through patience and persistence. You will benefit greatly from everything that the team behind Destination Accelerator brings to the relationship.”

Greg Norton, President & CEO, Twisted Rope, Inc.