I’ll be serving as a panelist on the Accelerator Panel on the main stage at next week’s 2014 IT and Web Venture Forum, organized by the Rice Alliance at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

I’m looking forward to discussing current trends in accelerator development and especially new concepts around “functional accelerators” that are emerging to help accelerators compete and distinguish themselves in an increasingly crowded market.

What do I mean by a “functional accelerator?” These are accelerators that perform a specific function for startups, and that help to build that functional capacity into the startup. There are, for example, design accelerators that focus on product design, offshore accelerators that serve to launch startups in new and emerging markets and manufacturing accelerators that focus on getting startups launched that need agile, affordable manufacturing resources.

The prime example for me, of course, is my new accelerator, TractionTank, which focuses on helping startups to get initial market traction and leverage that traction into Series A funding. More on that later!

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Kraettli Lawrence Epperson

Managing Director at JumpPhase Ventures

This blog is dedicated to providing advice, tools and encouragement from one entrepreneur to another. I want to keep this practical and accessible for the new entrepreneur while also providing enough sophistication and depth to prove useful to the successful serial entrepreneur. My target rests somewhere between the garage and the board room, where the work gets done and the hockey stick emerges.

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