Five Questions With: Melissa Withers

"REVUP IS the first startup accelerator in the world for revenue-first companies."

Melissa Withers, managing director of business accelerator Betaspring LLC, talked with Providence Business News recently about RevUp. Betaspring, which has accelerated 89 companies, launched RevUp to focus on companies already generating revenue.

PBN: Betaspring recently announced changes to its model for accelerating companies. What prompted this shift?
WITHERS:
RevUp is the first startup accelerator in the world for revenue-first companies – ventures where growth through revenue is the primary goal. RevUp was inspired by companies and founders that built big, successful companies by cultivating customers early-on. Turns out there are many: 93 percent of the companies on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies have not taken VC [venture capital] dollars. Today’s definition of ‘venture-scale’ ignores many companies that have the potential to be profitable and impact the world in major ways. RevUp is built for them.

PBN: How is the RevUp model different?
WITHERS:
The tools and knowledge that Betaspring has built over six years – channel sales, growth hacking, strategic partnering, inbound marketing, team building – are invaluable to revenue-first companies. But with RevUp, we’ve made a few changes that are significant. For starters, we don’t make getting follow-on equity investment the prime focus of the accelerator. We make rapidly growing revenue the goal. We don’t take equity. RevUp gets a return on investment as revenue scales. This enables us to work with companies that, for a variety of reasons, are not a good fit for equity. RevUp is also an exciting alternative for investors – especially those who want to engage with fast-growing companies without the constraints of the equity system.

PBN: What’s the benefit of working with the RevUp accelerator?
WITHERS:
Companies participating in RevUp receive $75,000 in growth capital and immersion in a three-month program focused on increasing customer acquisition and revenue. We take the time that many accelerators spend on prepping companies to pitch to VCs and direct it toward experiments and actions that help companies acquire more customers, expand into new verticals and improve their revenue models. In addition to an amazing mentor pool that includes founders who built revenue first companies, RevUp companies also access tools like a shared growth team, so they can act fast on revenue-enhancing opportunities. Bonus: because we do not take equity, founders exit the accelerator without giving up ownership of their company.

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PBN: Why are you branching out into the Boston market?
WITHERS:
If you want to be successful in New England, you’d be foolish to not plug into the larger and more mature markets that surround us. This includes the whole corridor between Boston and New York, which we are lucky enough to live smack in the middle of. At least of a third of our portfolio has Boston roots, as do many of the investors we work with. For the last few years, we have held events and programs in Boston and spent lots of time in space our collaborators were kind enough to let us borrow. Boston and Providence are closer together than Palo Alto and San Francisco – and they call themselves a valley. The geographic boundaries between our two cities are mostly political. For our companies, our founders, and our team, the boundaries are far more porous.

PBN: Is RevUp unique by focusing on companies already generating revenue or is it something that is being done more widely in other parts of the country?
WITHERS:
There’s a growing consensus that having only one mechanism for investing in startups – equity funding – is a limiting strategy. Because we aren’t unicorn hunters and our model doesn’t depend on exits, we have significantly expanded the pool of companies we can accelerate and invest in. There are some funders doing this downstream, but as far as we know, we are the first to integrate a nonequity investment model with a startup acceleration program. Putting our know-how to work for revenue-first companies is not in opposition to big-win venture capital. It’s complementary in proving out there’s more than one way to build profitable companies that make founders and investors happy.

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