When it comes to accelerator and mentorship programs, there’s certainly no shortage of them out there. From Fiverr to Apple, accelerator programs seem to be tailor-made for today’s startups, which seem to face insurmountable odds in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic. “By joining an accelerator program, startups are offered benefits like mentorship and educational workshops. At the end of it startups often compete in a pitch event or demonstration day (otherwise known as ‘Demo Day’),” says Tricia Levasseur, a former Bloomberg journalist, and current TechStars mentor. “The experience for founders is that acceleration provides a process of intense, rapid, and immersive education aimed at ‘accelerating’ growth by compressing years’ of learning into just a few months. For those that compete in a pitch event, cash prizes in the form of funding can be won.” Clearly, the benefits of such programs are self-evident. And while these programs are nothing if not competitive, they’re...