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 certainly worth participating in, especially given the advantages that they’re able to uniquely offer their participants.

These three accelerator and mentorship programs have been on our radar this week — and if you’re applying for them, good luck!

Black-led mentorship

Sign up for our daily Newsletter.