Building Startups by Validating Ideas: The Creatrix Accelerator Story

The Creatrix Accelerator started by accident. What began as a casual voice note between two founders quickly turned into a program designed to help startups validate ideas and find product-market fit.

With a focus on quick results and real market testing, Lauren and Doug built a micro-accelerator. It all happened fast, but it felt right.

Here's how the project came to be, and why it's different from other accelerators.

Why did you decide to start this accelerator?

The Creatrix Accelerator actually happened accidentally!

I’d met Doug Rogers, one of our program directors during FoundersBoost. He’d been super helpful with practical advice that resulted in traction and sales within the month, so after the program, we’d stayed in touch.

One morning, walking to coffee I sent him a voice note that said something like:

Doug you should offer startup founders a service called “Validate your idea with Doug”. He replied to say, “Let’s do it together!” and the idea took shape fast.

The concept was simple: we’d help startup founders to validate their idea against market research and equip them with content plans to test their concept in real time, in the market. 

We’d both have a history of working with founders and startups and we had Creatrix SaaS to do all the research work for us so we didn’t need to hire a team of analysts and strategists to support us.

We didn’t plan on a fully fledged accelerator, we just wanted to accelerate startup success through idea validation with product-market fit and a launch strategy. 

The whole thing was super meta - after we’d run the program we realised that we’d actually validated our own idea: the idea of a micro-accelerator and so The Creatrix Accelerator was born. 

Up until then we’d just called it “Validate Your Idea” and “Idea Validator”. Making it part of Creatrix happened after we’d successfully launched.

Sounds like right idea, right time?

Yeah, it kind of burst through - ripe and ready. It was easy and fun which is always a sign that it’s right. And it snowballed fast from there!

Who are your new program directors?

Robin Bentele joined our team. I actually met her through a Techstars Founder I’ve known since 2016 when we worked together, and she’s also South African like me. Robin is the Co-founder of Venturesmiths, a team of specialist fractional executives who serve high-growth venture-backed companies.

She brings a rich finance background to the accelerator, as an institutional investor, chartered accountant and sales coach. So she’d focused on spotting the early indicators of willingness to pay, market differentiation and the potential for traction - from audience growth to actual sales. 

Caoimhe Donnelly is the CEO and co-founder of Legitimate which is focused on ending misinformation around the world through their universal bio for journalists and they help journalists thrive with a suite of tools. 

We met during our both our first weeks in NYC at a Founder mixer in 2023. She runs a venture backed startup which is an almost impossible feat with women getting less than 2% funding.  Leigitimate is a member of multiple journalistic transparency organisations with some of the biggest companies in the world, so what she’s achieved is super impressive. 

She’s looking for growth before profitability in startups with the potential for aggregator, network and community as traction metrics. (Like how Meta, X and LinkedIn started out.) So user growth, market penetration and “stickiness” like with regular engagement is what she’s focused on. 

What are you looking for in founders who apply?

I’m looking for startups that offer alternatives, elevated user experiences and pleasure-points instead of pain-points. I think people spend more time and money on things they love versus what they need so a founder who demonstrates that they understand how humans behave is key. 

Tech for tech sake is redundant. I want to know what’s going to make people fall in love with your product or service and want to tell their friends about it. Does your idea have the potential to build community around it? Because your audience becomes your sales team if you do it right.  

What makes you different from other accelerators?

Aside from the fact that we don’t waste founder’s time on things that don’t matter? Haha ;)

 I’ve written all about our major points of difference in Accelerators are broken. 

As a top level overview:

• We focus on market positioning versus VC pitching
• Market opinions versus mentor opinions
• 3 weeks versus 3 months
• Free versus paid and/or equity
• And we actually include women

Which Founders won your inaugural Summer 2024 program?

We had two incredible women founders who won places in our first program:

Alice Chen of WoWo Studios and Darlin Donado of Purple Paws. Links to their social media and quotes from them are all up on our accelerator page. 

Describe Creatrix accelerator in 3 emojis

💡👏💫

How can organisations get involved?

We’re looking for partners who want to support the startup ecosystem though direct sponsorship. We don’t want to become a coupon collector and disguise discounted sales as perks. We’re looking for organizations that promote a diverse future that includes everyone.

We’re thrilled that We Are Founders is our press partner and is committed to sharing founders stories with the world. 

If you want to support us in a small way, like team coffee’s to a big way, like official partnership, email me lauren@creatrixsaas.com