Momentum — The Mentor Driven Acceleration Program
Momentum Start-Up Accelerator is a 3-month startup acceleration program designed for ventures formed by Students & Alumni of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC).

In 2001, IDC faculty decided to develop and launch the IDC Entrepreneurship Club (IEC), thus initiating what would become Israel’s largest Student Entrepreneurship Club, serving over 1,000 students annually.

Momentum Start-Up Accelerator serves as the flagship program of the IDC Entrepreneurship Club — students and alumni of IDC, who have already begun working on their venture and are past the ideation stage, can apply during one of the two enrollment periods which occur at the beginning of the winter and spring semesters, accordingly.

As the enrollment process starts teams are handpicked from a long list of applicants by various criteria as Idea Assessment, Pitching, Business Model and Scalability Potential.

During the program, in which each batch period is one full academic semester, participants go through a planned syllabus structure designed to propell their Start-Up from Pre-Seed stage to competing at a higher level, whether by raising capital or by competing as a structured business over a market niche.

In addition to the structure of the program, which covers all relevant aspects for an emerging Start-Up (whether it be Storytelling, Market fit & Validation, Legal & Fiscal Advisory, or the Demo Day — a highlight event in which participants pitch their Start-Up to VC & Angel Investors), participats also earn a Mentor to guide and advise them throughout the program.

Mentors at Momentum serve as the key player of the program, as they are sharing with the participants invalueable lessons learned from their proven experience in the private sector.

There are various great Acceleration programs out there, many focusing on different stages that Start-Ups are at, or even at specific emerging industries. In addition, most Acceleration programs are obligated to their investors due to the fact that such programs have to make sense economically.

However, as a non-profit, full time volunteering based organization, what makes Momentum unique is that the participating teams are the client, and not the product — Momentum reversed the order of the model.
['Dominik M. Hurmann']
['Accelerator', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Israel', 'Technology']