One of the hottest new startup accelerators out there right now is undoubtedly Andreessen Horowitz’s Speedrun program. Launched in 2023, the accelerator has an adoption rate of less than 1%. In a blog post in January, the program said more than 19,000 startups pitched and less than 0.4% were accepted into the latest cohort.
The program previously focused on early-stage games, then expanded into entertainment and media and is now a “horizontal program,” Joshua Lu, general manager of the program and partner at a16z, told TechCrunch. Founders of any type of startup can apply today, and the program runs for about 12 weeks in San Francisco. He used to have a program in Los Angeles, but Lu said he will focus on SF from now on.
There are two cohorts per year and around 50 to 70 startups are accepted into each. The program invests up to $1 million in each company, although the downside is that it is a bit expensive. It typically invests $500,000 up front in exchange for 10% of the startup’s company through a SAFE note, and another $500,000 if the next round is raised within 18 months, on whatever terms the other investors agree on.
By comparison, Y Combinator typically takes a fixed 7% of a company for $125,000, with the additional $375,000 “invested in an MFN unlimited vault.”
Speedrun said its program is “more expensive in stock” because of what it offers founders. It gives them access to a16z’s consulting and business networks to help with tasks such as launch, brand development, media strategy and talent acquisition. Plus, it offers startups benefits like $5 million in credits for vendors like AWS, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Deel.
Given the high interest and low acceptance rate, TechCrunch spoke with Lu about some tips on how startups can best stand out. The latest cohort started in January and will end on Demo Day in April. Applications for the next cohort open in April, though it looks at off-season applications throughout the year, Lu said.
Focus on the founding team
Speedrun focuses on early-stage startups. Because of that, they’re really looking at who’s on the founding team and whether their skills complement each other, Lu said.
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“That doesn’t mean one has to be technical and one has to be commercial and one has to be marketing,” Lu said. It means that “we prefer not to see any glaring holes in ability or interest. We want the founding team to be self-aware and to have that as part of the hiring plan.”
They also like to see teams that have worked together before or have a shared history.
“There are a lot of things that a founding team has to navigate on their startup journey, and they have to have a little bit of pattern recognition, being able to work together, knowing how to disagree and how to come out the other side of a disagreement, these are all things that people in founding teams with a shared history on average struggle with,” he continued.
Even though artificial intelligence has lowered the barriers to building software, it’s still incredibly useful for a founding team to be technical, Lu said. At the same time, because AI has made it possible to generate and validate hypotheses and bring a product to market much faster, Lu said the Speedrun team likes to see a startup already have some market validation or traction for its product.
“Speedrun as a program is really great in helping teams put gasoline on a very small spark or fire,” he said. “We’re looking for teams that have tried to build and try to show us that there’s a little spark that we can ignite.”
Limit market “theory”
Lu said a common mistake founders often make in the application process is spending too much energy talking about market theory or why a defined problem exists and why their solution is right. “That could all be true,” he said.
He also added that even the biggest and most successful tech companies faced unexpected roadblocks when they were young, sometimes even turning around completely. What a company thinks it will build at the beginning does not necessarily mean it will be successful at the end.
“We really want to hear why this founding team is really good together,” he continued, “why they’re a great founding team, the best possible founding team to solve this particular problem.” And then on top of that any validation of the idea itself.
It’s fine to use AI for an app, but…
Lu said the program encourages each founder to use AI to “clean up” their app. He said there is now no excuse for grammatical errors or typos given the increasing sophistication of AI tools. He also said that AI can help founders organize their thoughts, making them clearer, more concise and more coherent.
But if the AI has done all the work in explaining the startup, it can backfire. If the founder makes it to the next round, it will be a live video call. “That’s when their skills in explaining a living narrative will be put to the test,” he said. So founders should be prepared to talk convincingly about their startup without the help of AI.
Only about 10% of founders make it to the video call stage. There are usually two to three investors on the jury at the same time.
After the live interview, the team usually conducts a few more screening calls with the founders, and then the final cohort decision is made.
Be eager to network
Of course, there are also other acceleration programs for startups to choose from. Lu said that Speedrun itself was inspired by some of these other programs.
Still, he says, the accelerator prides itself on giving founders access to a large, dedicated operations team. In fact, he said the best teams to get the most out of the program are the ones most “greedy for exposure to the amazing people and programs” that Speedrun has to offer.
Lu made just a few points: a16z has around 600 people, and 10% of them are in the investment team, he said; everyone else is an operator who supports the companies the company works with. This will give founders at Speedrun access to experts who can help with marketing, banking, finance, management and many other functions. So it helps to know who the startup wants to connect with and why.
“We tell founders who go through the program that you get out of Speedrun what you put into it,” he said. “We think founders who want to take advantage of world-class experts in many different fields at the start of their startup journey would be really smart to choose us.”
Advice from the founder in the program
Founder Mohamed Mohamed, who is in the recent cohort, just announced a $5M raise for his proptech startup Smart Bricks led by Speedrun a16z. He was drawn to the program because he said it stood out as one of the few “explicitly designed for co-founders working on frontier AI applications,” and he chose it because he wanted a program that would allow him to “stress test an ambitious technical vision.”
Mohamed said he is treating the application more like an internal strategy memo than a presentation. “Instead of tweaking buzzwords, we focused on clarity—the real problem, why it’s structurally difficult, and why our team is unusually well positioned to solve it,” he said. “We got clear on what’s working, what’s not and where we need help. I think that honesty and being clear about why this issue matters,” is what helped the company through the application process.
He called the process “rigorous but refreshingly thoughtful” and said it was designed to understand how founders think, not just what they’ve built so far. “The conversations went deep into product architecture, data strategy and long-term ambitions. It felt closer to a partner-level discussion than a typical accelerator conversation, which was a strong signal for us,” he said.
His general advice is to be “intellectually honest and precise”. For example, he stated in his application that he avoids “over-optimization” in order to promote his company. “If you’re vague, derivative or overly defensive about your idea, it will show quickly. Don’t try to sound bigger than you are; being clear about where you really are is far more persuasive than an inflated narrative,” he said.
Ultimately, “Speedrun isn’t looking for perfect companies, but founders who can think clearly about complex problems and build with conviction,” he said. “Communicate the hard parts of what you do and why they’re worth tackling. Depth trumps glitz every time.”
Correction, story originally misstated YC’s 7% investment. It was fixed.