How a corporate accelerator turned a list of about 500 startups into profiles and program applications

01 The setting

The accelerator already knew which startups it wanted in its program: about 500 of them, collected over time in a spreadsheet. It wanted them on StartupDeal as complete profiles, each applied to the program, so its team could evaluate them in one place.

02 The challenge

Asking 500 founders to sign up and fill in a profile from scratch loses many of them along the way. Typing their details in on their behalf takes weeks, and still needs each founder's consent before anything goes public.

03 How it worked

1. The list went in as it wasThe accelerator's spreadsheet went in unchanged, with Turkish or English column names, and duplicate rows were dropped before anything was created. The StartupDeal team loaded this first list; program managers now do it themselves from the import screen.
2. Profiles filled from the websiteFor each row StartupDeal created an account and a private profile, read the startup's website and filled in the profile: what it does, the problem it solves, its business model and its categories.
3. A personal invitationEach founder received an email introducing the program and the profile prepared for them. Invitations went out at a steady pace rather than all at once.
4. The founder decidesNothing went public without the founder. When a founder approved, the profile was published, the application to the program was created and the startup appeared on the program's board.
5. Progress in one placeThe accelerator followed every startup on its own timeline: imported, profile filled, invited, approved, with the reason whenever a step failed.

04 The result

The accelerator's list became program applications without asking founders to start from an empty form. Founders reviewed a profile that was already there and approved it, and the team evaluated the startups on one board while seeing at a glance who had not responded yet.

05 What they used

• Bulk import from Excel or CSV
• Profiles filled from the startup's website
• Invitation emails
• Founder approval
• Program board