Prior literature suggests that accelerators impact venture performance across several dimensions, such as funding, web traffic, and employee growth. However, since the majority of ventures fail, it is important to know whether and how accelerators impact a founder’s subsequent career - career path and career success. In exploring this question, we use a regression discontinuity design on a unique dataset of Start-up Chile that contains detailed information about 30,000 applicants of which 3,840 founders had gone through the program between 2011 and 2019. We find that accelerated founders are more likely to remain entrepreneurs either by continuing their focal accelerator venture or by founding another venture. Our results are not significant for other dimensions of a career, such as earnings, and positions. Results suggest that while the accelerator experience provides participants with learning opportunities, perhaps more importantly, it also induces them into an entrepreneurship identity.
