O papel de uma pré-aceleradora na escalabilidade de startups: o caso de um programa em Sergipe

Abstract

The growing globalization of economies requires companies to constantly pay attention to everything that surrounds them, to their surroundings, and they have to make all their decisions in an attentive and conscious manner in a timely manner. Among several solutions for contemporary business ideas, a pre-acceleration program from Sergipe stands out, linked to training and mentoring that develop startups at an early stage. This is because in recent years the innovation environment and the entrepreneurial ecosystem have increased in number and complexity due to the increase in new business models and technological innovations, demanding more and more specific knowledge and an expansion of the network of contacts. An analysis of the reasons that lead participants to feel attracted by a pre-acceleration program was carried out so that, in this way, it was possible to solve the following problem: What are the challenges in the process of promoting business scalability in a pre-accelerator of Sergipe startups? An approach was used based on theoretical contributions from innovation and Entrepreneurship, more specifically from startups, assuming that the action of those involved in the program promotes the interaction of processes that triggers the promotion of living with the innovative, creative environment and opportunities. The objective was to understand the role of pre-accelerators in the scalability of Sergipe's startups. Due to the question of this research, this work presents an exploratory approach, of a qualitative nature. In this sense, the proposal is a displacement of a purely descriptive study of the minimum viable product, scalability, and experience lived in the program for an analysis of the meanings of its performance. Qualitative and exploratory research, 4 participating agents were interviewed who had some kind of relationship with this pre-acceleration program, regardless of their nationality and place of performance. From the Thematic Analysis, three themes emerged: a) Challenges between the startup link and the program; b) Relationship between startups and scalability; c) Reaching the minimum viable product. The results highlight the importance of the search for training on the subject of scalability, the emphasis on generating the network of contacts and some challenges in generating a minimum viable product.