tartup founders get into incubators at a very early stage. Many founders get into incubators just to get the experience. A set of accomplished founders, who have started, executed and exited successfully, mentor these new founders in incubators.
Startups usually get a few work stations, meeting rooms, chance to attend stand-ups with other founders, legal help etc. from the incubators. Demo Day is considered as "the" day for every batch that nears completion of incubation. There are 2 things that are more important than any other facility provided by these incubators. To me, if these 2 items are given in a great way, other things do not matter.
1. Mentoring by achievers with different backgrounds
Though most of the mentors in an incubator fall under the category of founders, when you get mentorship from different people from different industry, it adds a lot of value. You will be able to see from the eyes of the people in that industry. Ideally if you choose mentors who belong to the industries that will consume your product, nothing like that.
You will be able to find the commonality among the opinions by these people and the very specific ones as well. But it is very difficult to get such a mix of mentors for a 3-6 months program. As a challenge, try to get 6 people who are unknown to you, to give top 5 advises to you, thru LinkedIn. You will understand what I try to say.
2. First 50 logos as your clients
Getting logos in your clients page is not that easy. Those 50 clients must be willing to use your product, give critical feedback and ready to pay for the product. Great incubators like Y-Combinator do this very seriously. Also that 50 is a magic number for Series-A as well! As a founder, if you are able to connect, demo, conduct proof of concept and deploy your product for the first 50 clients, you are almost on a proven path.
An incubator must help you to achieve this. Imagine, you are able to get just 20 clients as part of incubation and tell that in the Demo Day.
All the best.
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