You wouldn't be the first to get a little confused by the term 'pre-acceleration'.

Mushrooming across Europe, pre-accelerator programmes essentially cater to people with ideas (or not even that yet) who are gearing up to join a 'proper' startup accelerator such as Y Combinator or Techstars, or for an early product launch - but aren't quite ready yet.

With today's news that renowned seed fund and startup accelerator 500 Startups is in the midst of setting up such a pre-accelerator in Oslo, Norway, we thought it would be a good idea to highlight this relevant white paper by our friends from Startup Pirates and Tetuan Valley.

Also read: European startup accelerators: current state and future trends

The white paper on pre-acceleration is an outcome of the recent inaugural Pre-Acceleration Summit held in Porto, Portugal. Organisations who participated in the pow-wow include NUMA (France), ZIP (Croatia), iMinds (Belgium), Beta-i (Portugal), SuperFounders (Macedonia), among others.

It explains what a 'pre-accelerator' is supposed to be, its goals and challenges, business model(s) and what its future is poised to look like. Check it out below or on Slideshare:

(Full disclosure: Tech.eu is part of a consortium that aims to better understand failure in the context of European entrepreneurship - as are NUMA, ZIP, Tetuan Valley and Beta-i).

Featured image credit: Linda Parton / Shutterstock