Hey all, sorry for being MIA the last 24 hours. There's a lot to dive into here. First, I'll have to agree with my colleagues above that not all accelerators are created equal. This is true both from the perspective of which program a founder should choose, and which programs are likely to drive financial returns. I'll offer some thoughts on each.First, the decision to join an accelerator is an extremely personal one for every company and (group of) founder(s). There really is no right answer. The first question to ask, however, is what do you want to get out of it. Is it about improving your product? Raising money? Finding motivation? Being part of a community? Different accelerators, excel and fall short in each of these above areas, so choose your program accordingly. Also, remember, that an accelerator isn't the best option for all companies. It's almost impossible to give a clear articulation of the strengths and weaknesses of every accelerator out there, but a founder would be wise to speak to past graduates of any program that they're considering applying to to get a sense of what to expect.As far as the financial viability of the accelerator model, it's hard to argue that this is the best way to generate a return on your capital. As Eli mentioned above, many accelerator founders/directors pursue this model for the indirect benefits like access to exclusive deal flow – which requires a separate pool of capital from which to invest – standing in the broader startup community, or altruism. But other than YC, whose (paper) returns are driven almost entirely by three companies – Dropbox, AirBnB, and Reddit – it's hard to think of another accelerator that has generated real, outsized returns.Many of these programs are still young, and like VC funds, should be given a 7-10 year horizon before passing judgement. That said, I don't expect the lay of the land to change much. A few (lucky?) programs will make outsized returns, but the rest will do to break even, or generate a small return at best. This is in large part because accelerators are making investments on less information than even most angels and Seed stage VCs and they are making small bets at that, and rarely follow on. Many, but not all, programs require a product prototype in order to apply, but this is rarely anything close to what the end product will one day be. Really it's just a little bit of extra friction in the application process to weed out those unwilling or incapable of "building something."For those interested, we've explored a number of accelerator-centric topics on PandoDaily – my NY colleague Erin Griffith deserves a special shoutout for her coverage of this topic – and I've shared a few of the best links below:"We know accelerators are headed for a shakeout — but do they?" – http://pndo.ly/ZBlXBK "Dear awesome startups, don’t join an accelerator, unless…" – http://pndo.ly/YX9n5a "Let’s kill the demo day and replace it with a one-year reunion" – http://pndo.ly/16aPATz "Steve Blank explains why accelerators should mimic 'Moneyball'" – http://pndo.ly/19I3c8M More available under our Accelerator ( http://pndo.ly/1aaKyWF ) and Accelerators ( http://pndo.ly/1hnwUG0 ) tags.