Supporting Startups: How Skhokho Benefits Accelerators and Incubators
Accelerators and incubators are key drivers of startup success, providing entrepreneurs with mentorship, resources, and support. However, managing an accelerator or incubator program comes with challenges: tracking the progress of multiple startups, ensuring each venture implements good business practices, and reporting results to stakeholders. At Skhokho, we recognize these needs and have developed a comprehensive business management platform to address them. Skhokho offers an integrated suite of tools – from objective tracking to project management and beyond – that gives startup enablers a 360-degree view of their portfolio companies and ensures each startup has access to best-in-industry tools for day-to-day operations.
In this blog we'll be discussing the following:
- Understanding the Needs of Accelerators and Incubators
- Overview of Skhokho’s Core Features for Startup Support
- Benefits to Accelerators and Incubators
- Supporting African Innovation and Inclusion
- Getting Started with Skhokho for Your Program
Understanding the Needs of Accelerators and Incubators
Accelerators and incubators typically work with multiple startups simultaneously, often in a cohort or portfolio. To drive success, these programs need effective ways to monitor each startup’s performance, guide them, and hold them accountable. Traditionally, program managers have relied on periodic reports, spreadsheets, and month-end review meetings to stay informed. This approach can leave gaps in understanding and delays in addressing issues.
What accelerators really need is real-time visibility into key aspects of each business – from financial health and sales pipeline to team productivity and goal attainment. They also aim to instill strong governance and record-keeping habits in startups early on, ensuring transparency and compliance as these young companies grow. Recognizing these needs, we designed Skhokho to provide a centralized solution that addresses the unique operational challenges of startup support programs.
Overview of Skhokho’s Core Features for Startup Support
Skhokho provides a comprehensive suite of integrated applications addressing all major areas of business management. Key features relevant to startup support include:
Objectives & Key Results (OKR) Tracking: Define and track goals using the OKR methodology. Skhokho’s OKR app helps teams set specific, measurable, and time-bound objectives and link them to key results for continuous progress tracking. This feature enables startups to align their targets with accelerator milestones and allows mentors to monitor goal attainment easily.
Project Management: Manage project deliverables, milestones, and tasks in one place. We simplify day-to-day project management by breaking projects into milestones and tasks, complete with employee time tracking and timesheets. Startups can use this to stay on schedule with product development or pilots, while incubator managers get a clear view of each venture’s execution progress.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Track business development activities, sales leads, and client interactions through an integrated CRM module. Skhokho allows startups to manage their contacts and sales pipeline, and even collaborate on documents, meetings, and notes related to deals. For accelerators, this means you can gauge each startup’s market traction and customer engagement in real time.
Human Resource Management (HRM): Establish good HR practices from day one. Skhokho’s HR app lets startups maintain employee records and HR files securely, manage leave requests and approvals, and define team roles/responsibilities. This not only helps young companies stay organized as they grow their teams, but also gives incubator staff insight into team capacity and organizational health.
Accounting & Finance: Keep track of finances with built-in accounting tools. Skhokho includes features for invoicing, expense tracking, and basic bookkeeping, giving entrepreneurs a clear view of their cash flow and financial position. Accelerators benefit by knowing that each startup is handling finances responsibly – and they can even review financial reports if needed via the platform.
Business Intelligence & Reporting: All the operational data captured in Skhokho feeds into rich dashboards and reports. Accelerators and incubators get on-demand access to their startups’ HR reports, OKR progress, accounting summaries, project status, and sales reports. These real-time reports can be viewed or downloaded at any time, providing a data-driven basis for evaluating performance and making decisions. By centralizing analytics across all startups, Skhokho enables a true 360° performance overview for program managers.
Benefits to Accelerators and Incubators
Skhokho provides accelerator managers with a unified, at-a-glance view of all their startups in one place. The Sponsorship Dashboard lets you see each company's status and key metrics instantly, eliminating the need to chase down updates or wait for monthly reports. This real-time oversight means you can quickly spot which startups are excelling and which need extra support, allowing you to focus your mentorship efforts where they matter most.
In fact, using Skhokho yields a range of concrete benefits for startup support organizations. Some of the key advantages include:
Single Source of Truth: All startup data – from tasks and KPIs to sales and finances – lives in one integrated platform. You no longer need to juggle five different software tools or spreadsheets. This one-stop system ensures everyone is working from the same information, increasing accuracy and reducing duplication.
Efficiency and Time Savings: By replacing manual reports and disparate apps with an integrated solution, accelerators cut down on administrative overhead. Routine tasks (like collecting updates or consolidating reports) are automated or easily accessible, giving program managers more time to actually support and coach their startups.
Accountability & Best Practices: Startups in the program follow structured processes within Skhokho for things like logging sales, tracking expenses, and managing HR. This encourages diligent record-keeping and transparency in business operations, instilling best practices in governance and compliance from the start. Such habits make startups more prepared for investor due diligence and sustainable growth.
Data-Driven Insights: On-demand dashboards and reports enable data-driven decision making. Program directors can pull up a startup’s performance metrics at any moment and use that data to drive strategic conversations. For example, an incubator manager can review a venture’s sales funnel or OKR completion rate before a mentoring session, leading to more targeted guidance.
Improved Communication & Collaboration: Skhokho’s collaborative features (shared documents, meeting minutes, integrated notes) keep mentors, founders, and staff on the same page. Important discussions and decisions are documented within the system, preserving institutional knowledge. Everyone involved in the accelerator can easily reference what happened last meeting or the latest action items, reducing miscommunication and ensuring continuity.
Scalability and Flexibility: Whether you’re supporting 5 startups or 50, Skhokho scales with your needs. There is no hard limit on the number of businesses you can add to a sponsorship account. This makes it easy to grow your program or manage multiple cohorts simultaneously. Additionally, Skhokho’s open API and integrations mean it can fit into your existing workflow and adapt as your program evolves.
Case Use Scenarios
Corporate Enterprise Supplier Development (ESD) Program: A large corporation running an SME accelerator uses Skhokho to sponsor a cohort of small businesses on the platform. Through the SME Sponsorship App, the corporate’s program managers can invite each startup onto Skhokho and then monitor their finances, HR, sales, and project progress in real time. Instead of waiting for each startup to submit monthly status reports, the team can pull live dashboards and reports at any time to evaluate performance.
Startup Accelerator Cohort Management: An early-stage tech accelerator adopting Skhokho streamlines its program operations. At the start of the cohort, the accelerator helps each startup define OKRs within Skhokho that align with the program’s goals. As the cohort progresses, startups log their tasks, milestones, and sales leads on the platform, and update their Key Results regularly. Accelerator mentors use Skhokho’s OKR dashboards to track how each team is progressing on objectives at a glance.
Incubator & Co-working Hub: A regional business incubator that hosts dozens of startups provides Skhokho to all its member companies as a standard operational tool. Each startup benefits from using professional management systems from day one – they handle sales, accounting, HR, and task management in Skhokho even if their team is small. Meanwhile, the incubator’s management gains aggregated visibility into all resident startups’ activities via the Skhokho sponsor dashboard, without having to chase updates.
Supporting African Innovation and Inclusion
Skhokho was born out of a vision to empower small businesses, particularly in Africa, with accessible technology. For many startups in emerging markets, access to world-class business software can be limited due to cost or complexity. We are proud that Skhokho helps bridge this gap by offering an affordable, easy-to-use solution tailored for small enterprises.
This inclusivity means a startup founder in Nairobi or Lagos can leverage the same caliber of management software as a company in Silicon Valley – helping level the playing field and spur local innovation.
Moreover, Skhokho’s sponsorship model enables larger organizations and incubators to actively promote inclusion. By sponsoring small businesses onto the platform, established companies or development agencies give those SMEs their best chance at success with world-class tools and processes.
By equipping entrepreneurs with technology that improves their operations and decision-making, we contribute to broader economic development and job creation. In short, our mission is closely tied to the growth of African innovation ecosystems – we’re committed to working hand-in-hand with Africa’s startup enablers to unlock the continent’s immense entrepreneurial potential through inclusive tech.
Getting Started with Skhokho for Your Program
Getting your accelerator or incubator set up on Skhokho is straightforward. Here’s how you can get started:
Start a Free Trial or Plan: Begin by signing up on the Skhokho website. We offer a 14-day free trial with no credit card needed, allowing you to explore all the features at no risk.
Request Accelerator Sponsorship Access: Once you have an account, contact our team to enable the Accelerators & Incubators Sponsorship module.
Invite Your Startups: From your sponsor dashboard, you can generate invitation tokens and send them to the startups you support.
Onboard and Configure: Work with your startups to get them onboarded. Skhokho’s interface is user-friendly, and we provide documentation and video tutorials.
Integrate with Existing Tools: Take advantage of Skhokho’s integration capabilities to fit the platform into your existing workflow.
Monitor and Support Actively: Make it a habit to review Skhokho dashboards and reports regularly.
Scale and Iterate: Continue to add new startups/cohorts into Skhokho as your program grows.
Leverage Support and Resources: Our customer success team is available for tailored assistance and ongoing support.
Supporting startups requires both passion and the right tools. Skhokho is more than just software – it’s a partner for accelerators and incubators aiming to scale their impact and drive startup success. By centralizing portfolio management, improving transparency, and enabling data-driven insights, we empower you to focus on what truly matters: nurturing innovation and growth in the startups you support.
The operations of your accelerator or incubator can be significantly streamlined with Skhokho, freeing up your team to spend more time mentoring and less time wrangling spreadsheets.
In today’s fast-paced and data-rich startup ecosystem, having an integrated platform like Skhokho is a strategic advantage. It not only makes your day-to-day management easier but also enhances the support you provide to entrepreneurs – giving them structure, clarity, and world-class business tools from the outset. We have built Skhokho with the confidence that it can help build better businesses. Now, we invite you to experience it for yourself. Get started with a free trial or reach out to our team to see how Skhokho can be tailored to your program’s needs.
