A startup accelerator can be a big distraction. Creating a tech company is invariably an around-the-clock endeavor that leaves room for little beyond work.

Committing to an accelerator can rob founders of time that would otherwise be spent building product, hiring key staff, closing sales or the other things they’d be doing if holed up in their living room, garage or a WeWork somewhere. And signing an accelerator agreement typically means giving up a slice of your company in exchange for a relatively small slug of cash.

And yet many founders who have gone through a top-tier accelerator believe it was the best thing that ever happened to their company.

That’s how SVB’s Jesse Bardo felt as a member of the founding team behind EverTrue, a Boston-based company that applies social media analytics to fundraising in education. Taking part in the 2011 class of Techstars, a leading accelerator with chapters scattered around the globe, meant surviving what the group calls “Mentor Madness” — basically two weeks of back-to-back-to-back meetings that sometimes felt like speed dating. There would be a lot more meetings as part of the 90-day program, along with many social obligations. But everyone on the EverTrue team agreed the experience was well worth it.

“I’m not sure we would have made it without Techstars,” says EverTrue co-founder and CEO Brent Grinna. In the ensuing years, the company raised roughly $25 million in venture funding. With EverTrue going strong, Jesse left in mid-2018 to take a job with Silicon Valley Bank helping Boston-based early-stage startups.

Not all accelerators are alike, however. There are some 200 accelerator programs across the United States — many more globally — and they differ in approach, focus and cost, not to mention effectiveness. While top programs boast of a large roster of well-known graduates, the number of successful exits and amounts raised drops off rapidly, according to reports in Forbes and Seed-DB.

That’s why the real question your founding team should be asking is whether an accelerator is right for you given your size, circumstances and the challenges you face as a business. And you need to choose carefully so you don’t end up giving away your time and equity in exchange for off-the-shelf help.

Don’t miss an opportunity to develop company-building skills
Sonciary Honnoll, cofounder of Promoboxx, which sells marketing technology connecting retailers and manufacturers, says going through Techstars proved effective in part because the opportunity to join the program came at the right time. “We were at the point where we had bootstrapped for a bit of time and weren’t sure how to get to that next level,” she says. She credits the program with helping to school …