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Seed accelerators (SAs) appear as a more advanced version of business incubators. These for-profit organizations in exchange of equity, help setting new start-ups by providing mentoring and funding during its first months. Due to their emergent nature, the impact and expectations of SAs remains largely unknown. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to throw new light on this field by empirically assessing for the first time the performance and prospects of these organizations through a survey of 116 SAs.

A model based on the Business Incubators literature is built with four categories covering size, location, age and profitability variables, leading to two hypotheses to be tested empirically over a survey of 116 SAs.

Some remarkable findings arise after implementation of both bivariate and multivariate analysis. The results confirm a higher size and performance in the US and in the oldest SAs at statistically significant levels.

The study is not free from limitations but the findings make a contribution to the still scarce existing literature on SAs, and provide some managerial implications to their stockholders, to investors and to entrepreneurs.

The findings concerning performance indicators are especially helpful for investors, primarily concerned with the percentage return on investment factor, the period and the investment rounds needed to achieve exit. Another key issue is the SA's role as an employment seedbed. At first glance, the amount of employment, both overall and per company, might seem small given the young age of these firms. The impact of SAs on the generation of new employment is difficult to measure as it usually takes place in further stages of development of the tenant companies, the so-called scale-up process. Nonetheless, at present, the number of new companies being born is remarkable and, in terms of employment, the results are indeed promising. Our findings also offer important implications for entrepreneurs, venture investors and policy-makers. To entrepreneurs, our findings offer insight on the expectations to hold in the accelerator programs.

For policy-makers and would-be accelerator founders, our results support the idea shared in the literature that accelerators can be an effective entrepreneurial intervention, even in small entrepreneurial ecosystems, compared to the strongest entrepreneurial hubs (Hallen et al., 2017).

SAs are a very recent phenomenon which is blooming all over the world, especially in developed countries. SAs are therefore considered a key agent in the prospects of any entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, no studies have so far analysed the impact and performance of this emerging instrument. This is precisely the main purpose of this paper, to offer for the first time an approximate and exploratory assessment on the impact and prospects of SAs, based on a database.

種子促進中心，以企業孵化中心的更高級版本的形態出現。這些營利組織、在企業剛開始營運的首數個月內提供指導及資金，以換來股權。由於種子促進中心是從未有過的，故其影響及人們寄予的期望大致仍為未知之數。因此，本研究旨在這範疇內提供新的知識，以實證方法，透過調查116間種子促進中心，首次對這類組織的表現及前景進行了評估。

研究人員根據關於企業孵化中心的文獻建立了一個模型，內容包括四個範疇，﹔涵蓋的變量為：規模大小、地域位置、經營年期及盈利狀況。這模型提供了兩個以實證方法、透過調查116間種子促進中心來進行驗證的假設。

透過進行二元及多元分析取得卓越的研究結果。研究結果確認了在美國的種子促進中心及歷史最悠久的種子促進中心在統計意義上顯著地呈較具規模及表現更佳。

本研究不是沒有局限的。唯研究結果為現時在種子促進中心方面的探討仍稀少的文獻提供了貢獻，亦為種子促進中心的股東、投資者及企業家提供了管理方面的提示。

與表現指數相關的研究結果對投資者尤為有用。他們主要的關注是投資因素的回報率，進行轉讓所需的時間及籌集投資總額。另一主要問題是種子促進中心作為就業苗床所扮演的角色。乍看之下，如考慮到這些公司短暫的歷史，無論整體的就業數量、或是以每間公司計算的就業數量都看似微小。種子促進中心在製造新工作方面的影響是難以量度的。這是因為新工作的產生通常出現在租戶公司發展的進一步階段內, 這就是所謂放大過程。但目前誕生的新公司的數目另人注目。而且, 以就業方面來說，效果實在是相當不錯的。我們的研究結果也為企業家、風險投資者及政策制定者提供重要的暗示。對企業家而言，我們的研究結果為他們就促進中心方案應持甚麼期望提供了啟示。

對政策制定者及未來的促進中心始創人而言，我們的研究結果支持文獻所說：促進中心、與最強大的企業樞紐比較之下，即使是在細小的企業生態系統裏，可以是有效的企業介入 (哈倫等人,2017)(Hallen et al., 2017) 。

種子促進中心是一個頗為近期才出現的現象。這現象在全球興盛起來，特別是在發達國家。因此，種子促進中心被認為是可為任何一個企業生態系統帶來前景的主要媒介。唯至今仍未有分析這新興工具的影響及表現的研究。這正正就是本研究的主要目的，就是首度根據一個數據庫，為種子促進中心的影響及前景提供一個適當和探索性的研究。