As an endeavour that in its first iteration was “hacked together” and “shipped as soon as possible”, according to its original co-founder, Neil Davidson, startup accelerator Springboard looked at Friday’s Investor Day a polished and mature product.

With some talk recently that the marketplace for European accelerators is beginning to get crowded, the ten graduates presenting at the programme’s inaugural investor day last Friday looked like a rigorously selected and well mentored group of ventures, primed for success. In short a strong endorsement of Springboard.

Adwings, Arachnys, apiary.io, HubFlow, Mayday, MiniMonos, Playmob, Publification, Tastebuds and TotalGigs all look as though they have what it takes.

It is a mark of the esteem in which Springboard’s model is held that it  was ranked the fourth best accelerator in Europe, before the first intake had even graduated, much less an exit achieved.

In that sense, Springboard is still a startup itself in accelerator terms and one whose story so far will undoubtedly have resonance with many of the early stage ventures that it works with.

Formed in the summer of 2009, Springboard was set up by Cambridge software company, Red Gate as a means simply to get close to innovative people and companies working in areas “adjacent to” its own activities.

Startups were offered some cash to keep them going, somewhere to live if they needed it, free office space, free food along with mentoring from Davidson among others and the occasional pop-in visit from the likes of Joel Spolsky and Ryan Carson.

No equity was taken, because according to Neil Davidson’s blog on the subject, entitled ‘the Accidental incubator,’ such an approach would involve paperwork, lawyers and hassle.

Davidson said: “If Red Gate succeeds it’s not going to be because we take 10% stakes in start-ups. It might, however, be because we manage to build long-term, meaningful relationships with people creating the products of the future.”

And at least one such relationship has come about, with early Springboarder, Pagerduty announcing in May that it had integrated its phone and SMS alerts with Red Gate SQL Monitor. Other entrepreneurs that experienced Springboard as it was then have gone on to shine, including Mixcloud and Rapportive, which closed a $1m plus angel round almost exactly a year ago.

However, running it in-house proved to become a burden for a company managing significant growth of its own, leading to Davidson's decision to mothball the project altogether in 2010. He maintained that it had been a success though, and pledged to relaunch it the following year.

Pledges of that nature are very often subject to some slippage before being placed on a back burner and eventually being buried under the tide of subsequent initiatives and changing priorities. But more than making good on the promise, Springboard was actually relaunched later in 2010 by Jon Bradford, founder of The Difference Engine.

Davidson’s approach to handing over the reins was characteristically laid back according to Bradford; "I came to Neil and said can I steal your name? I sat with him for 20 minutes, thought I'd blown it and two days later he said 'yeah, take the brand.’”

This is the stage at which Springboard shifted from being the accidental incubator described by Davidson to a much more deliberate one. Bradford was aiming for at least 100 applicants and 50 mentors for the relaunched Springboard, the buzz the reborn project managed to generate ensured that in the end he more than doubled both.

He had also amassed not just a world class group of mentors, but leading blue chips including Microsoft, Google, Paypal, Facebook and Amazon Web Services and top investors from Amadeus, DFJ Esprit, Penny Black and Eden among others.

That early response led to Bradford and the Springboard team to commit to making it a permanent annual fixture in Cambridge with the possibility of a wider national roll out, possibly in London.

The initial funding structure involved £5,000 per participant with a maximum of £15,000 per team. But the real value lay in the mentors and advice, Springboard was now in a position to provide a business building programme designed to produce cast iron business models to provide a solid platform for long term success and to offer a compelling case to potential investors.

This is what was on show at Investor Day, last Friday. Figures show that similar accelerators such as Y Combinator and TechStars have delivered further funding for around 50 per cent of entrants, but on the basis of the pitches we saw on Friday, there is a good chance that Springboard’s first vintage could add at least ten percentage points on to that industry  norm.

But it's not just the startups investors are interested in backing, Bradford eventually had to turn investors wanting to come in to finance Springboard. In fact the interest was so high the decision was taken to try and make it a twice annual event.

This was made possible by financing from a group of angels, which ironically perhaps, do not come from Cambridge but the North East, where Bradford will be overseeing ignite100, a programme similar to Springboard. Participants on that programme each get up to £15k, but this time with up to £100,000 of investment available for each participating startup in the form of a convertible loan as long as they meet certain pre-agreed milestones.

Whether Springboard 2012 H1 and H2 will be offering that amount of money remains to be seen, but the speed with which the programme has created genuine buzz and momentum is the ultimate validation of the value investors believe it is bringing to the entrepreneurial community in Cambridge and well beyond.

While Springboard and its startups were enjoying their day in the sun on Friday, one of the most telling of a large number of tweets on the subject came from Davidson, who since stepping out of the driving seat still maintains strong ties with the programme.

He tweeted: “Well done to @jd, @JessInBlue and all the #springboard teams. What a journey.” And it isn’t just the startups that have been on the journey.

Posted by cbm_startup on Sun 31/07/11 @ 13:22