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Abstract
When talking about entrepreneurship, an immense ecosystem appears, from startups success and funding, to public policies and the entrepreneur itself. This applied research study the entrepreneur’s characteristics, using as guide the Traits, Skills and Motivation model from Baum and Locke (2004), within a selected group of entrepreneurs that are part of Accelerator programs, focused to understanding the accelerator contribution to the entrepreneur and its company growth. The study was developed by a qualitative phase with semi-structure in-depth interviews with these entrepreneurs and accelerator’s executives, resulting in rich data coded using Nvivo software, and serving as base for the model design and the quantitative phase definitions. During the quantitative phase, an online survey was deployed to all members of 9 accelerators, returning 102 valid responses statistically analyzed using PLS-SEM. Results confirmed that the entrepreneur’s Passion has high impact on Resource Creation and Growth Attainment, and shown that participation intensity on Education programs does not have a significant impact on company’s growth – in opposite to the other two activities also provided by the Accelerators: Networking and Mentoring, presenting a high impact on growth.