By: Rick Ed, mentor, advisor and trainer at DoBetter.Business, a business coaching and consulting agency
South Africa has an unusually large number of enterprise and supplier development providers relative to its population, driven partly by corporates needing to maintain their BEE scorecards. That scale has created a real problem: entrepreneurs who bounce from one incubation programme to the next, hoping to stumble onto the one that finally delivers.
Why incubator hopping happens
When a startup takes longer to succeed than expected, some entrepreneurs start jumping from one enterprise or supplier development programme to another, hoping to find the magic contract rather than addressing what is actually holding their business back. Government-run incubators report high survival rates after two years, but many of those businesses never actually grow their turnover or staff while cocooned inside the programme, meaning survival is not the same as genuine progress.
How to avoid a bad incubator or ESD programme
Understand exactly what an incubator is meant to provide before joining, and whether what you are considering is genuinely an incubator, an accelerator, an enterprise development or a supplier development programme, since the boundaries are often blurrier in practice than official definitions suggest.
Be honest about whether the programme’s offering actually aligns with your business goals. Are you hoping for a supply contract, access to expertise, or facilities? Confirm the programme genuinely delivers what you are hoping to get from it, not just what it advertises.
Weigh what you are actually willing to commit, full-day classes, homework assignments, regular time with a coach or mentor, against what the programme genuinely offers in return.
Check the credibility of the organisation itself. How reputable are they, and how competent are the people actually delivering the programme? Are they entrepreneurs themselves, or are they consultants who have never run a business? Ask other alumni whether the programme lived up to its own promotional claims, and whether it monitors and supports businesses after the programme officially ends.
Frequently asked questions
Why do so many South African entrepreneurs move between multiple incubator programmes?
Often because a first programme did not deliver the funding or contracts they expected, leading them to try another rather than diagnosing what specifically their business still needs.
Does a high survival rate after an incubator programme mean it was actually effective?
Not necessarily. Many businesses survive an incubation programme without meaningfully growing their turnover or staff count, which is a different outcome from genuine business growth.
What is the most reliable way to check an incubator’s credibility before joining?
Ask existing or past participants whether the programme lived up to its own promotional claims, and confirm whether the people delivering it have actually run a business themselves.
Education, not another programme, is the real fix
Understanding what an incubator can genuinely offer, and being honest about what your business actually needs, prevents the incubator-hopping cycle far more reliably than trying yet another programme.
Further reading: Is My Business Funding Ready? | Department of Trade, Industry and Competition for official small business support information
Originally published in March 2019. Updated September 2026 to tighten this guidance from DoBetter.Business’s Rick Ed on avoiding the incubator-hopping cycle. The underlying diagnosis remains sound.
