Undergrad Business Accelerator - ADVICE NEEDED

Hey there, this is my first discussion on WSO so I'll get right to it. I am this year's director of an accelerator program at my university and am really excited to really take the program to the next level. This will be the program's second year, with the leadership from last year moving on to other things.

I was lucky enough to gain entry into the program last year as a participant and the program was... decent. I cut the whole thing some slack because it was the first year of the program. Throughout the entire thing I was more focused on how I could improve upon it than I was my team's business (I know, I know, priorities).

We were paired up with other participants in the program at random, which left me with two engineering minded students who had no concept of revenue models, MVPs, or how VC worked. The goal of the program was to build a tech related start-up from scratch (unless we had an existing idea) and during the course of the three month program, turn it into something great. The accelerator brought in local speakers including some local VCs, branding guys, successful start-up CEOs, and a handful of others.

There was a weekly session which included an hour for teams to update each other on the progress they had made during that week, thirty minutes or so to eat pizza, and then the remaining time would be given to the local speaker. Speakers would talk about anything from minimum viable products to legal work and from framework to branding.

That was essentially all the program had to offer. Out of the 5 teams in the program, only one made significant progress (they were the only group that had joined the program as a preformed team with an idea already in place). After the program ended, the leadership faded away and didn't care about actually seeing these companies succeed.
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That brings us to this year. I have a vision of making this year's accelerator something worthwhile. If done right, this could be really BIG. My goal for the program is very similar to last years: give teams the learning environment, financial support, and networking they need to take their start-up and turn it into a seed stage company positioned for entry into a 'real' accelerator (Y-incubator, TechStars, etc.).

Right off the bat I know we needed to change the application process to mimic other accelerators; preformed teams with existing ideas. We want the entrepreneurs who are passionate about what they do, not just wanting to fluff up their resume and eat free pizza.

Next, local speakers are great, but the start-up environment in the area is very small compared to the bigger areas out there (San Francisco, New York, Chicago). That's why I sent out 500+ cold emails to the top venture capitalists in the nation. The amount of positive responses I got was very surprising. I have scheduled Skype video calls with partners from big names such as Khosla Ventures, Spark Capital, Tech Stars, First Round Capital with a few of these partners going above and beyond and are actually FLYING out to our university to help (it's crazy what simply asking for help can accomplish)!

I also got in touch with all of our local speakers from last year and was able to get most of them to volunteer their skill sets to the program in forms of mentorships. If a team is having some legal trouble during the program, our accelerator now has several hours of legal consulting to offer. The same goes for branding, tech, financials, and VC related questions. We aren't just bringing in speakers this year, we are giving teams the resources they need for success.

The three month program will close with a pitch competition/demo day at a local seed stage accelerator (one of the top 25 in the nation) where judges will include university entrepreneurship staff, local venture capitalists, and managers of the accelerator itself. I am still in the process of working out prizes for the top companies (suggestions would be great).

So this is where I'm at in the planning stage for this year's accelerator program. I'm very excited with the positive feedback I've received from the top people in the field nationwide and can't wait to hear them speak with our teams. I've also started an early application process for any local teams who are actively looking for this type of program (one team who is in the process of receiving $50K funding is still choosing to enter our program).

So my question is this: after reading through everything that is in place for the program this year, what are we missing? I'm very passionate about this program and truly want this accelerator to be something that receives national coverage and helps its teams to get some serious seed funding. It would be great to hear from some of you who have day to day experience working with this sort of stuff. Any and all help is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance for all of the help!