Lead

Launch in Your City

Leading a Founder Institute chapter is an exciting way to take a leading role in the local startup ecosystem.

The Institute brings together seasoned founders, new entrepreneurs, investors and community groups to launch meaningful and enduring technology companies. After a couple four month semesters, a large portion of the new startups in your local ecosystem will be graduates of the program.

As the Founder Institute expands around the world, we are looking for people who love startups to help lead chapters in various cities. It's a rewarding and fun experience. Are you interested in leading your city and launching amazing companies?

Learn more about leading a local chapter here, and, if the opportunity interests you, please apply below.

What is the Founder Institute?

The Founder Institute is a four month program that helps passionate people with domain expertise launch meaningful and enduring technology companies. Founders apply to the program and are centrally enrolled using advanced social science testing, and then they meet one night each week with local CEOs to discuss company-building subjects in a planned curriculum. You can watch a full session here. Throughout the four months, the Founders build their companies with guidance from the CEOs and by working with their peers, and the Founders do not need to quit their day jobs through the process. By the end of the program, the Institute takes this group of passionate people and helps them to form companies, normally graduating between 15 and 25 businesses per semester.

What is the role of a local leader?

The local leader plays a central role in the startup ecosystem of a city. In less than a year, a large percentage of all the new technology companies will be created by the Founder Institute, and the local leader will be widely recognized for their contributions.

Leading a city usually takes between 10 and 15 hours of time per week, usually during the evenings. The leader helps to recruit applicants for the program in the local market, identifies strong startup CEOs to participate as Mentors, spends a couple hours per week meeting with Founders and organizes three Mentoring sessions per month in the evening. The Institute provides the curriculum and all of the online tools necessary to run a fun and engaging chapter with as little administration burden as possible. There is also a group of over 25 leaders around the world that will support your city launch.

What are traits of a good local leader?

The ideal local leader has a passion for startups and, preferably, experience helping new Founders navigate basic business building decisions. Being able to communicate with founders in a meaningful way is key. Leaders also tend to have strong connections into the local startup ecosystem, participating in various events and knowing various local startup personalities. Lastly, the local leader has basic organizational skills or can recruit others to help with straightforward logistics of hosting a well-run evening meeting.

How is a local leader compensated?

The local leader earns short-term compensation through local sponsorships and longer-term compensation through equity upside in all of the graduating companies from a particular semester. Every city has a number of sponsors lined up by the launch. The Institute generally runs two semesters per year in a city, graduating between 30 and 50 companies per year in any location.

What are the next steps?

If being a local leader is of interest to you, please fill out the form below. The Institute will get back to you within a couple of days, and then we will start discussing specifics. Once a reasonable plan to launch a semester is developed, you will sign an agreement and be provided with all of the tools necessary to launch. It normally takes between four and six months to launch a new semester, which includes six to eight weeks for accepting applications.

We look forward to your application. Enjoy!