Get Your Startup Idea Ready
The Startup Ideation Bootcamp, by Founder Institute, is a free, intensive 5-week program to help aspiring entrepreneurs brainstorm, pitch, and start testing their business ideas before 'making the leap' into entrepreneurship.
Ideation Bootcamp
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Bootcamp Benefits
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Join a highly selective, 100% free program for high-potential entrepreneurs
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Follow a proven, step-by-step process to improve and test your startup ideas. No previous entrepreneurship experience necessary!
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Get expert training, tips, and feedback from experienced entrepreneurs during live and interactive sessions
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Leverage a library of helpful resources, tools, and AI chatbots designed to simplify the startup ideation process
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Get opportunities to pitch your startup ideas to potential Co-Founders, partners, advisors, and investors.
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Improve your ideas and prepare yourself to join pre-seed accelerators, like Founder Institute
A Free, Selective Bootcamp
The Startup Ideation Bootcamp is designed for high-potential entrepreneurs ready to devote the time and energy required to improve their startup ideas. This includes:
- Anyone with rough startup ideas that need testing
- Anyone interested in teaming up with other aspiring entrepreneurs
- Anyone with startup ideas that want to learn the first steps
Bootcamp Instructors
Jonathan Greechan
Jonathan is the Co-Founder & CEO of the Founder Institute, a global startup accelerator that has helped startups raise nearly $2BN across 200+ cities and 95+ countries. He has over 15 years of experience working directly with pre-seed and seed-stage startups, accelerators, angels, funds, and LPs.
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I cannot thank FI and its mentors enough for helping me go from idea to launch and now a seed round! Their programs really push you to towards your goals. The mentors at FI were always available for help and support: from reviewing cap tables to strategizing about launch. Without FI it would have been difficult to scale!
Swathi Arulguppe NagendraBettermeal.ai ($500K+ funding) -
The real question is: can the Founder Institute be game-changing for your business? The answer is yes. Without FI, Udemy may have never raised any money.
Gagan BiyaniUdemy (IPO, 2021) -
FI's content and structure were extremely helpful to learn everything in a step by step manner. It saved me a significant amount of time and prevented me from making a lot of mistakes!
Purva GuptaLily ($41M+ funding) -
The biggest challenge I had during fundraising was explaining our value proposition. It was complicated. The advice I got around everything from FI was spot on!
Ernest ChanPredictNow ($750K+ funding)
Ideation Bootcamp Schedule
This intensive, 5-week program is designed for high-potential entrepreneurs prepared to devote 10+ hours per week improving, testing, and pitching their startup ideas.
Program Dates
Kickoff & Brainstorming
Week 1 is focused on the entrepreneurial mindset, foundational startup concepts, and strategies for ideation.
- Develop an entrepreneurial mindset and assess your unique Entrepreneur DNA.
- Master essential startup concepts like the Rule of One, VC Math, and key terminology.
- Identify One Problem and One Customer that align with your Founder-Market Fit.
- Build and refine your One-Sentence pitch as the foundation for your Validation Pitch.
Market Opportunity
Week 2 focuses on refining your problem and customer, while analyzing the market opportunity.
- Understand your customer needs and specific language used to describe their problem. Become an industry expert.
- Gain confidence to interview potential customers and build a habit of introducing yourself and pitching your vision.
- Refine your core problem, customer, and solution with actionable insights.
- Enhance your Validation Pitch with real customer insights, market analysis and customer-specific language.
Customer Validation
Week 3 focuses on validating your problem, customer, and solution through targeted customer interviews.
- Solidify your Customer Validation through interviews with potential customers and industry experts.
- Become confortable with pivoting and ensure alignment between your problem, your customer, and a potential solution.
- Strengthen your pitch by incorporating further validated customer feedback and refine your story.
Submit Your Validation Pitch
Week 4 is dedicated to synthesizing your findings, refining your idea, and preparing your pitch.
- Clearly articulate your problem, and describe your customer, prove that there is a need for a solution.
- Submit your final Validation Pitch to showcase your progress and prepare for potential live pitching opportunities.
Pitch Showcase
The bootcamp concludes with a Pitch Showcase, where the top participants present their ideas to a jury of mentors, investors, and peers.
- Present your pitch to a panel of Founder Institute mentors and investors.
- Collect actionable insights and feedback from experts and gain clarity on next steps. Gain visibility and connect with other participants, mentors, and potential collaborators or supporters.
Utilize a Proven Platform
Participants get access to the Founder Institute's 'FounderGen Platform' - the world's leading LMS for startup creation.
- Experiential learning and structured, action-oriented sprints
- Embedded videos, templates, and resources to help with every step of the business-building process
- State of the art AI tools to help students augment their capabilities and speed up progress
Powered by the Founder Institute
Based in Silicon Valley, the Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. Since 2009, FI's accelerators have helped launch fast-growing, funded technology companies across nearly every geography, industry, and sector.
7,500+
Portfolio Companies
$1.85BN+
Portfolio Company Funding
200+
Chapter Cities
100+
Chapter Countries
6
Continents
35,000+
Global Mentors & Advisors
Frequently Asked Questions
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No, you don’t need a startup idea to join the Ideation Bootcamp. The weekly deliverables during the bootcamp will be guiding you through the startup ideation process to help you identify a problem that you are best positioned to solve for a customer. And if you join the bootcamp with an idea, you will benefit from the deliverables to validate your idea or pivot into a new one. Your startup idea will transform multiple times.
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Yes, there are 3 online sessions and events: 1) Week 1: a live Kickoff & Brainstorming online session; 2) Week 3: an online Ask-Me-Anything session to get feedback and guidance; 3) Week 5: a live Final Pitching Event where the best founders will pitch their ideas in front of mentors and investors. All sessions will be recorded and available to re-watch. The rest is self-paced work on the weekly deliverables of the bootcamp.
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The bootcamp workload is approximately 40 hours spread across 4 weeks. You will be spending 10 hours per week on your own time doing practical work on startup ideation, customer validation, customer interviews and pitch preparation.
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No, the goal of this bootcamp is to help you shape an idea and get feedback from potential customers before you talk to any mentors. You can still meet mentors from the FI network at our online events which you can find here: https://fi.co/events
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On Week 3, you will have an AMA session open for questions and feedback from the Founder Institute instructors. Other than that, the weekly bootcamp deliverables are self-serve and you have to keep yourself accountable to complete them on time so that you have higher chances to be selected to pitch at the Final Pitching Event. As a startup Founder & CEO, you won’t have anyone to chase you to do your work or give you feedback, you will be accountable to yourself.
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No, there is no fee. The Ideation Bootcamp is free to join.
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You have to complete a brief application, including the Entrepreneur DNA Assessment. In the application, you will answer a few questions about your background and a startup idea you'd like to explore. You can change your startup idea during the bootcamp.
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Please email any questions to janet(at)founderinstitute.com
The Founder Institute is the world’s most proven network to turn ideas into fundable startups, and startups into global businesses. Since 2009, our structured accelerator programs have helped over 7,500 entrepreneurs raise over $1.85BN in funding. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 100 countries, our mission is to empower communities of talented and motivated people to build impactful technology companies worldwide.