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Schedule

Berlin Fall 2022

At the Founder Institute, you won't "learn" how to build a business. Rather, you will build your business alongside top startup experts using a proven, structured process that has helped some of the world's fastest growing companies raise over $1.85BN. 

Our core program includes a series of challenging growth sprints, in addition to Weekly Feedback Sessions where you will receive constant feedback on your progress from experienced Mentors and Investors. 

See the schedule for the Berlin Fall 2022 program below.

The Final Application Deadline for the Berlin Fall 2022 program is Sep 25, 2022, and you can apply to the program at FI.co/join.

Orientation

Meet the cohort & learn our methodology

Date: Oct 04, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Vision

Define a strong business vision

Date: Oct 05, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Impact Track: Introduction into Impact Entrepreneurship

Understanding of a regenerative economy

Date: Oct 10, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

  • In which society and economy will we live a sustainable environment?
  • What are principles of a circular and regenerative economy?
  • What are the principles of systems thinking and how to appply them in business?
  • How can purpose and profit go hand in hand?
  • What are the UN Sustainable Development Goals?
  • how do we achieve a transformation of economy and society towards a sustainable future
  • Which companies have succesfully built impact businesses?
  • Which companies have pivoted or are pivoting towards sustainability and why?
  • How do you build Mission Statement and vision of a sustainable company?
  • How do you manage Lifecycle Assessment?
  • How do you report Impact?
  • How do you use Impact in Marketing, PR and Sales?
  • What are the contradictions and pitfalls within the sustainability industry?

Customer Development

Analyze your customer feedback

Date: Oct 12, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this Feedback Session, Founders will present any customer development progress to the Mentors to examine if they are pursuing a scalable business with a clear and actionable customer problem. The Mentors will also provide tips on how to validate your key assumptions, interview potential customers effectively, and best interpret the feedback you receive.

 

Sprints

Below are just a few of the 10-15 deliverables you’ll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:

 

Launch Track Deliverables

  1. Customer Interviews - Develop a longer series of customer interview questions based on your initial interviews and key assumptions, with at least ten open-ended customer interview questions for each customer problem.
  2. Customer Archetype - Use our guidelines to develop or improve an initial customer archetype for your ideal target customer.
  3. Landing Pages - For each remaining customer problem, develop or improve a professional landing page targeted to your initial customer archetype, and quickly build up a mailing list to receive customer feedback.

 

Growth Track Deliverables

  1. Customer Archetype - Use our guidelines to create or update a detailed customer archetype of your target customer, based on either your existing customers or improved research.
  2. Revenue Interviews - Interview customers about the pricing of your revenue model, using three different revenue models/ pricing schemes. Confirm your existing model or select a new one based off these interviews. 
  3. Interview Competitor Customers - Identify customers of competing products or solutions and encourage them to switch to your solution, ideally securing a letter of intent (“LOI”), or developing an ongoing relationship for feedback. 

EIR Series: Model, Assumptions and Experiments Roadmap Workshop

Build good customer experiments

Date: Oct 14, 2022
Starts at: 11:00 am (America/New_York)

Revenue

Validate a scalable revenue model

Date: Oct 19, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Branding & Design

Get feedback on branding & design

Date: Oct 26, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

EIR Series: Pitch Workshop

Fast Track Your Perfect Pitch

Date: Nov 01, 2022
Starts at: 01:30 pm (America/New_York)

Mentor Idea Review

Test the core business on a mentor panel

Date: Nov 09, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

This is the first big checkpoint in the program to determine your progress. During the Mentor Idea Review, you will present a longer presentation to a panel of FI Mentors for extensive review. You will receive a rating, as well as feedback on the long-term viability of your offering, revenue model, growth strategy, and more. 

 

Sprints

After the Mentor Idea Review, Founders receive a larger number of custom "Epic Sprints" with deliverables based on their specific challenges. Below are examples of some of the standard deliverables. 

 

  1. Corporate Materials - Immediately update your 3 minute pitch deck and video based on the Mentor Idea Review feedback, and develop a new and updated Executive Summary using our template.
  2. Advisor Candidates - You will create (or fill out) an Advisory Board in the next 5 weeks, so develop a target list of new advisor candidates based off your identified needs and gaps in knowledge/ connections. 
  3. Advisor Outreach - Leverage the FI network to get introductions to your targets where necessary, and follow our templated process to make progress on your advisory board.  
  4. Sales Follow-up - Continue to work on securing sales or commitments for revenue, growing the rate month over month. For B2B solutions, get as many contracts or letters of intent as possible. For B2C solutions, aggressively increase your revenue (or submitted information indicating they will pay you). Document all lessons learned.
  5. Financial Model - Develop or professionalize your financial model based on our template that focuses on expenses (“burn”) to understand your cash needs. Develop a revenue forecast for 12-18 months and factor in timing considerations from your sales follow-up work.
  6. Legal - Identify your short to medium term legal needs, and if you don’t already have a law firm, identify at least two local law candidates that have experience working with startups. Begin vetting new or existing law firms using our guidelines. 

EIR Series: Model, Assumptions and Experiments Roadmap Follow up

Define value propositions and validation

Date: Nov 11, 2022
Starts at: 11:00 am (America/New_York)

Impact Track: Hardware startups and scaling challenges

Learn how to build and scale

Date: Nov 14, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Legal & IP

Review your legal infrastructure

Date: Nov 16, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Go-to-Market & Scale

Improve your strategy to launch or scale

Date: Nov 23, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Impact Track: Impact & Public Funding, Regulated Markets and their stakeholders

Public & Impact finance, regulations

Date: Nov 28, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

On 28. November we'll touch on "Impact Funding & Public Sector" with focus on these topics:
- anything linked to finance and funding strategy (public & private) incl. hands on advice:
- managing the public sector as target customer
- navigating regulated markets
- case studies (examples and stories of successful startups as well as failures)

EIR Series: Live sample Pitch Deck overhaul

Get your pitch deck optimized

Date: Nov 29, 2022
Starts at: 06:30 am (America/New_York)

Pitching a business is an art for itself. You can have the best product, but if you can’t sell your idea,
you won’t make it far. Pitching your company is hence key to success – and should be an integral
part of your marketing and investor strategy. You pitch all the time: Everyone you meet is a potential
customer, partner or investor.
A compelling pitch deck is hence the business card of your start up, that makes or breaks the first
impression. Invest (time) in it!
For this session, Magdalena will run you through the deck of one of the founders and will offer individual office hours in the week after. 
We will pick the deck to analyze in the week before!

Product Development

Get feedback on your product roadmap

Date: Nov 30, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

EIR Series: Derive an MVP from your customer interviews

Start MVP definition

Date: Dec 02, 2022
Starts at: 11:00 am (America/New_York)

Mentor Progress Review

Test your progress on a mentor panel

Date: Dec 07, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Hiring, Onboarding & People Culture

Improve your team and hiring

Date: Dec 14, 2022
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Growth

Establish a scalable engine for growth

Date: Jan 11, 2023
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

EIR Series: Legal War Games

Be on top of the game of legal terms

Date: Jan 18, 2023
Starts at: 03:00 am (America/New_York)

Equity & Funding

Fix any impediments to fundraising

Date: Jan 18, 2023
Starts at: 12:30 pm (America/New_York)

Graduation

Celebrate & onboard to our post-programs

Date: Jan 25, 2023
Starts at: 01:00 pm (America/New_York)

Completing the Founder Institute is an honor. The program is challenging, and the expectations are demanding.

In this final session, you will celebrate with your peers, friends and family, as well as select Mentors. Some Founders will also pitch to a live audience, and you will officially onboard to all of the post-program resources and assistance the Founder Institute provides.

Post Program Resources

The 4 month Core-Program is just the beginning. We have developed extensive support programs and resources for our Alumni that far exceed any other comparable startup program.

Continued Support

FI Alumni
  • Dedicated Alumni Support Team in Silicon Valley
  • Access to the world's largest network of mentors and investors (35,000+)
  • Private Alumni mailing lists
  • $2M+ in partner discounts
  • Invites to FI sessions & network events
  • Potentail introductions to investors

Post-Programs

Founder Lab
  • A series of virtual advisory programs where you work with our Silicon Valley HQ team to reach next milestones
  • Funding Lab helps get your lead investor within 6 months
  • P/M Fit Lab (2023) helps you get to Product Market Fit
  • FI Venture Network helps you get intros to investors
  • 100% customized and FREE for Alumni