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Curriculum

Londrina 2020

Currículo

O Founder Institute oferece um currículo semanal de sessões de criação de empresas, planejado para ajudar os empreendedores a refletir sobre cada aspecto do seu negócio, desde a ideia central ao modelo de receita. Cada sessão semanal é conduzida por três Mentores CEOs de iniciativas, que partilham as suas opiniões singulares e frequentemente divergentes sobre o tema. Aos Fundadores Participantes são atribuídas tarefas para criar aspectos fundamentais das suas empresas entre as sessões, que são realizadas em Grupos de Trabalho com os seus colegas.

Orientation

Welcome and meet your peers.

Date: mar 11, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

Vision and Validation

Interview customers to develop and valid

Date: mar 12, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, you’ll hear from a panel of experienced Mentors on how to develop startup ideas, how to properly pitch your ideas and strategies, and how to analyze your existing ideas or business. Founders will also present their startup idea to the Mentors and receive in-depth feedback on how to improve their idea and pitch.

 

Assignments

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

 

Standard Founder Assignments

  1. Ideation - Catalogue the ideas that you are interested in pursuing, or explore different business opportunities in your areas of interest or expertise.
  2. Customer Problems - Translate three of your top startup ideas into customer problems that you will explore turning into a business.
  3. Initial Interviews - Using our templates, interview at least 15 people that have knowledge of the customer problems or may be potential customers themselves.
  4. Market Research - Utilize our market research template to collect accurate and available market information on the customer problems you are analyzing. 

 

Advanced Founder Assignments

  1. Customer Problem - Outline the main customer problem and any alternative customer problems that you are trying to solve, and get feedback from your peers in the program.
  2. Customer Interviews - Using our templates, interview at least 5 people that have knowledge of the customer problem or may be potential customers themselves. If you have done similar interviews in the last 60 days then outline this feedback.
  3. Identify Unknowns - Create a step-by-step strategy to thoroughly validate that the main customer problem exists and fill any required gaps in your customer knowledge. 
  4. Plans - Describe what your business will look like when it has $100 million in annual revenues, including the vision, culture, and main revenue stream, and write at least 5 steps that need to happen for your company to reach that goal.

Customer Development

Test your assumptions with customers.

Date: mar 18, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, you’ll hear from experienced Mentors on how to validate your key assumptions, interview potential customers effectively, and interpret their feedback. Founders will present their progress to the Mentors to determine if the are pursuing a scalable business with a clear and actionable customer problem.

 

Assignments

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

 

Standard Founder Assignments

  1. Key Assumptions - For your ideas, identify at least three key assumptions that you are making for your customer problem or problems to be real.
  2. 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.
  3. Customer Archetype - Use our guidelines to develop or improve an initial customer archetype for your ideal target customer.
  4. Landing Pages - For each remaining customer problem, develop or improve a professional landing page targeted to your initial customer archetype, and start collecting email addresses to receive customer feedback.

 

Advanced Founder Assignments

  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 research.
  2. Validation - Refine the list of “unknowns” you previously developed, pick at least two of the top items, and develop a test to empirically collect evidence and draw conclusions over the next two weeks.
  3. 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. 
  4. 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. 

Revenue

Develop a viable revenue source.

Date: mar 25, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, Mentors will discuss how to sustain your company before receiving financing or revenue, identifying the most lucrative revenue source for your business, testing different revenue sources with your target customers, and more. Founders will also continue to share their pitch and revenue model to Mentors for feedback and continued refinement.

 

Assignments

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

 

Standard Founder Assignments

  1. Customer Problem - Select one customer problem to pursue in the program that has the greatest chance to generate significant revenue.
  2. Revenue Models - Narrow down that problem to three potential revenue models, and thoroughly analyze the positives and negatives of each model.
  3. Mockup - Create a mockup of the solution to your one customer problem that has sufficient detail to impress a target customer.
  4. Pitch Deck - Use our templates to develop a first draft of a three minute long pitch deck, based on the feedback, concepts and flow that have resonated from your Hotseat pitches.

 

Advanced Founder Assignments

  1. Expert Interviews - Speak with three financial people who have experience in a similar industry to your customer problem, and get their insights and opinion on your revenue model.
  2. Key Performance Indicators - Based on your research thus far, identify the final key metrics that will impact your ability to secure revenue. Discuss these with your Directors and peers.
  3. Sales - Encourage a number of people that resemble your customer archetype to buy your solution (or sign up for your service), and report the amount of revenue (or growth) that you have secured.
  4. Product Development - Refactor your plans to prioritize the release of a solution that will allow you to generate initial customer revenue and validate your riskiest assumptions.

Branding and Design

Create, design and launch a brand.

Date: abr 01, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, Mentors will analyze your existing names and branding, and discuss how to develop a good name for your business, how to develop an enduring brand, and the basics of great user interface design. Founders will also share their pitch and existing branding to Mentors for continued feedback and refinement.

 

Assignments

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

 

Standard Founder Assignments

  1. Competitor Branding - Analyze and compare the name and branding of at least 15 companies with a competing offering, in a related industry, or with a similar value proposition in a different industry.
  2. Naming Words - Brainstorm at least 50 short nouns and adjectives that evoke the characteristics of your main customer problem.
  3. Name Brainstorming - Use combinations of your naming words to develop a series of business names for the review of your peers and Directors.
  4. Name Research - Research the availability of the combined words as a domain name and list the ones that are most available.

 

Advanced Founder Assignments

  1. Branding Expert - Leverage the FI Network to set up meetings with industry experts about your final name, your customer problem, archetype, and any existing brand materials for feedback.
  2. Close Sales - Follow-up on your previous sales activities, and measure the time allocated, conversion rates, financial spending and other metrics for each activity. Your goal is to convert new sales and show quantifiable traction before the Mentor Idea Review. 
  3. Design Specification - Evaluate the design and branding feedback from your peers, Mentors, and expert meetings, and begin fixing the issues by creating a Design Specification. If you don’t have an internal design resource, find someone that can complete the job in 2 weeks. 
  4. Idea Review Pitch Deck - Finalize your 3-minute pitch deck for the Mentor Idea Review, using our templates and guidelines. Practice the pitch at least five times with your peers, and revise it based on feedback. Upload a final video on the assignment page.  

Mentor Idea Review

Receive expert feedback to improve.

Date: abr 08, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

This is the first big checkpoint in the program to determine each Founder’s progress. During the Mentor Idea Review, every founder will present their customer problem and progress to a panel of FI Mentors for extensive review. Founders will receive a rating, and receive feedback on the validity of their idea, their customer problem, market size, the soundness of their revenue model, and more. 

 

Assignments

After the Mentor Idea Review, all assignments are Standard, and Founders receive a larger number of custom "Special Assignments" based on their specific challenges. 

 

  1. Corporate Materials - Update your 3 minute pitch deck based on the Mentor Idea Review Feedback, and include a new and updated one page executive summary using our template.
  2. Law Firm Identification - If you don’t already have a law firm, identify at least two local law firm candidates that have experience working with startups, and recruit one for your startup using our process and guidelines.
  3. Advisor Candidates - You will create an advisory board in the next 5 weeks, so start by developing a target list of new advisor candidates based off you identified needs and gaps in knowledge/ connections. 
  4. 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.  
  5. Sales Follow-up - Continue to work on securing sales or commitments for revenue. For B2B solutions, get as many contracts or letters of intent as possible. For B2C solutions, aggressively your revenue (or submitted information indicating they will pay you).
  6. Sales Plan - Based on the needs of your financial model and sales follow-up research, develop a plan to build and grow your revenues over the next three months.
  7. Financial Model - Develop a simple financial model based on our template that focuses on expenses (“burn”) to understand your cash needs. Develop a revenue forecast for 12 months and factor in timing considerations from your sales follow-up work.
  8. Business Calendar - Create a calendar to track all of your relevant business due dates, regulatory filings, and other obligations and related events.

Legal

Set up the company and legal framework.

Date: abr 15, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, startup lawyers and CEOs will explain various legal agreements, startup legal components (such as equity), how to protect intellectual property, the best practices for managing a law firm, and more. As usual, Mentors will also provide Founders feedback on their startup pitch and progress, ensuring that you can better explain what your company is to your growing audience.

 

Assignments

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

  1. Legal Concepts - Review our Legal Guide in detail to fully understand all critical startup legal components, including granting equity, vesting equity, granting options and issuing common stock versus preferred stock.
  2. Capitalization Table - Develop or improve your capitalization table (“Cap Table”) that shows the ownership structure of the business, using our template and guidelines.
  3. Finalize Co-Founder Legal (if any) - Create a list of any co-founders, co-founder candidates or founding Team Members that you have for your Founder Institute company, and begin the next steps in formalizing the relationship.
  4. Advisor Interviews - Meet with or call each of your advisor candidates for at least 15 minutes, discuss the customer problem and progress, and narrow down to a few top advisor candidates. 
  5. Law Firm Engagement - If you don’t already have a law firm, meet with your law firm candidates and sign an “engagement letter” with your chosen firm. 
  6. Corporate Formation Agreements - If you don’t already have a suitable corporation, secure all of your corporate formation agreements, including bylaws or similar documents, which govern how the business conducts itself.
  7. Legal Templates - Secure standard legal templates from your law firm, including a mutual non-disclosure agreement, an intellectual property assignment agreement, a basic employment agreement, a basic freelancer agreement, and a basic advisor agreement (such as https://fi.co/FAST).
  8. Bonus Pool - Prepare to join the Bonus Pool, and send your law firm the necessary agreements and request their help to properly fill out the required fields.

Go-to-Market Planning

Finalize a go-to market plan.

Date: abr 22, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, Mentors will discuss prioritizing your go-to market initiatives, evaluating different models for growing your startup, developing marketing messages that resonate with your target customers, and more. Mentors will also provide Founders with feedback on their go-to-market plans and progress. 

 

Assignments

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

  1. Alternatives - Identify two alternative models (markets or “pivots”) for your go-to-market solution to discover the most lucrative market opportunity. Interview at least 2 customers for each alternative.
  2. Advisor Follow-Up - In the next Step you will finalize advisors, so begin finalization meetings with your top candidates, and set up test Advisor Test Projects where necessary following our templates.
  3. Marketing Tools - If you have not already, implement standard marketing tools on your site and channels (including analytics, email management, and A/B testing solutions).
  4. Test Marketing Messaging - Write at least three separate marketing messages for your solution, and A/B test them using landing pages with at least 100 engagements each. 
  5. Customer Acquisition Channels - Identify at least five initial or new major marketing channels to acquire customers that are appropriate for your solution.
  6. Conversion Rate - Begin testing at least three of your new customer acquisition channels, pushing as much traffic through them as possible to evaluate their comparative conversion rates. 
  7. Unit Economics - Research any data on the standard Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) and standard Lifetime Value (LTV) for your industry and segment, and compare and analyze against the metrics you have collected thus far. 
  8. Growth Goals - Set ambitious customer acquisition goals for both during and after the program, which should include a quantifiable increase in the top of the funnel from the Steps to Revenue, as well as an increase in the bottom of the funnel, which are paying customers.

Product Development

Develop a plan to build your solution.

Date: mai 06, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

Mentor Progress Review

Review your progress with CEOs.

Date: mai 13, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

Hiring and Onboarding

Start recruiting a world-class team.

Date: mai 20, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, Mentors will discuss how identify the roles needed to build a world-class company, how to develop a strategy to recruit, board and retain the best people for the roles, and more. Founders will also receive feedback from Mentors on their team plans and product progress. 

 

Assignments

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

  1. Outsourcing - Identify what roles you should outsource, and use your recent release work, sales, and program work to update or execute your hiring needs.
  2. Candidates - Search for candidates to hire (including Co-Founders) by identifying everyone that you know who is appropriate, or leveraging the FI network, to fill the top two or three roles you are not planning to outsource.
  3. Hiring Process - Develop a hiring and onboarding process using our guidelines to add team members into your organization, and begin executing on the process.
  4. Test Projects - Develop at least one test project for each of your top two or three roles, which should create opportunities for a credible candidate to demonstrate their skills.
  5. Advisor Review - Arrange a meeting or phone call with at least one of your advisors to discuss your outsourcing and hiring work. Present everything that you have done, and incorporate their feedback into your planning.
  6. Recruiting Outreach - Based on the feedback from your advisors, create a list of events and activities that you will attend or undertake each week for the next three months to identify new candidates for the top two or three roles.
  7. Time Allocation - Meticulously outline your “founder’s schedule” by allocating weekly blocks of time to address your core business activities, providing you with uninterrupted time to work on each activity.
  8. (Optional) Founding Round Setup - If you don’t have sufficient capital to run the company for the next few months, then follow our guides to start a preparing documentation and research for a “Founding Round”.  

Growth

Focus your business on growth.

Date: jun 03, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

Equity and Funding

Prepare to fundraise from investors.

Date: jun 10, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

In this session, Mentors will cover numerous topics related to fundraising, including different fundraising options, what different types of investors expect to see with respect to progress on team, product and traction, and more. Mentors will also provide Founders with feedback on their startup pitch that they can expect to hear from investors. 

 

Assignments

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

  1. Minimum Victory Condition - Work with your Directors to set up a “Victory Condition” to achieve before the “Impact Deadline” (three months after graduation), and add it to your business calendar.
  2. Advisor Strategy - Set up a call with each of your advisors and briefly review your “Victory Condition”, the funding strategy, hiring plan, sales plan and product plan.
  3. Use of Proceeds - Examine the capital needs of the business, and extend your financial model to project revenues and expenses for a total of 24 months from now.
  4. Final Investor Pitch Deck - Refine your investor pitch deck, and update it with all of your work to date, including details from your various plans. Test the presentation on peers and Directors and upload it to the FI site for review. 
  5. Deal Room - Create a Deal Room for future investors that includes relevant files like 'Company' documents with legal, 'Pitch Deck', 'Team' bios, 'Board Materials,' 'Financials,' 'Sales' information, 'Marketing' materials and 'Intellectual Property.'
  6. Target List - Identify local Angel Investors and Seed Accelerators, ignoring Venture Capitalists and Seed Funds. The Target List should include at least 100 local angels, 25 regional and 50 global seed accelerators, using our guidelines.
  7. Event List - List upcoming pitch events, including events where angel investors will be attendance that you identified for the target list, and during the events, look to make connections with these angel investors for future use.
  8. (Optional) Founding Round Close - Work through your investor pipeline, making sure that each interested party is either “Soft Circled” (verbally committed to invest) or “Hard Circled” (investment has been received). Start filling and closing the Founding Round.

Londrina/Maringá Leadership and Graduation

Graduate and start leading.

Date: jun 24, 2020
Starts at: 05:30 pm (America/New_York)

A graduação no Founder Institute é uma honra. O programa é desafiador e o currículo é exigente. Nesta sessão final, você celebrará a formatura com seus colegas, amigos e familiares, além de Mentores selecionados que discutirão as importantes qualidades de liderança necessárias para administrar uma empresa de sucesso. Você também aprenderá sobre todos os recursos e assistência pós-programa que o Founder Institute fornece.

Dia: 24/06
Horário: 19h às 22h
Link ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85219862799

atribuições

  1. Responsabilidade - Crie um plano para manter você e os negócios responsáveis ​​perante seu plano de graduação e metas de crescimento após o programa.
  2. Liderança - Analise como você cresceu como líder de inicialização durante o programa, destacando os pontos positivos, negativos e em quais aspectos você precisa crescer no futuro. 
  3. Visão - Revise sua visão original do negócio e descreva por que você ainda está animado em seguir a visão e por que sua equipe e estratégia estão alinhadas para alcançá-la. 
  4. Perseverança - Desenvolva um sistema para avançar, manter o foco e agregar valor nos momentos sombrios inevitáveis ​​para a construção de um negócio duradouro. 
  5. Priorização - Finalize seu sistema para priorizar projetos complexos em situações igualmente complexas, bem como sua rotina semanal e a "Agenda do Fundador".
  6. Celebração - Além da comemoração do FI, planeje uma comemoração em grupo particular com seus colegas. Como líder de startup, é importante comemorar todos os marcos e sucessos. 

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