Schedule

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. 

In this Feedback Session, Founders will share their pitch and revenue model with Mentors for feedback and continued refinement. You will also get tips on how to sustain your startup before receiving financing or revenue, identifying the most lucrative revenue source for your business, testing different revenue sources with your target customers, and more. 

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 Problem - Based on your research, 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. Professional Pitch Deck - Use our templates to develop a professional three minute long pitch deck, based on the feedback, concepts and flow that have resonated from your Hotseat pitches.

Growth Track Deliverables

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 the scalability of 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 (and funding). Discuss these with your Local Leaders, and finalize a tracking system for these metrics. 
3. Product Development - Refactor your plans to prioritize the release of a solution that will generate initial customer revenue and validate your riskiest assumptions.

In this session, Mentors will analyze your existing branding and design, and also discuss how to develop an enduring brand and great user experiences.  

Sprints

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

Launch Track Deliverables

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. Name Brainstorming - Use combinations of your naming words to develop a series of business names for the review of your peers and Directors.
3. Name Research - Research the availability of the combined words as a domain name and list the ones that are most available.

Growth Track Deliverables

1. Branding Expert - Leverage the FI Network to set up meetings with industry experts to get feedback about your name, branding, and customer experience. 
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/or show quantifiable traction before the Mentor Idea Review. 
3. 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 deliverables page.  

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. 

In this Feedback Session, Mentors will provide Founders with feedback on their current go-to-market plans and progress, and cover topics like marketing messaging, unit ecomomics, customer acquisition, and more.   

Sprints

Below are just a few of the 10-15 deliverables 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. 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. 
4. Customer Acquisition Channels - Identify at least five initial or new major marketing channels to acquire customers that are appropriate for your solution.
5. 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. 
6. 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. 

In this Feedback Sesison, Mentors will provide Founders with feedback on their current product, and/or product roadmap. Expert in product development will also discuss best practices in product management, roadmapping, managing product teams, and more.

Sprints

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

1. Intellectual Property - If you have not already, secure and protect the intellectual property for all of the work done to date. Examine the need for patents, if applicable, following our guidelines. 
2. Solution Goals - Evaluate the current state of your solution, and outline the three solution goals that you would like the next product release to solve for your target customers over the next year.
3. Project Team - If you have not already, organize the skills and roles needed to execute on your solution goals, whether using existing team members or supplementing through hiring or outsourcing. 
4. Product Roadmap - Develop a first or updated product roadmap, using our guidelines, in order to meet your solution goals with your project team.
5. Project Plan - Fine tune the schedule of releases in your product roadmap to be as simple as possible to each test one hypothesis of the business, using our guidelines.
6. Hotseat Pitch - Prepare a five minute presentation for the Mentor Progress Review that includes sufficient information to enable Mentors to evaluate your progress and plans.

Similar to the Mentor Idea Review, the Mentor Progress Review is the second major test in the program. In this session, Founders will focus on give a long presentation their progress and traction to a panel of Mentors for a detailed review. Mentors will evaluate Founders based on their progress in the program, the company’s scalability, and more.

Sprints

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

1. Polished Investor Pitch Deck - Create an expanded, 12-slide pitch deck incorporating any feedback from the Mentor Progress Review, using our templates. 
2. Growth - Make progress on your growth goals, and examine or adjust how your strategy and the system to keep yourself accountable is performing.
3. Product - Make progress on your next product release, and outline and address any of the setbacks that you have faced with your project team.
4. Hiring Needs - Score the progress of each member of your project team on a 1 to 10 scale, including yourself, and set up plans to improve those that are struggling. 
5. Finalize Advisory Board - Set up your advisory board with startup, industry, technology or marketing advisors, and set up a one hour conference call with all of the them, which will be your first quarterly advisory board meeting.
6. Financial Model Update - Review and update your financial model with the work done to date. Adjust the revenue projections based on your growth thus far, and evaluate the need and requirements for external funding. 

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

Sprints

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

1. 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.
2. Hiring Process - Develop a hiring and onboarding process using our guidelines to add team members into your organization, and begin executing on the process.
3. Test Projects - Develop at least one test project for each of your top two or three roles, which should create opportunities for credible candidates to demonstrate their skills.
4. Advisor Review - Arrange a meeting or phone call with at least one of your advisors to discuss your hiring work. Present everything that you have done, and incorporate their feedback into your planning.
5. 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.
6. (Optional) Fundraising - 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 funding round.  

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.