Accelerate Your Seed Funding

• The Founder(s) must be working exclusively on their FI company

• The company needs to have a functioning product ("Beta" version, at a minimum)

• The company needs demonstrable customer demand or traction

• Be willing to spend at least 25 hours per week for the next 3 months to raise seed funding

• Your team has to be larger than two including yourself

Fundraising takes an organized and concerted effort. Weekly fundraising sprints will take a minimum of 30 hours+ per week

The Founder Institute developed Funding Lab because many of our Alumni struggled to raise pre-seed and seed money due to an ineffective fundraising process. There are many nuances in the fundraising process that first-time fundraisers will need to get acquainted with.

To help, we meticulously developed a playbook based on many years of experience from multiple top Founder Institute mentors that provides founders structure and guidance to increase their probability of success.

You are in the sweet spot of Funding Lab if you are looking to raise a pre-seed or seed round from professional investors. If you are raising a friends & family round, you may be too early. If you are raising a Series-A round, we can work with you directly on this.

The program is free and cost 0$ for Founder Institute Alumni companies.

Funding Lab is a virtual program. We host a series of live and interactive webinars on various fundraising topics with various influencers. We cover topics such as best practices for developing your target list and the in-depth due diligence process of a VC.

Once you begin meeting investors starting in Week 5, we work to address your specific situation 1:1 via Office Hours and on Slack.

We help 100s of FI Alumni companies raise money every year worldwide. We provide you with advice on all facets of the fundraising process via webinars and office hours. You will receive extensive feedback on your pitch deck, investor target list, your data room, and your term-sheets. We will guide you through every step of the investor outreach, negotiation, and closing process.

Jeremy Geiger leads the program. Jeremy has previously raised $45M of Venture Capital financing from diverse investors including institutional investors (ex: Draper fund), incubators (ex: 500 Startups), strategics (ex: Motorola) & Angels in both US & Asia. As a startup founder and CXO, he has generated $65M of revenue growth for new startup companies/regions/products + 100 in new BD partnerships. Jeremy currently leads the Founder Institute alumni success team overseeing the 6000+ alumni companies.

The Portfolio Success team works to help you develop the best process to leverage the Founder Institute mentor network. The key here is for you to understand that connections cannot be forced and that is it ultimately your responsibility to generate interest, follow up, close the meeting, and build the relationship. Luckily, we can give you the best advice to make connections.

This guide on how to write a forwardable email introduction is a great place to start.

In general, no, because Founder Institute Headquarters may not be connected in your specific local area. FI Alumni have a pretty solid head start in this area because most of your local mentors and leaders are either investors or know investors.

Yes, however, targetting international investors will almost certainly yield a lower return-on-investment per unit of time spent fundraising. The earlier the company is in the lifecycle, the more important is the personal connection between investor and founder and as a result it is far more likely for local investors to take the risk to invest in your business. The majority of companies that enroll in Funding Lab raise their pre-seed rounds from investors in their local eco-system.

FI Alumni have successfully closed their rounds in most of the startup ecosystems worldwide. In the 10+ years experience in running Funding Lab, we have gained nuanced experience working with Founders in emerging markets with inexperienced investors. The team at Founder Institute Headquarters as well as your Local Leaders will also help you navigate your local fundraising environment.

This is not just a requirement of Funding Lab, but also for most professional investors. You must be working exclusively on your company to have a realistic shot at raising money from professional investors. If you're not full time on your company, you are shifting all the risk onto the investor. As a result, professional investors will not fund you.

The majority of companies that finish Funding Lab close investment by the end of the program.

You will need to dedicate a minimum of 30 hours per week to fundraising in order to be successful. We recommend that you begin to start delegating work to other team members so that you can make the necessary time for fundraising.

We will recommend that you come back to a future program. We run Funding Lab 3 times per year and we’ve had multiple companies successfully close their round on their second try.

By the end of the program, there is a high likelihood that you have hard-circled investors and are in the process of closing your round. From here, our team is available for continued support on anything regarding your business from your next funding round, to syndicating your latest press coverage.

No. The most valuable asset that you have as a founder is your time. Fundraising is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks that a founder can take on. If you’re not 100% committed to fundraising right now, this effort will be a massive waste of time and will severely affect your business in a negative way. If you are not making progress towards your fundraising targets, we will ask you to come back to a future program.