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Dec 12, 2013

Only the Tough Survive the Founder Institute

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The Founder Institute program is tough - and for good reason. It’s designed to simulate the many of the challenges of startup life, as entrepreneurs launch a company in four short months. The level of difficulty also vets serious entrepreneurs from the wantrepreneurs, leaving those left standing fully prepared to brave the storm ahead.

StartupSmart recently highlighted the program difficulty in the article “Why Only a Third of Accelerator Participants Made it Through the Sydney Founder Institute”.  This week the Sydney Founder Institute graduated seven new entrepreneurs - a significant reduction from the original 20+ enrolled at the beginning of the semester.

Sydney Founder Institute Director, Benjamin Chong, says the benefit of such a rigorous program, which includes psych testing as part of the entry program, is learning how to become your business’s biggest critic.
 
“As a startup founder, if you’ve been through the effort of combing through your business and being critical of all the aspects, you can go and talk to customers, investors and suppliers and give them a great deal of comfort because you’ve dealt with a lot of issues,” Chong says.

Greg Jarrett, founder of private aircraft booking system Charter Intelligence, told StartupSmart the dropout rate in the program reflected the pressure to make sure your idea actually has potential.
 
“The point of the program is that you need to evolve your business idea throughout. You discover if it’s got real potential early on,” Jarrett says.

Click here to read the full article on StartupSmart.



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