In May of 2012, we announced a Silicon Valley-based partnership with StartOut, a non-profit organization fostering entrepreneurship within the LGBT community.
This program proved to be very successful, and as a result, we are happy to announce a significant expansion to our partnership to promote technology entrepreneurship within the LGBT community across the United States.
Through the new StartOut Smart Program, StartOut will subsidize the course fee for up to twenty promising LGBT candidates to participate in The Founder Institute’s four-month accelerator program, where they can get access to expert training and feedback to launch an enduring technology company. In addition, StartOut Smart candidates will have access to StartOut’s mentors and sources of funding, and also have the opportunity to be featured in a StartOut Demo Day event.
For an initial pilot, this opportunity is available for applicants in StartOut’s chapters in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and New York. Anybody who is passionate about building a technology company is welcome to apply: idea or no idea, full-time job or unemployed, young or old, experienced in business or straight out of school.
To apply to the program, visit http://startout.org/programs/startout-smart-the-founder-institute. The deadline for applications is Sunday February 17th, and the recipients will be announced on Tuesday, March 5th.
“StartOut is excited to partner with The Founder Institute, and we know that by doing so, we are helping to develop LGBT entrepreneurs by giving them the resources and support of a world-class accelerator program,” says StartOut Chairman, Lorenzo Thione. “By sponsoring high-potential candidates, we intend to provide them a pathway to success, helping them to mature their ideas and build their businesses, while also providing them with a platform to showcase them.”
StartOut is an organization dedicated to fostering and developing entrepreneurship within the LGBT community. They are helping to create the next generation of LGBT business leaders by helping aspiring entrepreneurs start new companies, helping current entrepreneurs to grow and expand their businesses, and engaging successful entrepreneurs as role models and mentors for less established entrepreneurs.
The Founder Institute is an early-stage startup accelerator and global launch network that helps entrepreneurs create meaningful and enduring technology companies. Through a part-time four month program, existing and prospective founders can launch their dream company with expert training, feedback, and support from experienced startup CEOs - while not being required to quit their day job. In just over three years of operation, the Founder Institute has helped launch over 750 companies across 40 cities and five continents - making us the world's largest startup accelerator.
The StartOut Smart Program is not about providing special treatment - the majority of applicants to the Founder Institute do not get accepted, and this will always be the case because we employ a quantitative Predictive Admissions Test designed to remove all subjective forms of bias. The goal of this program is simply to promote StartOut’s mission by providing education in entrepreneurship for the next generation of LGBT founders, helping increase the number of LGBT founders across the globe. A similar program designed for female founders actually helped spur a 62% increase in female founders across the Founder Institute in a short period of time.
