Program Schedule

• In which society and economy will we live a sustainable environment?
• What are principles of a circular and regenerative economy?
• What are the principles of systems thinking and how to appply them in business?
• How can purpose and profit go hand in hand?
• What are the UN Sustainable Development Goals?
• how do we achieve a transformation of economy and society towards a sustainable future
• Which companies have succesfully built impact businesses?
• Which companies have pivoted or are pivoting towards sustainability and why?
• How do you build Mission Statement and vision of a sustainable company?
• How do you manage Lifecycle Assessment?
• How do you report Impact?
• How do you use Impact in Marketing, PR and Sales?
• What are the contradictions and pitfalls within the sustainability industry?

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. 

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. 

On 28. November we'll touch on "Impact Funding & Public Sector" with focus on these topics:
- anything linked to finance and funding strategy (public & private) incl. hands on advice:
- managing the public sector as target customer
- navigating regulated markets
- case studies (examples and stories of successful startups as well as failures)

Pitching a business is an art for itself. You can have the best product, but if you can’t sell your idea,
you won’t make it far. Pitching your company is hence key to success – and should be an integral
part of your marketing and investor strategy. You pitch all the time: Everyone you meet is a potential
customer, partner or investor.
A compelling pitch deck is hence the business card of your start up, that makes or breaks the first
impression. Invest (time) in it!

For this session, Magdalena will run you through the deck of one of the founders and will offer individual office hours in the week after. 

We will pick the deck to analyze in the week before!

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.

The FI Core Program is just the beginning of a life long journey.

Founder Institute Alumni get access to a series of advanced accelerator programs, ongoing support from our Silicon Valley Team, valuable partner and service discounts, and more to continue building the business for years to come.