Program Schedule
Our flagship 'FI Core' program combines structured sprints with constant feedback to help you reach the milestones needed for investment and growth.
Early Application Deadline
Final Application Deadline
Orientation
This is where it all begins. During Orientation, we will review the Founder Institute - DePaul program structure, curriculum, tools, and requirements. You will start to review why you have pursued entrepreneurship, and how you will use the program to be successful. We will review the progress that you have made to date and start to build a system for your success.
Sprints
Every Founder follows the Agentic Track — an AI-personalized curriculum that adapts each sprint to be more advanced or more basic based on your stage, with powerful free AI agents to help complete the work.
The below deliverables are in addition to any custom "Epic Sprints" you may receive based on your specific challenges, and are just high-level previews of the 10-15 deliverables you'll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:
Deliverables
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
- Office Hours - Book your first Office Hours with Local Leaders and Mentors to get guidance on the next steps for your business.
- Hotseat Pitch - Prepare a one sentence verbal pitch for the weekly "Founder Hotseat", where you present to Mentors during the Feedback Sessions.
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Vision and Validation
Sprints
Below are just high-level previews of the 10-15 deliverables you'll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:
Deliverables
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
- Market Research - Utilize our market research template to collect accurate and available market information on the customer problems you are analyzing.
- Personas - Build an initial Buyer Persona to better understand your target customer's needs, challenges, and buying process.
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Refund Deadline
Customer Development
All businesses require customers. The degree of desire and urgency that customers feel to adopt your solution, can cause your business to grow quickly and easily, or slowly and frustratingly. Work to identify actual customers, validate your key assumptions, and be sure you are building the best and easiest business. By the end of the week, you will have a clear sense of your ideal customer and be in a position to start building a leading technology company.
Sprints
Below are just high-level previews of the 10-15 deliverables you'll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:
Deliverables
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
- 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.
- Revenue Modeling - 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.
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Product Mockups
Businesses need products or services as well as customers. To make sure you are building the right product, you want to get detailed customer feedback from the minimum investment in product. The way to do this is to develop a mockup, detailed drawing or outline. Customers can then give you detailed feedback on features, helping you make sure you are building the right things in the right order ... and allowing you to further validate if you should even build the product in the first place.
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Revenue
Sprints
Below are just high-level previews of the 10-15 deliverables you'll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:
Deliverables
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
- Revenue Models - Narrow down that problem to three potential revenue models, and thoroughly analyze the positives and negatives of each model.
- 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.
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Naming and Branding
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Pitch Bootcamp
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Mentor Idea Review
The Mentor Idea Review is the first major test in the Founder Institute Program, and the culmination of the Founder Institute - DePaul Business Bootcamp. During this session, every founder presents their customer problem to a panel of CEOs who review the idea and the progress in detail. After the session, you will incorporate their feedback into your planning, and decide whether to proceed to building and growing your business in the Founder Institute - DePaul Acceleration Bootcamp.
Sprints
After the Mentor Idea Review, Founders receive a larger number of custom "Epic Sprints" with deliverables based on their specific challenges. Below are high-level previews of standard deliverables.
Deliverables
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
- 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.
- 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.
Personalized by AI to your startup's needs — more advanced or more basic — with powerful free AI agents to help you complete the company building work.
Post Programs
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.
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Dedicated Alumni Support Team in Silicon Valley
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Access to the world's largest network of mentors and investors (40,000+)
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Private Alumni mailing lists
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$2.5M+ in partner discounts
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Invites to FI sessions & network events
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Potential introductions to investors
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A series of virtual advisory programs where you work with our Silicon Valley HQ team to reach next milestones
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Funding Lab helps get your lead investor within 6 months
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The FI Venture Network matches Alumni ready for funding with a massive pool of investors that specialize in writing 'first or second checks' of funding
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Exclusive for FI Alumni
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The Founder Institute is the world’s most proven network to turn ideas into fundable startups, and startups into global businesses. Since 2009, our AI-native company-building programs have helped over 9,000 entrepreneurs raise over 2BN in funding. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 100 countries, our mission is to empower communities of talented and motivated people to build impactful technology companies worldwide.
