Program Schedule

In this session, Mentors will discuss prioritizing your go-to market initiatives, evaluating different models for growing your startup, developing marketing messages that resonate with your target customers, and more. Mentors will also provide Founders with feedback on their go-to-market plans and progress. 

Assignments

Below are just a few of the 10-15 assignments you’ll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:

1. Alternatives - Identify two alternative models (markets or “pivots”) for your go-to-market solution to discover the most lucrative market opportunity. Interview at least 2 customers for each alternative.
2. Advisor Follow-Up - In the next Step you will finalize advisors, so begin finalization meetings with your top candidates, and set up test Advisor Test Projects where necessary following our templates.
3. Marketing Tools - If you have not already, implement standard marketing tools on your site and channels (including analytics, email management, and A/B testing solutions).
4. Test Marketing Messaging - Write at least three separate marketing messages for your solution, and A/B test them using landing pages with at least 100 engagements each. 
5. Customer Acquisition Channels - Identify at least five initial or new major marketing channels to acquire customers that are appropriate for your solution.
6. Conversion Rate - Begin testing at least three of your new customer acquisition channels, pushing as much traffic through them as possible to evaluate their comparative conversion rates. 
7. Unit Economics - Research any data on the standard Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) and standard Lifetime Value (LTV) for your industry and segment, and compare and analyze against the metrics you have collected thus far. 
8. Growth Goals - Set ambitious customer acquisition goals for both during and after the program, which should include a quantifiable increase in the top of the funnel from the Steps to Revenue, as well as an increase in the bottom of the funnel, which are paying customers.

In this session, Mentors will discuss best practices in product development and team management to release a world-class solution, prototyping your solution, speaking with your target customers and to get feedback, and more. Mentors will also provide Founders with feedback on their product’s development and progress.

Assignments

Below are just a few of the 10-15 assignments you’ll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:

1. Intellectual Property - If you have not already, secure and protect the intellectual property for all of the work done to date. Examine the need for patents, if applicable, following our guidelines. 
2. Solution Goals - Evaluate the current state of your solution, and outline the three solution goals that you would like the next product release to solve for your target customers over the next year.
3. Project Team - If you have not already, organize the skills and roles needed to execute on your solution goals, whether using existing team members or supplementing through hiring or outsourcing. 
4. Product Roadmap - Develop a first or updated product roadmap, using our guidelines, in order to meet your solution goals with your project team.
5. Project Plan - Fine tune the schedule of releases in your product roadmap to be as simple as possible to each test one hypothesis of the business, using our guidelines.
6. Development Tools - Research and secure any development tools, technologies, or systems that you will need to create your solution and to manage the process.
7. Next Release Plan - Record the details about your next release, and describe the timing for its completion in a way that can be easily communicated to team members, partners, and other stakeholders in the business. 
8. Hotseat Pitch - Prepare a five minute presentation for the Mentor Progress Review that includes sufficient information to enable Mentors to evaluate your progress and plans.

Similar to the Mentor Idea Review, the Mentor Progress Review is the second major test in the program. In this session, Founders will focus on presenting their progress and traction to a panel of Mentors for a detailed review. Mentors will evaluate Founders based on their progress, their go-to-market plan, the company’s scalability, and more.

Assignments

Below are just a few of the 10-15 assignments you’ll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours: 

1. Investor Pitch Deck - Create an expanded, 12-slide pitch deck incorporating any feedback from the Mentor Progress Review, using our templates. 
2. Growth - Make progress on your growth goals, and examine or adjust how your strategy and the system to keep yourself accountable is performing.
3. Product - Make progress on your next product release, and outline and address any of the setbacks that you have faced with your project team.
4. Hiring Needs - Score the progress of each member of your project team on a 1 to 10 scale, including yourself, and set up plans to improve those that are struggling. 
5. Finalize Advisory Board - Set up your advisory board with startup, industry, technology or marketing advisors, and set up a one hour conference call with all of the them, which will be your first quarterly advisory board meeting.
6. Bookkeeping - Start regular bookkeeping processes if you have not already, and implement tools, accounts, and monthly processes to manage it moving forward.
7. Accountant Interviews - If you don’t have an accountant already, begin interviewing potential organizations using our processes. You will need a startup-friendly accountant to understand your unique needs.
8. Financial Model Update - Review and update your financial model with the work done to date. Adjust the revenue projections based on your growth thus far, and evaluate the need and requirements for external funding. 

In this session, Mentors will discuss such topics as defining success for your company, the various tactics to grow a business, setting growth goals and milestones, communicating your startup’s growth progress and setbacks with stakeholders and advisors, and more. Mentors will also also provide Founders with feedback on their current growth and growth strategy. 

Assignments

Below are just a few of the 10-15 assignments you’ll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:

1. Growth Plan Update - Review the performance of your growth goals and adjust your growth plan to improve your performance and accountability.
2. Sales - Push yourself for a second week to close new revenue or users, which may be signups, payments, a signed contract, a pre-payment or a signed letter of intent.
3. Growth Tactics - Work with your working group and advisors to brainstorm 15 new ideas to increase the top of your funnel and to accelerate the closing of sales, and provide a bulleted list of these Growth Tactics.
4. Pivot - Consider a pivot if you are not meeting your growth goals, sales, product or hiring progress targets. If you decide to Pivot, schedule a call with one of your Directors to discuss your proposed pivot in the business and do the same with your advisors.
5. Product - Work closely with your project team to make substantial progress on your next release, and work to ensure that each release takes about two weeks to complete.
6. Hiring - Review all of the candidates that have come through the various recruiting outreach channels and other activities, and identify the most effective channels.
7. Post-Program Schedule - Work with your cohort on a monthly meeting schedule where you will continue to meet, provide updates, and share learning on your progress. 
8. (Optional) Founding Round Follow-ups - Build your pipeline of potential “Founding Round” investors, meeting and securing commitments from at least one person. 

In this session, Mentors will cover numerous topics related to fundraising, including different fundraising options, what different types of investors expect to see with respect to progress on team, product and traction, and more. Mentors will also provide Founders with feedback on their startup pitch that they can expect to hear from investors. 

Assignments

Below are just a few of the 10-15 assignments you’ll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:

1. Minimum Victory Condition - Work with your Directors to set up a “Victory Condition” to achieve before the “Impact Deadline” (three months after graduation), and add it to your business calendar.
2. Advisor Strategy - Set up a call with each of your advisors and briefly review your “Victory Condition”, the funding strategy, hiring plan, sales plan and product plan.
3. Use of Proceeds - Examine the capital needs of the business, and extend your financial model to project revenues and expenses for a total of 24 months from now.
4. Final Investor Pitch Deck - Refine your investor pitch deck, and update it with all of your work to date, including details from your various plans. Test the presentation on peers and Directors and upload it to the FI site for review. 
5. Deal Room - Create a Deal Room for future investors that includes relevant files like 'Company' documents with legal, 'Pitch Deck', 'Team' bios, 'Board Materials,' 'Financials,' 'Sales' information, 'Marketing' materials and 'Intellectual Property.'
6. Target List - Identify local Angel Investors and Seed Accelerators, ignoring Venture Capitalists and Seed Funds. The Target List should include at least 100 local angels, 25 regional and 50 global seed accelerators, using our guidelines.
7. Event List - List upcoming pitch events, including events where angel investors will be attendance that you identified for the target list, and during the events, look to make connections with these angel investors for future use.
8. (Optional) Founding Round Close - Work through your investor pipeline, making sure that each interested party is either “Soft Circled” (verbally committed to invest) or “Hard Circled” (investment has been received). Start filling and closing the Founding Round.

Graduating from the Founder Institute is an honor. The program is challenging, and the curriculum is demanding. In this final session, you will celebrate graduating with your peers, friends and family, as well as select Mentors who will discuss the important leadership qualities needed to run a successful company. You will also learn about all of the post-program resources and assistance that the Founder Institute provides.

Assignments

1. Accountability - Create a plan to keep yourself and the business accountable to your graduation plan and growth goals after the program.
2. Leadership - Analyze how you have grown as a startup leader during the program, highlighting the positives, negatives, and in which aspects you need to grow in the future. 
3. Vision - Review your original vision for the business, and describe why you are still excited to pursue the vision, and why your team and strategy are aligned to achieve it. 
4. Perseverance - Develop a system to press forward, stay focused and deliver value in the dark times inevitable to building a lasting business. 
5. Prioritization - Finalize your system to prioritize complex projects in equally complex situations, as well as your weekly routine and “Founder’s Schedule”.
6. Celebration - In addition to the FI celebration, plan a private group celebration with your peers. As a startup leader, it is important to celebrate all milestones and successes. 

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.