Program Schedule

This is where it all begins. During Orientation, we will review the Founder Institute program structure, curriculum, tools, and requirements. You will review why you have pursued entrepreneurship, and how you or your team will use the program to push your business or business idea forward.

Assignments

During Orientation, Founders and teams will be segmented into the “Standard Founder” or “Advanced Founder” assignment tracks, depending on the stage of their business or business idea.

These assignments are in addition to any custom "Special Assignments" Founders receive based on their specific challenges, and below is a small sample of the assignments you’ll complete through Working Groups and Office Hours:

Standard Founder Assignments

1. Progress - If you have started working on one or more ideas before the program, outline each of your ideas and any testing or progress made to date. 
2. Hotseat Pitch - Prepare a one minute verbal pitch for the weekly “Founder Hotseat”, where you present to Mentors during the sessions. Start with our one-sentence pitch template, and if you do not have a final idea yet, describe yourself and a field that you are passionate about and uniquely qualified to build a business around.
3. Co-Founders - If you are looking for a Co-founder, create a basic description of what you are looking for, and this will be shared with the rest of your cohort.

Advanced Founder Assignments

1. Program Goals - Outline the monthly objectives you or your team want to achieve with your business while participating in Founder Institute, including the specific support you feel that we can give you to succeed beyond the curriculum.
2. Key Performance Indicators - Outline the specific metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that you are currently using to track success. Analyze the validity of these metrics, and create a plan to share updated metrics and progress with your Directors every week in the program.
3. Hotseat Pitch - Prepare a one minute verbal pitch for the weekly “Founder Hotseat”, where you present to Mentors during the sessions. Start with our one-sentence pitch template, followed by why you are uniquely qualified to pursue the idea, and any progress that you’ve made to date.

In this session, you’ll hear from experienced Mentors on how to validate your key assumptions, interview potential customers effectively, and interpret their feedback. Founders will present their progress to the Mentors to determine if the are pursuing a scalable business with a clear and actionable customer problem.

Assignments

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

Standard Founder Assignments

1. Key Assumptions - For your ideas, identify at least three key assumptions that you are making for your customer problem or problems to be real.
2. 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.
3. Customer Archetype - Use our guidelines to develop or improve an initial customer archetype for your ideal target customer.
4. Landing Pages - For each remaining customer problem, develop or improve a professional landing page targeted to your initial customer archetype, and start collecting email addresses to receive customer feedback.

Advanced Founder Assignments

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 research.
2. Validation - Refine the list of “unknowns” you previously developed, pick at least two of the top items, and develop a test to empirically collect evidence and draw conclusions over the next two weeks.
3. 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. 
4. 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 each Founder’s progress. During the Mentor Idea Review, every founder will present their customer problem and progress to a panel of FI Mentors for extensive review. Founders will receive a rating, and receive feedback on the validity of their idea, their customer problem, market size, the soundness of their revenue model, and more. 

Assignments

After the Mentor Idea Review, all assignments are Standard, and Founders receive a larger number of custom "Special Assignments" based on their specific challenges. 

1. Corporate Materials - Update your 3 minute pitch deck based on the Mentor Idea Review Feedback, and include a new and updated one page executive summary using our template.
2. Law Firm Identification - If you don’t already have a law firm, identify at least two local law firm candidates that have experience working with startups, and recruit one for your startup using our process and guidelines.
3. Advisor Candidates - You will create an advisory board in the next 5 weeks, so start by developing a target list of new advisor candidates based off you identified needs and gaps in knowledge/ connections. 
4. 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.  
5. Sales Follow-up - Continue to work on securing sales or commitments for revenue. For B2B solutions, get as many contracts or letters of intent as possible. For B2C solutions, aggressively your revenue (or submitted information indicating they will pay you).
6. Sales Plan - Based on the needs of your financial model and sales follow-up research, develop a plan to build and grow your revenues over the next three months.
7. Financial Model - Develop a simple financial model based on our template that focuses on expenses (“burn”) to understand your cash needs. Develop a revenue forecast for 12 months and factor in timing considerations from your sales follow-up work.
8. Business Calendar - Create a calendar to track all of your relevant business due dates, regulatory filings, and other obligations and related events.

If you have a startup or startup idea and would like to get feedback and guidance from top local entrepreneurs, then join this exclusive and public "Startup Office Hours" event. At the event, attendees will have the opportunity to pitch expert CEO mentors and ask them questions about their business strategy, key decisions, next steps, and more. Don't miss this opportunity to learn how experienced entrepreneurs would tackle the problems you or others are facing.

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. 

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.