Program Schedule

During the Accelerator Kickoff, you will meet the Local Leaders and your cohort of Founders, and establish how your startup will use the program to push your business forward.

In each weekly Feedback Session, Founders will pitch and outline their strategies/ progress to the Mentors for feedback, get tips and insights on the week's topic, and have multiple opportunities to ask questions. This week you'll get tips on how to develop a strong vision for your business.

Caribbean founders, executives, and innovators tackle the biggest questions shaping the AI era: cybersecurity, AI governance, regulation, trust, and risk. Learn how AI-native startups can move fast without compromising security or compliance. Join industry leaders, legal experts, cybersecurity professionals, and startup operators for bold conversations on building the future of AI responsibly. Featuring Neil Sumaru, Samantha Deoraj, Areeb Ahmad and Mellissa Lezama. Moderated by Rawle Annandsingh.

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.

In this Feedback Session, Founders will share their pitch and revenue model with Mentors for feedback and continued refinement. You will also get tips on how to sustain your startup before receiving financing or revenue, identifying the most lucrative revenue source for your business, testing different revenue sources with your target customers, and more.

An entrepreneur never stops pitching, so this session focuses 100% on helping you build a great pitch. First, the mentors will share the latest best practices for pitching your startup - whether the pitch is for investors, team members, customers, partners, or otherwise. Then, you'll share your most recent pitch and receive constructive feedback on how to improve.

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.

What do investors actually look for before writing a check? What separates fundable startups from the rest? What happens behind closed-door investment conversations? Join us for a special Ask Me Anything where we flip the pitch and put founders in the driver's seat. Hear directly from VCs, fund managers, and venture builders investing across sectors and emerging markets as they answer your toughest questions on fundraising, investment readiness, scaling, due diligence, and what founders should know in today's market. No pitches. No gatekeeping. Ask anything.

In this Feedback Session, startup lawyers and CEOs will explain various legal agreements, startup legal components (such as equity), cap tables, how to protect intellectual property, the best practices for managing a law firm, and more. As usual, Mentors will also provide Founders with ratings and feedback on their startup pitch and progress.

In this Feedback Session, Mentors will provide Founders with feedback on their current go-to-market plans and progress, and cover topics like marketing messaging, unit economics, customer acquisition, and more.

In this Feedback Session, Mentors will provide Founders with feedback on their current product, and/or product roadmap. Expert in product development will also discuss best practices in product management, roadmapping, managing product teams, and more.

Similar to the Mentor Idea Review, the Investor Progress Review is the second major test in the program. In this session, Founders will focus on give a long presentation their progress and traction to a panel of Investors and Advisors for a detailed review. Founders will be evaluated based on their progress in the program, the company's scalability, and more.

In this Feedback Session, Founders will receive feedback from Mentors on their team plans and product progress. In addition, Mentors will discuss how to identify the roles needed to build a world-class company, how to develop a strategy to recruit, onboard and retain the best people, and more.

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.