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Build a Global Company with FI and SJSU's Spartup Community

The Founder Institute provides a global support network and a proven methodology to get your startup to traction and funding

Program Dates: Mar 07, 2025 to Dec 16, 2025
Format: Virtual
This program will be run 100% online, with in-person networking opportunities before and during the program. Learn more here.

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Spartup 2025 is not accepting applications

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The FI Agentic Accelerator

A Playbook built for your startup, agents that do the busywork, and mentors who tell you what to fix. Weekly sessions, then Demo Day.

How FI Agentic works

Agents that do the busywork

Frank, your always-on sidekick
AI Assist on every deliverable
Pitch Gym investor practice
Market research
Customer outreach

A Playbook built for your startup
- Sprints in the order your company needs them, set by your stage, industry and traction
- Re-planned every week as your company changes
Weekly feedback from mentors
- Live Feedback Sessions with your cohort and local mentors
- One-to-one Office Hours when you need a second opinion
Earn your way to Demo Day
- Fewer than 40 percent of accepted founders graduate
- Graduates pitch angels and VCs at Demo Day, with a live demo

Time: About 15 to 20 hours a week
Equity: 2.5 percent pledged to the Equity Collective
Team: No co-founder, team or finished product needed, just an idea

Week by week, from Vision & Mission to Graduation

Live sessions with your chapter leaders and mentors, each with one focus. Along the way, 2 mentor reviews check your progress.

Fri

Feb 28

Onboarding
Self-paced

When you enroll in the FI Core Program, you can immediately start onboarding by following a guided process where you will learn how the program works, tips to get the most benefits, and details on the perks of Graduating from the Founder Institute.
Sun

Mar 2

6:00pm PST

Vision & Mission

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.
Fri

Mar 7

11:00am PST

Accelerator Kickoff

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.
Sun

Mar 9

6:00pm PDT

Customer Development

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.
Sun

Mar 16

6:00pm PDT

Revenue & Business Models

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.
Sun

Mar 23

6:00pm PDT

Pitch Mastery

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.
Sun

Mar 30

6:00pm PDT

Mentor Idea Review
Mentor review

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.
Sun

Apr 6

6:00pm PDT

Legal & Equity

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.
Sun

Apr 13

6:00pm PDT

Go-to-Market & Scale

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.
Sun

Apr 20

6:00pm PDT

Product Development

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.
Sun

Apr 27

6:00pm PDT

Investor Progress Review
Mentor review

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.
Sun

May 4

6:00pm PDT

Co-Founders & Team

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.
Sun

May 11

6:00pm PDT

Growth

In this session, Mentors will provide Founders with feedback on their current growth, branding, metrics, and strategy. Mentors will discuss various growth tactics, setting growth goals and milestones, communicating your startup's growth progress and setbacks with stakeholders and advisors, and more.
Sun

May 18

6:00pm PDT

Funding

In this session, Mentors will give you insider tip and tricks to raise funding for your startup in the current market, and in your locale. Mentors will also cover numerous topics related to fundraising, including different fundraising options, how to raise funding, and more.
Tue

Dec 16

6:00pm PST

Graduation
Final milestone

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.

Founders who built with FI

What graduates say about the program, in their own words.

The real question is: can the Founder Institute be game-changing for your business? The answer is yes. Without FI, Udemy may have never raised any money.

GB Gagan Biyani Udemy (IPO, 2021)

My investor materials, my data room, my pitch deck, all of it exists because someone was going to ask for it each Thursday morning. I've never had that kind of forcing function.

KA Kelly Anderson Founder, DyeConverter Silicon Valley AI cohort 2026

First funding offer 2 weeks after Funding Day
Delaware inc. Aug 2026

Before the program I was using ChatGPT for basic tasks. By the end of the summer I had built an AI agent marketing team, 1,500 synthetic customers and a voice AI avatar agent. I didn't even know what Python was.

DW David Williams Founder and CEO, Zuma Internet Silicon Valley AI cohort 2026

AI marketing team built
1,500 synthetic customers
Seed investor list ready

I came in already using AI heavily. The curriculum pushed me past research and content into the company itself: customer discovery, pilot design, pricing, unit economics, KPIs, investor prep, a repeatable pilot-to-enterprise sales process. Our first construction deployment started at one site. The customer asked us to expand to two more. We're in two live proposals and already discussing an annual subscription.

DR Donna Vincent Roa Founder, MicDots Silicon Valley AI cohort

1 site to 3 sites
2 live enterprise proposals

Founder Institute since 2009

companies launched: 9,000+
raised by graduates: $2BN+
mentors and investors: 40,000+

See more graduates

Frequently asked questions

All questions(opens in a new tab)

: Entrance fee varies by city and deadline; your chapter page shows the exact figure. It is fully refundable before Kickoff and 75 percent refundable before Session 3. Payment plans are available through Partial.ly (5 percent service fee). Teams of 2 to 3 founders pay 1.5 times the fee and teams of 4 to 5 pay 2 times; the 2.5 percent Equity Collective pledge is per company, not per founder. See your chapter.
: Yes. About two-thirds of the way through the program, not at enrollment, founders pledge 2.5 percent of future equity to the Equity Collective as a warrant: 0.5 percent to mentors, 1 percent to local leaders, 1 percent to FI. It activates only at a qualified equity financing of $100,000 or more from outside investors ($25,000 if you join a qualifying program such as Y Combinator after graduating), carries no board seat or voting rights, is not a revenue share, dissolves if the company fails, and 60 percent of returns go back to the local ecosystem that helped you. Bootcamps have no equity component. How the Equity Collective works.
: Yes. Come to a free event in your city or online at fi.co/events, where local leaders and mentors take questions, or write to us at fi.co/support. Local leaders are listed on your chapter page.
: If you have an idea and want to build a company, apply to the FI Agentic Accelerator: 10 sessions plus Funding Day, a program generated for your startup (your Playbook), practice pitching an AI investor at any hour (Pitch Gym), Frank and AI Assist on every deliverable, and weekly feedback from mentors. It runs in 200+ cities; apply to the chapter nearest you or to an online cohort. If you want a short, focused course first, FI Bootcamps (Startup Ideation, Vibe Coding, OpenClaw AI Productivity) are short, focused courses of a few weeks with no equity component, and enrolled Agentic founders get one bootcamp free and 50 percent off the others. See the program or see the bootcamps.

All questions(opens in a new tab)

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Loyal VC
Founder Capital

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The Founder Institute is the world’s largest agentic company builder, turning ideas into fundable startups, and startups into unicorns. Since 2009, the Founder Institute program has helped over 9,000 entrepreneurs build 9,000+ companies, including unicorns like Udemy and Esusu, raise over 2BN in funding, and grow a portfolio worth an estimated $20BN. Based in Silicon Valley and with chapters across 200+ cities and 95 countries, our mission is to empower communities of talented and motivated people to build impactful technology companies worldwide. Learn more about the Founder Institute.

Build a Global Company with FI and SJSU's Spartup Community

Spartup 2025 is not accepting applications

The FI Agentic Accelerator

A Playbook built for your startup

Weekly feedback from mentors

Earn your way to Demo Day

Week by week, from Vision & Mission to Graduation

Founders who built with FI

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost?

Is there an equity component?

Can I talk to someone about the program?

Which program should I apply to?

Spartup 2025 is not accepting applications