With our FoundersBoost applications open for the coming Spring cohort, I thought it’d be good to provide some advice on what we look for when assessing startups and founder teams. Here are some of the most important pieces of advice I give when founders ask what they should do to stand out:
1?? Founder-market fit is essential: take care to show why you or your team are the BEST fit to build this startup. This could be your experience, education, previous work, projects, etc.
2?? Unique insights: asymmetric information is what will help you design something that stands apart from the crowd. What insight(s) are you bringing to the venture that made you want to pursue the problem space in the first place.
3?? You can build: we don’t expect you to be entirely technical, but you should be able to hack your way to an MVP or an unscalable version of your value prop (as a debt-relief software platform you’re manually helping every new customer construct payment plans and pick credit cards, for example)
4?? Timing is everything: now is the right time to be building your product. If you’re building a web3 community or NFT marketplace in 2024, it’s hard to argue that there’s tailwinds in your favor. We want to see both micro and macro trends that support your thesis on the state of the world.
5?? Scalability (or lack thereof): not every startup is venture-backable, and that is OK. We work with other sources of funding beyond venture, and help founders find the best capital mix that fits the business. But, we’re still an accelerator for fast-growing startups, so we’re looking for companies with high growth and k-factor potential.
We’re expecting this coming cohort to be the most competitive yet, and we’re extremely excited to see who our founders will be. I hope this was helpful in understanding some of our assessment criteria (there’s quite a lot more).
More details to come around additional benefits and perks on top of the non-dilutive & free program, so follow/connect to stay up to date.
Please reach out to me, Spencer Chandlee, or our team members to learn more and see if Founders Boost is right for you!
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