Founder Institute Global Alumni Q&A Panel (16 June 2021 - Nvestiv, KNOSK, Left Hook)

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Founder Institute Alumni Panel. My name is Ryan Micheletti, and I'm Head of Global Operations for the Founder Institute here in Silicon Valley. We're joined here today by 3 alumni from programs across the world, who I'll introduce in a moment. And really, the goal of the event is to get your questions answered. And so as most of you know, Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. We've been around for 12 years. We've launched over 5,000 companies that are part of our portfolio, and we operate in over 200 cities with a mentor network of 21,000 mentors. And so if you're interested in learning more about Founder Institute, how we support founders, and potentially enrolling in our program, you can go to fi.co/enrolling, and you can see a list of all of the different cities across 6, 6 continents. To look at potentially enrolling in the program. So let me explain a brief agenda for today. First, I'm going to introduce the alumni who are joining us today. Then we're going to get your questions answered. So this is live. If at any point you have questions for anyone here, go ahead and put your question in the chat, and I'll start the conversation off with a couple that I usually share in the beginning. And then after this event, we're going to do a post-session networking event on Airbnb. You know, in the virtual environment, it's harder to network with other founders and people. And so every— at every opportunity, we want to help founders network with each other to find potential co-founders, mentors, investors, and really just build relationships with people within the network. So we'll send the details of the networking session at the end of this event. So let's go ahead and get started. First up, I'd like to introduce Saad Hassan, who I've worked with through the Founder Institute Toronto. He's an alumni there, and he is the founder and CEO CEO of Investive Capital. Saad, do you want to do a quick introduction?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Ryan. Um, hello everyone. Um, Ryan said my name is Saad. I am in the investment banking space, um, but that's really a vague sort of category. I guess the best way to describe what I do is, is it's a marketplace for alternative investments, which is anything that's not related to the stock market. Right? So your typical real estate, your venture capital, startups, oil and gas, energy, all of those types of projects, they require large amounts of money and they look to raise money from high net worth individuals, high net worth families, you know, institutions like pensions, insurance companies, and et cetera. So there is a marketplace that really a lot of people don't know exists. It's a world that most of us aren't used to and, that's the world that we operate in. Really, we're just a system where we matchmake the right investors with the right parties. That's the best way to describe it. My involvement with Foundry Institute started, I would say, a little over a year, year and a half ago to maybe 2 years, Ryan, I think. But I did the course in the summer and I remember I was thinking to myself when I was reviewing the program, I already know a little bit about Founder Institute. I knew a little bit about the Techstars program. I know how to build a business. So, you know, what would potentially make me want to do the program? I realized that I wanted to learn to streamline the communication and the messaging around my business, right? I wanted a structured approach and I think that's what I was missing at that point. So I'm really happy that we did the program. We've done really well so far, I think, because of a lot of the things that we've learned in the program, but more importantly, a lot of the networks that we've built since then, whether it's through FI, whether it's through the, through other things that we've done in connection with FI. In terms of what we've done so far, you know, we've been in business for about a year and a half. We've done very well in revenue. Our product is finished. We also, well, I've managed to do something separately as a result of the business that I've created, which allowed me to invest on my own alongside some of the deals that we see on our platform. So on my spare time, I also look at deals and look at startups and et cetera, where I invest as well.

Awesome. Well, we appreciate you joining today, Saad. I know you're busy like all the alumni, And then you also co-host the clubhouse that we have, the FI alumni clubhouse. And that was actually an idea that you and your team came up with. So that's been great.

Yeah, I would say though, you know, one of the things that our managing partner said to us is that the important part is not just the cohort itself, but also staying in touch with the alums, making sure that the resources are shared. You know, we all have different strengths and different, weaknesses and we're able to learn and rely on each other. So Clubhouse is a forum that we use. Felicia has been organizing that. We've just recently started. Before that, we're looking to organize a global group of all of the alums from FI so far, where we do biweekly or monthly Zoom calls. We have Slack channel and etc., where people can just post and really talk to each other and rely on each other.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, uh, thanks for joining today. Next up, I'd like to introduce Irene Bangwell. She is an alumni from Founder Institute Lagos, and she is the co-founder of NOSC Education. Irene, good to see you.

Hi, Ryan. So beautiful to be out here this evening, Nigerian time at least. So my name is Irene, and I'm the co-founder of the NOSC 30 Cent a Day School, also known as NOSC Education. I have worked in education over the last 13 years. Back home in Nigeria, and one of the things that came abundantly clear to me was that we're having a lot of kids from low-income families were not accessing quality education. So 83% of our kids are going to public schools, and public schools are broken. Their classes are overpopulated. And so it really wasn't surprising to me about 4 or 5 years ago when Nigeria became the world's poverty capital. So for my team and I, we know that education is the one ticket out of poverty. So we designed a 30 cents a day school for children from low-income families. So they pay 30 cents as tuition, they get books, uniform, one meal a day. The girls get sanitary pads because there's a lot of menstrual poverty as well. So FI came when I had to decide that, okay, we're running this amazing nonprofit and we're depending a lot on We're depending a lot on donations, but it was time for us to say, what's in this thing that we can turn around into a business so that the school in itself is sustainable? So I came to Founders Institute because I really wanted to— we wanted to crack the sustainability part of this idea. And so one of the things that has, um, that led us to start this project was we wanted to start a secondary school project where poor kids could actually access premium education. They could learn action learning, learn to think, create, design, things that their parents will ordinarily not be able to afford, because we believe that for poor kids to break out of poverty, we have to give them a unique kind of education. So we call this at the NOSC the Action Learning Education. So our FI company is called the NOSC Limited, where what we're doing is we're developing a solution that will provide deep learning in a way and at a rate that is first and foremost affordable to poor people like the kids at the North Secondary Day, and then the lower-rung working class in Nigeria who may not be able to afford a million, um, in fees but still want their children to access quality action learning education so that they are better positioned for better economic realities. So we're designing this solution that will be able to serve the pockets but also lower-middle-income, lower-rung working class, and FI was kind of the threshing floor for us where you go from this passionate nonprofit leader to, well, if we needed to convert this into a business where we keep the passion aside and really narrow into what the problem is, what our solution is, and the possibilities of scaling. Yeah, FI was that place. And I knew I was going to graduate, but I didn't know if I was going to graduate in one piece It was a lot of work, but it was that place where I had to begin to learn how to think like a business leader, not just a nonprofit leader. So that's the NOSC education. Kids are getting action learning education at 30 cents a day. But in order for us to be sustainable, we want to take the core product of that nonprofit and make it available to, at a scale, to people within our country, throughout the continent, using tech and non-tech solutions, you know, tech and non-tech platforms to push the solutions in order for us to be able to plant more NASCOs but actually run a business that supports our passion to bring quality action learning education to Africa. So it's beautiful to be here and get to meet other alumni so that I can hear all our crazy stories. I know that I'm not alone in this.

Well, uh, thanks for joining, Irene. Uh, you're doing some amazing work, and I already see a couple questions here in the chat, so, so we'll get to to that in a minute. But first, I'd also like to introduce Tom Elliott. He's an FI Boston alumni and co-founder and CEO of Left Hook. Tom, welcome. You want to do a quick intro?

Yeah, I don't know how to even begin to follow up with— after following Irene, but hopefully we're doing something almost as interesting. I'm Tom Elliott. My partner Sean and I started Left Hook a long time ago as a digital marketing consulting firm and followed many different threads and went down many different avenues and eventually gained a competency in what is known as integration, or the use of APIs to make different software talk to each other. And through that sort of emerging strength, uh, we started to do professional services or consulting work around the development of these integrations which also then led us into a sort of a niche inside a niche inside a niche around the building of those types of integration tools in a way that a non-developer could eventually make their own connections between different software apps. And so Left Hook has been early in on the concept of the citizen developer or the citizen integrator, which is this very exciting area of software where you build software so that other people don't need developers to get work done. And so in that niche, we have sat as professional service providers for quite a long time. Along the way, though, we always intended to become a scalable, investable SaaS company, or at least a company that someday gets a multiple revenue. And to prepare for that transition from being a consulting group to becoming more of a product company, we entered the FI Accelerator in Boston in the fall of 2019, where we brought a bunch of ideas and a bunch of learnings from our consulting life to the table and had dedicated time and resources to really think about being a different company, which is— if any of you have ever been in a consulting company or started a consulting company, they're very easy to start, but they're hard to leave for, for all sorts of lifestyle reasons and things like paying your mortgage. So, uh, FI really helped us, uh, plan that transition, which is now well underway. And our first product, uh, was sort of publicly released last week. And, uh, now we're on the way to becoming a, a more of a software company than a consulting company, still in this niche within a niche within a niche, which is very technical. I'm happy to unpack it if it's interesting, but you can think of it as a way for business people to make software talk to other software without needing a developer.

So that's, that's, that's huge. So, so appreciate that, Tom, and thanks for joining us today. So I would just encourage the, the founders that if you have questions for any of the alumni directly, either about what they're working on or about their experience in the program, go ahead and put into the chat. I'm going to start off with a couple questions here that we get a lot of, and, you know, prior to the launch of this event, I was telling the alumni that we get a lot of questions from people who are either thinking about applying to the program or they have applied and they're considering enrolling, and a lot of the time these, these applicants will also ask our head of admissions if they could do an introduction to a grad. And the problem with that is, you know, at our scale with 200 cities, I mean, we would just be doing introductions to grads all day. And so instead of doing one-on-one introductions, we've decided to host these alumni panels to get your questions answered. So you can ask the alumni anything you would like, the good, the bad, the ugly. So just to kick this off, Saad, I'll ask you the question first since you did the first introduction. You mentioned a little bit about like where you were, you know, when you first joined and your reasoning, but could you go back and tell us a little bit more about about like the stage of which your company was and the exact sort of reason or what was that like moment when you're like, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and join Founder Institute?

Yeah, the stage that we were at was that we hadn't built a product yet. I had an idea, you know, we learned about validation, but I had done a little bit of validation myself in just calling our clients on a random basis and running my idea by them and saying, well, if I did something like this, would you pay for it? I had an idea as to how I wanted to do things. I was debating as to whether I wanted to raise money for the business or whether I wanted to bootstrap it. You know, there's a lot of questions in my head and I had connected with a few people and asked those questions, but never really got the questions answered the way that I wanted them to be. One of my team members, she found the FI program while we were looking for angel investors, actually. And, you know, we stumbled upon FI. We didn't realize what we had come across, but we realized, okay, here are some, some, you know, ways for us to answer questions. We looked at some of your videos online and we, and it had already answered a lot of the pending questions that we had. And I realized, okay, well, if I'm getting all of this for free, well, if there's a program that they have, which is structured, which takes them through the process, then I wonder what else I can learn. I had spoken with a previous grad from FI, and I think what really put me over the edge was that what she said to me was, you know, if you're looking to, if you're looking to learn how to start a business, learn how to, you know, create an idea, this is not the program for you. But if you're looking to, to a) build a network, but more importantly, if you're looking to to sort of understand how you're gonna communicate your value proposition to people. Understand how you're going to learn to, you know, say less in your dialogue, in your messaging. How you're going to focus on learning about the legal aspect of things, because a lot of people don't talk about that. So those are fundamentals of growing a business. And I think the keyword there is growing, right? The fundamentals of growing a business. If that's your priority, then you should do the program. I actually found that to be the wrong case when I did the program. Being the pre-seed accelerator, it's more about starting the program. And then all the things that I thought I knew about having started a program, I realized that as we went week by week, I realized I hadn't done most of those things yet. So I came in thinking I was gonna, you know, I was way ahead of the whole, you know, system. I kind of knew what was going on. The first 1 or 2 weeks I thought, okay, yeah, you know what? Like I'm a little further ahead. But then later on, as things started picking up, I realized there were so many fundamentals to business that I, you know, it never bothered me at that moment. But as you know, now a year later, 2 years later, I'm realizing had I not done those things, it really would have been detrimental. And then I would have gone in circles and backwards right now. So I think I would say that I came to the program with the wrong idea, but I definitely am lucky that I actually went through it.

Yeah. You know that I actually hear that a lot, right? It's sort of like you don't know what you don't know. And so like, you know, it's a way for you to kind of go through the process and make sure like all the boxes are checked. You're actually doing it in a structured approach. And, you know, we, we say that structure helps you scale faster. And so kind of getting you into that mindset of, okay, here's what a highly structured scalable process looks like. And the secret is that if you can apply some of those frameworks that you kind of learn by osmosis in the program, you know, we've been able to scale pretty effectively through structure. To 200 cities, and if you can kind of learn by osmosis and apply that to your own business, then that's gonna help you as well. So that's great insight, Saad. A question here for Irene. So this comes from Jamie in the audience. She said, your company sounds amazing. How are you able to operate at your current cost?

All right, so I always get that question every time we talk about the Nos 30 Centos, and I know everyone is like, how is this even possible with 30 cents? What we did when we started out in 2019 was to just step out and do crowdfunding. And so we just raised money on social media. Cost of keeping one child in school for a 3-month term is about $130. So if their families are paying 30 cents a day, that comes to about maybe roughly $10. And then we kind of crowdsource the rest. So we have people co-sponsoring kids. We have people, you know, taking up their meals. We have people calling to say we want to support a meal for a day, or so we've been doing that a lot. But you know, you just get to the point that you kind of like the enthusiasm of the people, you want it to continue, but you know, this is not scalable. So for now, that is the model we're depending on. And so we hope with the experience we've gotten from Founders Institute program to be able to now, um, yeah, we'll keep getting donations, but we want something more predictable, something more sustainable. Something that can make us kind of predict our growth, because we want to plan the schools in so many communities. But on a model that is solely dependent on individual donors, um, that will not be very easy to predict. But so far so good. It's been 2 school years now. We have Nigerians coming out and doing amazing, um, co-sponsoring kids they don't know, they don't want to know about. We have Nigerians in diaspora, we have Nigerians everywhere. And then we also have international friends who are sending donations to co-sponsor a child, and so on and so forth. So that's how we've been able to sustain so far. And by the way, we're not working with volunteers because we're full school, so we have full-time teachers and they have to be on, on staff and all of that. So it's, um, it's really— it's, I mean, it's a very interesting place to be in and to lead, um, a team with that kind of dynamic. And so it was easy for me to almost go crazy at some point and say, look, we have to find another way to make this a bit more sustainable. But right now, our model is still— we're still depending on donations.

Yeah, and as a follow-up, I see Anand in the chat asked what program you were a part of, and then are there any alumni from Europe on the call today? So Irene graduated from FI Lagos in Nigeria, Tom is from Boston, Saad is from Toronto, and so it's a pretty international audience. The one thing I would say, you know, because your question's around Europe, The Founder Institute program is the same worldwide, meaning that the curriculum's the same, the structure's the same. The difference is that in each ecosystem, you have a different set of mentors and a different set of directors that help facilitate and run the program. And that's how we're able to kind of localize it a little bit because fundraising in Bucharest is different than Cape Town. And so although the structure and the curriculum and the principles of launching a startup are almost like ubiquitous. You want to make sure though that like there are like local customs and cultures and things that you want to take into account when you're launching your startup, and that's where the local mentors and the local directors are able to add value. So hopefully that helps answer your question here. Tom, a question for you, and this also, this comes from Jennifer. It sounds like she's kind of interested in your company and she's asking if you have any plans to expand into Canada and build out a team. So Not sure if you're expanding internationally yet, but you two may want to connect outside because she sounds like she's interested in learning more.

Well, we find talent wherever we can get it, so long as it works in a time zone with, you know, in alignment with our core team. But I'd be happy to— we're actually in the pursuit, like everyone, for senior engineering talent right now. So I'd be happy to hear from her.

Awesome. So maybe you two can connect in the chat. I think you can actually send individual messages so you can exchange it that way. A question here from Hugo, and this is to kind of all the panelists. Did any of you join Founder Institute while still working full-time? And if so, how did you manage working full-time with the Founder Institute schedule? Saad, maybe we'll start with you.

I didn't. I wasn't working full-time, but if I were, I was a little lucky because I'm in the East Coast, so our program was at 6:30 PM, right? So in terms of hours, it would have worked out. In terms of the hours required to do the assignments and on a weekly basis, I mean, I would say that takes anywhere from 20 to— I would say 10 to 20 hours a week if you really want to put some real, real effort behind it. Because some of the weeks it was just, you know, answering questions, thinking about it, but there are some weeks where you have to do things like validation, right? Creating surveys, sending it out to people in your industry, doing research on those people, waiting for them to come back and give you feedback. So there's some real involvement there, and I think that, you know, Ryan said it to me when I first started, our managing director also said it, which is that you have to treat this as if it's a whole full-time thing.

Irene, you were working full-time on your nonprofit, so it wasn't necessarily like you were employed by someone else, but you were out, you know, certainly it was on top of your normal workflow.

Yeah, I mean, I was just listening to, um, Seth talk about the weekly task, 10, 20 hours. Now when you add that to full-time job, that's like, that's like a lot. So, but however, when we started, um, there was still a little bit of lockdown, so school wasn't yet We're not yet working full-time because we're just, we're sending worksheets home. So it was a little bit, the work burden wasn't so much. But by October, school resumed, and so I had to get in back into school. I want to let you know that it was a lot of work, so many things conflicting. However, what I did with my team was I started delegating my in-office work. Because it was clear that we needed to get— do F5 well, because it was like our future was like part— it was a— we took F5 as a part of the organization's project. So I was the project officer working on Founders Institute, so I had to delegate a little bit because I couldn't be everywhere. So what I did was I tried to delegate where I could, because again, I was a team leader. I think that could be a plus. So I delegated. There were times that the F5 work needed for me to brainstorm with my entire team. I didn't want to interrupt the entire team, so I now had this little circle where when we needed to brainstorm on FI, I would call them into my office and we'll go on, go on. I mean, it helped reduce how long I could work on a task at a time, but I think the priority for me was just knowing that it was, it was just a phase. There was a lot of inconveniences, a lot of sleepless nights, but it was worth it. I think our bottom line was we're trying to do this for the organization, so everyone just We kind of worked as a team, and so I think that helped us delegating, creating a small team that also worked with me on this from time to time, and just knowing that it was not going to be the normal thing. I was going to do extra, but then it was going to— I was going to graduate eventually. It was a phase, and so I think it helped me. I dealt with it in my mind, so I was able to go through the whole process. There was a lot of work, but it was work that was also helping us learn about the company. So because we worked as a team, We're finding out things, looping back to the team, and the team was— it was a very great experience for all of us. A lot of work, but it was part of the whole. We saw it as what our organization needed to do at the time.

So, Tom, I'm going to ask you the same question, but before I do, you know, I can also just add to this, like, all in, the Founder Institute sort of weekly workload is somewhere between like 20 and 30 hours per week. And Saad said it depends on like how seriously you take the curriculum, which, you know, you're not doing it for us. We're not giving you like a letter grade. It's really for you, so you should actually be taking it very seriously. Um, and so the way that you want to look at this is like there's a weekly program session online. It's anywhere from like 2 to 3 hours if you include like a networking session afterwards. Then during the week, you're broken into working groups, which are basically peer groups of people who are working on different companies. And you meet twice a week. So that's, you know, 2 hours right there. And then the rest of the time is sort of self-serve work. And we also provide office hours with mentors and our local leaders so that, you know, if you wanted to meet one-on-one and talk to a mentor, you have that ability to book a time through your profile. And so that's, that's another sort of component of the program. So depending on your involvement, I would say like the minimum, like bare bones, If you're like, you know, gonna graduate and actually make progress, it's like 20 hours a week. But if you take it seriously and you really like double down and you focus a lot, I mean, you could probably spend over 40 hours a week doing it, but you don't have to in order to make progress and graduate the program. So Tom, I guess, you know, you were, you were a part, you're doing your consulting business, you're figuring out like, how do we transition this to turn it into a product? So you were also kind of working full time, What tips do you have for Hugo or others who are looking at, like, who already have like a full workload?

So if you're lucky enough, like I was, to work on my own business as my full-time job, that was also the business I was developing in FI, which is unusual. I think we were the only ones in our cohort who were in that position. Uh, then a couple things. One, it's just labor of love and you might work more than 40 hours a week, but that's okay. The other thing is, I think, at least in our experience, the program was more understanding of us not completing every last little bit of homework, particularly when we had to say, hey, it was either sell a customer, you know, I had 3 sales calls and I had to get this proposal out for customer to keep the lights on, or, you know, do my 9th discovery phone call. And they're kind of the same thing depending on what week you're in. So for us, it wasn't a big deal. I will tell you though, that of the cohort that I graduated with, the ones who were the most able to, uh, well, the ones who were able to stick it out and manage a full-time job on top of, uh, FI were typically single in their 20s and they were dead tired every week. They were, they were working very, very hard. Uh, we had a meaningful number of people drop out. And, you know, I think that happens and that's a natural part of the process. But I think part of that dropping out was people who originally thought they can handle a full-time job, family life, and the FI commitment, and something had to give by week 6 or 8. And in fact, I think the program kind of, if I remember correctly, Ryan, it kind of pushes you into moments to really stare in the mirror and say, are you sure? Are you sure this is for you? Which I think was actually really helpful to some. There were some people in my cohort who were not— and I say this without prejudice— they were not meant to be entrepreneurs, and they realized that by going through the program. So that is a function. It's not the primary function, but that is a function of FI, is to help someone who thinks they might want to be an entrepreneur. You're going to find out pretty quickly what it takes, which I found useful because there were some people in there that I think they just— their lives just didn't lend themselves to doing a startup, and it was much better for them to find that out this way than to have quit their jobs and put their financial future on the line to then find out they're not really intended to be an entrepreneur. So if that's helpful.

Yeah, no, I mean, you're exactly right. Founder Institute tends to be a proxy for real startup life, right? So like regardless if you do the program or not, if you're working full-time and you're thinking about doing a startup, you're gonna have to put in 20 hours a week anyway. right? And if you can't find the time to do that, um, and most of the time it's a time commitment issue, it's not really like a talent issue, you know, it might not be the right path, right? Or maybe it's just bad timing. I mean, I've got two young kids and it'd be impossible for me to start a startup on top of working full-time at FI and everything else. I do have other companies that, that I run, but starting a company is like a little bit extra because you're kind of starting with like no momentum and you're trying to create that momentum as you go. And it's, you know, starting from a place of standing still is much harder than when you already have momentum. And so, Tom, you know, to your point, like, you're exactly right. It does challenge you to think, you know, is this the right path for me? Am I committed enough? Do I actually care about this problem or this product enough to where I'm actually going to have to stay up late or I'm going to have to make sacrifices? And so everyone has a different sort of journey and a different sort of circumstance. And so it really depends on the individual, but that's good to hear. Ryan, you have something to add?

Ryan, yeah, I wanted to add one little thing to that, which is, you know, the way we've been talking about the program so far, maybe it's just me, but I get the impression that, you know, we're talking about it as a class or some sort. I really want to make that distinction that it is— and that's what I thought as well— it is nothing like a class, you know, the 20 hours or the 30 hours that, you know, we would have to spend doing our weekly assignments. I realized that those assignments were geared towards, based on where we were at the stages of our company, things that we would have to do for our company anyways. So those assignments were tasks that we were supposed to do for our business if we're really looking to proliferate our business, and it was just done so in a structured manner. And then even the weekly sessions were mainly guest lecturers who were other founders, mentors who had either gone through the program or had done something significant outside of the program, who came in and shared their experiences on a specific topic. And then as you mentioned, the peer groups that we did, I mean, that I think was, I think one of the most underrated things that we've done in the program, which isn't talked about very often, is to be able to go through those assignments and share how other founders are doing the exact same tasks. And so I think an amalgamation of everything together is what makes up the program. And I would hate for it to sound like it's a— it's somebody lectures and you kind of take notes and learn along the way.

You're 100% right. And I'm glad you made that distinction. I think, you know, go ahead, Irene.

I mean, I like that, Saad clarified that. I remember my very first task and the very first question they asked how long are you going to be able to invest in this? And I was like, 5 hours a week. And I remember a sentence where I wrote, I think I can spend 5 hours working on the FI task. And I remember one day replying and saying, no, this is not FI task, this is your business development task. Um, it wasn't clear to me until the very next week, and I realized that, wow, this is like having someone giving you space to actually think through your idea in a way that builds your business. So I like that Saad has clarified that it's not lectures that we're sitting down and someone is talking to us. If there's anything, FI really gives you room to think, to breathe. And so, so when we say 30 hours or 40 hours, it's just you sitting down on this idea So you can imagine for someone like me who is coming from a lot of nonprofit things in my head, I really needed that room. I needed to come out of my organization to really think about this future in a very practical way. So yes, please. Too many things add up to make FI the rich experience that it was, from the working groups to the office hours to those sessions where you— I mean, it was just a lot of I mean, it's like being given space to just think through your idea with very quality input. So that's what I wanted to add.

Yeah. You know, you bring up some good points because it really does a couple things, right? And, you know, Saad, to your point, it's like regardless if you go through Founder Institute or not, if you're going to start a company, you got to do the stuff anyway, right? We just give it to you on a silver platter and say, here's how you want to structure it. To save time and increase your trajectory. And so we kind of put founders on rails so they don't have to think about like, you know, the million different options that they have at any given moment to like where to spend their time. If they just follow the structured approach, they're going to get pretty far ahead. And so Irene, I think you're right. It creates space, right? So you're like committed to something and you like have that time to like think about it and actually make that progress. But it also creates accountability, which is, which is a huge piece of that. It's like, you don't do the work, you don't get to graduate. And like, so if you really want to do it, this is a good way to put structure around it. So I've got a bunch of other questions in here now, um, that, that I'd like to, um, ask. So Amir asks a really good question. So there's a lot of accelerator programs out there. Why did you choose FI? Um, Tom, I don't know if you want to take that one or if any of the other panelists want to jump in.

Yeah, that's an interesting question for me. I actually helped start and run the— ran the first accelerator in New Hampshire's history. Little state that just got its first accelerator, and, you know, probably 10 years ago. So I'm super familiar with the many different models. I, you know, I guess I'd struggle to say that FI is a company accelerator. I would say it's an entrepreneur accelerator, and accelerator You know, lots of different— we have lots of different perspectives about what that word means. The program is geared to— the program that I experienced was geared toward people who were just beginning the entrepreneurial journey, and the curriculum and many of the questions— I mean, yes, it resulted in a company being formed along the way, but really it was about forging an entrepreneurial mindset and being an entrepreneur. It is not similar to an accelerator like Techstars. And in fact, my understanding is that, at least in Boston, the FI program is viewed as a feeder to Techstars. So we're often encouraged to apply to that and other accelerators. There's actually a number of accelerators in Boston that FI founders want, or FI graduates are encouraged to apply. So I think I would say it's, even though we were a company that existed coming in, the product mindset and the type of company we wanted to be is really why we wanted to be there and focus on that. So in that sense, we were— I wouldn't say we're at, you know, step one, but we were very, very early. We're ahead of many of our people in the cohort. We were very, very early in understanding what it would mean to be a software business or subscription software business as opposed to a consultant. So we were happy to kind of squeeze ourselves into the model even though we were a little out of place. So I really think you got to know what stage you're at and what you need. And if you already have a, you know, if you've already been an entrepreneur and you've got a company that you need to accelerate, I'm not going to say FI is a bad program for you, but it's not a direct hit the way I think it was always intended, which is, hey, I've got a full-time job, but I've thought about being an entrepreneur. Let me dedicate some time in doing that, you know, in a focused way. And at the end, it will result in a company. It's just a slightly different matter of emphasis.

Does anyone want to add to that?

I would like to. Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Okay, so for me, it was two things. I saw the application. And when I tried, I started filling it out, I saw there was my idea was de-emphasized. And I was thinking there was going to be a process that I'm going to talk about my idea, and by the beauty of the idea, I was going to be admitted. And I found that that was the easiest part of the application process. And then I go through this patterns test, 17 slides of identifying patterns and making connections, and my mind goes, oh, this is the entry point. What will the experience be like? It was the most challenging thing I had ever done of all the applications I've taken. I mean, I found myself like straining. So I felt that this was exactly something I needed, something challenging. I can easily get bored with learning experiences. So I wanted something that was challenging. I didn't want anything academic. I wanted to find me. I wanted to find my business voice. I wanted to find the entrepreneur within me. And so when I saw that entry point, it was something I really wanted to experience the other end, like if the application process, why are they de-emphasizing the idea and focusing on the quality of my person? So I wanted to see what would come out of me at the end of the FI program. So that was for me the connection, that's what made me choose FI.

You know, I would say that there's a term that we always hear. I'm from the investment space, so it's common is that people invest in people, not ideas and not products, right? And to translate that over to this question, the difference between accelerators and FI, I would say, I think Tom touched on this, is of all the accelerators that I've spoken to so far, the accelerators, you know, purpose was the idea of finding product market fit, commercialization, you know, how to make your business grow and earn revenue. So that all comes after the product and idea has been built, but the idea of developing the person, developing the entrepreneur, if you were to take one entrepreneur who really knows how to build a business and put them into any business, you know, can he still survive and thrive in that business? If a little education went into that person and understanding that industry. So I think that's the difference and that's why I chose to go with a pre-seed accelerator. Even though I don't think we were at a pre-seed stage because I wanted to condition myself and educate myself on how to be an entrepreneur and not, you know, how to build my product because I felt that there was nobody else who can build my product the way I can, but who was gonna build me along the process? That's the question that I had to answer.

Yeah, you all bring up great points, which is, you know, we're the Founder Institute, we're not the Startup Institute, right? Everything we do is founder-focused, right? Because the founders are our customers, so we can be extremely founder-focused, whether it's like running postgraduate programs or it's doing, you know, the initial program. So, um, you know, I like to say that like we kind of— the secret of FI is it's not just, you know, to help you grow your business and give you that global network, but it's really to kind of build you as a person and an entrepreneur. And there's this sort of transformational process that happens not just with your company, but also with you and your mindset, you know, throughout the, uh, the program. And so there's a, there's a lot to the, the structure of the curriculum, you know, based upon like building the actual entrepreneur themselves. Um, so a couple other questions in here. Um, Asad, uh, you asked what is the most difficult part of the program? Would anyone like to jump in on that one?

I would think is the task I think it's you kind of— the task jolts you to reality. You know, when you start thinking about starting a company, you think you have this amazing idea, you kind of hold this idea, and then you get that week starts that say, send a survey to people that are your target audience, then wait for their feedback. And so you throw out these surveys and people are saying, no, I'm not interested. And you're like, no way, I was so certain that this was going to work. So there are moments of heartbreak where you're like, whoa, people don't want this, or they don't want this in the format that I think is the best. And then Founders Institute helps you detach from the idea and be a person who realizes that you can evolve, your idea can evolve. But now this sounds really nice the way I'm saying it because you're out of the program, but when you're in that program or when you're pitching and the mentors are like, I'm not hearing you, I don't get your idea, I don't think it's going to work, So those were the hardest parts for me. But I think because I started out knowing that it was about me, and one thing I took away from Founders Institute is that the entrepreneur is the constant. If the idea, it's about the people, if the idea is about solving problems, then we detach from the form that the idea takes and allow the idea evolve into something that the customers really want to pay for. So when I started having this realization, it wasn't fun, it wasn't interesting, because trust me, especially when you want to go into tech, you have an idea what your app platform is going to look like and what the features are. And then you start sending out the surveys and the audience said no, they don't want it. Or then you start studying failed startups who had similar ideas like you did, and you start coming face to face with the kind of challenges that they had. And then you realize Oh, I don't even need to build a tech platform just yet. So, but I think it's those shocks that happen when you have an idea of how your idea will go, and then you hit the reality, not because a mentor told you your idea won't work, but because the market is saying, I don't want it in this format. And then you do realize that, oh, oh, oh, while I'm the constant, the idea and the business is not about me. It's really about providing a solution that people want to pay for.

Uh, Tom, for you, what was the hardest part of the program?

I don't know if hard's the right word, but, uh, we were a little bit odd to be in the program at our stage anyway. And then once in the program, which by the way, we joined a little late. Uh, so we were even more unusual. We didn't get into, I think, the second or third class. And probably the, the piece that was hardest for us was that almost to a person, the other companies in our cohort were very much consumer-oriented B2C companies, and we're like a super geeky B2B company. So, uh, frankly, there was a lot of content and a lot of mentors brought in, spent working on B2C, which I think was incredibly helpful to our cohort, but was less relevant to us. So I don't want to pretend that it was hard to, you know, sit and learn about stuff that didn't directly apply to our business. But, you know, I think that's a consideration. I think somebody asked in a chat, you know, what was, you know, what was something to watch out for with, with, with FI? I guess I just point out that if you're in the right cohort with the right mix of different business types, uh, I think that would be helpful. If you're the odd company out, you're the one consumer-focused company in a sea of like nerdy enterprise software, of course the FI mentor and staff involved with that program are going to try to teach to the larger audience in the class. And I think we just got a little unlucky in that regard. I will say that our mentor has done a ton outside of, you know, those classes to be really helpful to us. And he himself was from enterprise software. And so that itself made it worthwhile. But, you know, those 3 hours once a week, a lot of it was spent on stuff that wasn't terribly applicable to us. And I think it was just bad luck or luck of the draw, because of course when they start a program, I think there were 25 entrepreneurs in there across a bunch of different verticals and different companies. And by the end, there are only 7, and they were 6 consumer and 1 non-consumer. So Ours might be a little bit of an unusual case, but I guess I'd— to the extent you can know who else is going to be in your cohort with you, that might be helpful. I don't know that anybody has a lot of choice. Well, maybe do they have choice in where they apply these days, Ryan, because it's virtual? You know, do you have to go to Lagos if you're from Lagos, or might you pick a cohort somewhere around the world that's more aligned with your own business vertical?

Yeah, so to answer that question, founders can enroll in any program they want. We recommend that they enroll in the city that's closest to them because in the very beginning you need to be with people that are close to you, right? There's like cultural differences between like Silicon Valley and Lagos, right? And like, so in the beginning your network is like the most valuable piece of the program but also of your startup. And so you want to build that initial core network through a local program, and then the global network after you're done graduating the, the Founder Institute core program is unlocked. And then that's where you get access to like Funding Lab, which is a free fundraising accelerator for all of our alumni, access to the mentor network and other things. So founders do have a choice, but we always encourage them to take the local program because that's where they're going to get the most value in terms of a network. I have a couple questions here, because we're almost at the top of the hour. So one really quick one from Dina, which I can answer directly. If you join the program with a product like a mobile app idea, are you supposed to build the app at the end of the program? So the short answer is no, you don't have to have your product fully built. This is really more of like a business and founder accelerator. So we do have a product development session and you're going to make progress progress with figuring out what is the product you need to build. Or if you have, you know, a team member who's not enrolled in the program, maybe it's your CTO or technical co-founder, they can make progress building the product while you're focused on building the company in the program. But that's how you want to think about it. So you don't have to have a finished product by the end of the program, because that would just be unrealistic, you know, depending on what the company is, and it's hard to, to do that.

Scale.

So second question here from Anand: which elements of the Founder Institute would you have liked to see go differently, either the curriculum, the admissions process? Anyone want to jump in and answer that question?

Yeah, actually, there is, there is one thing that I was really hoping to learn. And I think this this changes depending on the mentors that you have, because different mentors will come in different, we can talk about different topics. I think a very crucial step in this entire process is learning how to sell and learning how to market. And I think that in our program specifically, we kind of skimmed over that, maybe because we had a lot of founders in our program that were people-focused. But generally with startups these days, the startups are products, they're apps, they're the CEOs or developers and et cetera, whose expertise is in the product. But there is no point in a product if you can't sell it, if you can't pitch it, and if you can't market it. So I think that, you know, based on my experience in my program, I would have loved to see a little more emphasis on how to sell, whether it's to B2B or B2C, whether it's, you know, the marketing and the digital marketing aspect. Aspect of things. I think that a lot of people don't know that the resources were definitely provided because some of the mentors that we had the ability to connect with were experts in those categories. And so I think the, the important thing is, you know, to be able to connect with those mentors and, and really identify which mentor was going to be addressing your specific need.

So, just in the interest of time here, I usually wrap up by having the alumni answer one last question, which is what tips would you give someone to be successful in the program? Irene, maybe we could start with you.

So first and foremost, I think that if someone listening to us or watching us right now and is trying to make a decision about coming to Founders Institute, I want to say that it was a high point for me for 2020. It was a great experience. However, I want you— my number one recommendation is don't hug your idea. I don't know, I find that it's very common, but don't hug your idea and understand that entrepreneurship is a very humble stance to take out of life. It means you're saying that you want to prefer solutions, but many times you may think you know what the solution should be or what the problem should be.

Be.

So when you come into Founders Institute, I want you to have a really open mind. Allow the— trust the process. I think that's the call for me. When you come into Founders Institute, trust the process. You're going to like the finishing. You're going to— you're going to love the, the outcome. I mean, just trust the process. Let the— I let the process just do whatever it wants, um, with you, but you'll be happy at the end of the day. Bottom line, you would be.

Solid advice. Tom, what about you? What advice do you have for founders who are going through the program or looking to go through it?

So a couple of things. First, if you're interested, apply early, have a conversation with whatever the leader, the, you know, the head mentor or leader of the program, and advocate early and often for mentors to participate that match up with your needs. And whatever those needs are around vertical or type of business, but also around the problems you're having. My company was too late to the party to give influence there, but I think had we been, you know, earlier in the process and earlier in the conversations, there's no doubt in my mind that the guy running Boston would have found mentors to be helpful to us. It was just by the time we got in, it was a little too late. And the last thing is life is about expectations. So one of the things I love about FI, uh, the curriculum is very transparent, is very clear what FI is best at building those entrepreneurial skills. It is very, like Ryan said, very much a founder institute. And what I would say is, uh, really dig into that curriculum, really understand the goals of the program now, and then ask yourself, how well does this align with my needs? And if it's, you know, 85% or 75% alignment, then it'll be absolutely worth it. And, you know, there might be some parts that you're like, oh yeah, I already know that, or that doesn't apply to me, but you'll get a ton of value out of it, it'll be worth it. If it's 25% alignment, you should know what FI is and what you need and not get those two things confused. And that seems elemental, but I actually had the experience of talking to a number of different people early in our program that I don't think they really knew why they were there. And part of it was they hadn't done their homework to know what FI was. So, uh, I love that FI has this opinion and a curriculum that backs that opinion about what it takes to be a founder. Like, I think that's its strength. Make sure that that matches up with your needs.

All right. And Saad, last but not least, what, uh, tips would you have someone to be successful in the program?

After Irene and Tom, I don't really know what else to say. I think the best thing, the only piece of advice that I could give is essentially understand that you can lie to everybody else in the world, but don't lie to yourself, right? FI, I think Tom mentioned this earlier, FI, if not anything, is really a window to your own sort of future. It's a mirror that's held up to you quite constantly. And it's important for you to assess exactly where you stand, how you're feeling, how you're taking everything, and decide for yourself, okay, is this something that's— that's something that I want to pursue? And this being the business idea or even the lifestyle of being an entrepreneur, because it comes with a lot of stuff, right? It comes with sleepless nights, it comes with You know, being able to take rejection, that's a big one. Being able to take feedback, all of those things are important. And to be able to be very quick with understanding and assessing, do I like this or do I not like this? Is this a good idea or not a good idea? If someone gives you feedback, you know, understanding that maybe they don't understand what it is that you actually do, to be able to shake that off and say, let me find another mentor who more resonates with me, and therefore whose opinions I should value a little more. And be able to find all that starts, I think, with being able to look yourself in the mirror and say, yes, this is who I am and this is who I'm not.

All right, well, I'd love to just give a quick thanks to Irene, Tom, and Saad for joining us today. Founders who are on the call, if you wanna stick around after the event to do a little post-session social and networking event, our lovely producer Felicia has pasted the link to Airmeet in the chat here. So we can go ahead and pick this back up on Airmeet. We'll leave this Zoom webinar open for those of you who need a couple minutes to transition over. Really appreciate everyone's time, great insights here today. So thank you very much for joining and we'll send out a recording of this. If you ever have questions about the program, you can also set up a one-on-one call and you can also reply back to any of the emails that we've sent you. To get your specific questions answered. So do not be afraid, send us your questions and feedback. We love hearing from our founders. So thank you everyone, and I wish everyone a very lovely day. Take good care.