How to Get Quality Deal Flow for Your Startup Accelerator

Hey everybody, welcome to the event. I'm happy that you are able to join us today. My name is Jonathan Gritchen, co-founder and CEO of Founder Institute, and we are here today about talk to talk about getting quality deal flow for your startup accelerator. And as someone who has now been in the accelerator space for over 14 years, believe it or not, I can, I can definitely attest that this is the hardest part of of running a startup accelerator. And there are many hard parts to running a startup accelerator, which I think a lot of people definitely do not appreciate, but getting that deal flow and then making the economics work is definitely two of the hardest parts. So quickly, just in case you're not aware of what the Founder Institute is, we were started in 2009, pre-seed startup accelerator based out of Silicon Valley, started out of a garage in Palo Alto, as jaded as that may sound, but we started that program with just a small cohort at an unused classroom at Stanford University. And since then, we have now grown it to over 100 countries, all pretty much organic growth. I think our first location outside of the US was in Paris. We were in Afghanistan versus London, for example, right? We really just grew based on inbound demand from people just wanting to start accelerator, so they use our platform and our expertise that we had built up. And, and since then, we have helped launch over 7,000 companies. They've raised nearly $2 billion in venture funding. That's a very conservative estimate, by the way. One other challenge of accelerators is getting up-to-date data on all of your portfolio companies. So we kind of have to have a, a round number, not an exact number on the amount of funding raised. And these companies have created over $35 billion in estimated value and Really, I think one of the biggest things we've done too is just building a massive network to support these accelerators, which is incredibly important. So this is a live event, I should say, and I'm looking here in the chat. If you are there, please do let us know where you're joining in from. I think I saw someone joining from Georgia, the country Georgia, not the state. I have Dominic from New York City. Hi, Ale from Miami. Ahan is, member of the FI team, is from Dubai. I see Mario from Miami as well. Robin, Sofia, Bulgaria, Cloudy, Los Angeles, California. That's rare, Lawrence. And a couple other people here as well. So please do let us know where you're joining in from. Fabian's in Colorado. So am I right now, Fabian. And, uh, Ghana, Greece, Singapore. Wow, Singapore. Thank you for staying up for us to watch this. Hopefully we'll will make this worth your while. So I bring this up that all these people are in the chat because afterwards we will have some networking, okay? So please do stick around and please do throw any questions that you have into the chat as well. All right, we try to make these events as interactive as possible. Um, so, uh, let me just again, I introduce myself. I'm Jonathan, co-founder and CEO of FI. I've been in startups, in startup accelerators since 2009 in started startups since 2004, which, so I guess that'll be about 20 years pretty soon, which is, which is, uh, I don't know, I guess you could quantify some of the gray hairs that I have on my head here. Um, and, uh, and we have Ryan and Diane. So, uh, Ryan and Diane, you guys want to introduce yourselves as well?

Yeah, that sounds great. Um, my name is Ryan McLeady. I'm very excited to be here. This is a very important topic. I'm head of global operations for the Founder Institute. I've been here for the last 9 years leading our ops team. That helped us scale to almost 7,000 startups across 200 cities with the large 35,000 mentor network that you've seen. I've also not only supported these different programs around the world from, from an HQ perspective, but I was also the managing director of our Silicon Valley program for many years, and I've also run a veteran-focused accelerator. So all in, I've helped launch over 600 startups through the accelerator programs I've run that have raised over $200 million, and I translated that, and I'm also a venture capitalist at the Veteran Fund. We invest in deep tech and dual-use startups led by exceptional military veterans. So with that, I'll pass it to Diane.

Thanks, Ryan, and it's going to be very humbling for me to follow both Jonathan and Ryan on the introduction today, but it is a pleasure for me to be with you today and honored to speak to you about accelerators. I am Diane Bailey. I am the head of accelerator growth for Founder Institute. My primary job is as customer experience across all of our stakeholders. So working with founders, mentors, investors, and very importantly, our local directors. So I oversee the operations of our 500+ local directors across our 200 chapters. And so I know a lot about how each different region is running accelerators, very knowledgeable about what's going on in ecosystems around the world. I also run our Colorado accelerator for the core program here in the US. So I will be going into my 5th cohort this fall. So there's just— you're in the right spot if you want to learn about how to run accelerators. We have some really good people on the panel today talking about it.

Awesome. All right. And let me give you just a quick rundown of the agenda. So I'll start off today by going through for a couple of minutes just some of the 3 accelerator trends that we're seeing now. Obviously, it's interesting times for anybody in the venture space these last couple of years. We've had some pretty high highs and we're kind of going into some lows at the moment, but not everything's bad. And then I'll drop off and Diane and Ryan will talk about some of the best strategies to get deal flow that we've been using here at the Founder Institute. And then finally, the last part of the event will be networking, right? So as I mentioned, we got a bunch of people— if you're not in the chat, get in there now— but a bunch of people are in the chat, and this could be a great opportunity for you to connect with some other accelerator managers, program managers, or people interested in running startup accelerators all around the world. And before we get started, just a shameless plug here really quick. We are running an accelerator lab bootcamp. This will be coming up in September, and basically we're running this just based off demand. We've had a lot of people reach out to us that are running accelerators or trying to start accelerators and, you know, just want to leverage our expertise. So we thought we'd put together a structured program to help people do that, where we go through in a very intense format all of the different things that we've kind of had to learn the hard way, to be honest with you, over the last 14 years, and share some of those best practices with other people so that they you don't have to learn it the hard way. So you can check out this bootcamp at fi.co/bootcamp/acceleratorlab and apply. Okay, so let me first get— as I said, there's 3 main accelerator trends that we're seeing, all right? And I think the first trend that we're seeing, and this was really an offshoot of COVID is that the education side of things has pretty much been democratized at this point. All right, I'm still seeing a lot of accelerators out there that are really putting forth, oh, we have the best, you know, curriculum, we have the best this, we have the best that. And it's really because of COVID It's— and this also kind of goes in conjunction with the creator economy, right? The creator boom. Anybody can create a course now. Anybody can create an ebook. Anybody can go create stuff on YouTube. I mean, you can learn anything on YouTube right now. You can learn anything on Google. And that's not even bringing up ChatGPT and just all the applications that that's going to have in democratizing learning. Right. And this didn't necessarily used to be a threat to accelerators, so to speak. But now, at least the accelerators that are really putting forth that education is their main component and the main secret sauce that they have, it's not going to be sustainable, right? It's just with COVID everything went online. And it's— you can find this information anywhere. Now, this has been the case for many years, I'd say, but I think it really even started to filter down to the mass audience, the people that weren't like power users and really dedicated towards going deep on the internet to find this information, where now you can pretty much get access to anything. And as a result, it really just drives home the fact that now as an accelerator, your network is your net worth, right? It has, and I think we've all known this as accelerators for a while, that it's not just about the training that you provide, it's not just about some awesome demo day, which is also kind of a dying format too, I should mention, but it's just who are the people that you can connect them to? I know that that sounds general, but I think what it really means is who are the relevant investors. All right, I know a lot of accelerators that they'll run demo days and yeah, sure, they'll have investors at those demo days, but the investors don't even invest at that stage, right? The investors don't even invest in those verticals. The investors aren't even interested. Like, they're really just, they're sending principals, they're sending scouts, they're sending associates there just to get information and just to just to do, um, you know, just to gather data for their other, uh, for their other portfolio companies. So really, uh, the accelerators that survive are going to be the ones that, um, that aren't really touting the education, but the ones that are touting the ability to connect you with— and it's not just investors, right? It's relevant investors, uh, it's relevant customers. All right, I think that's a really, really big one that a lot of accelerators miss out on. It's connecting them to get their first customers, especially when you're talking about B2B or SaaS companies, right? How do to do the ins and outs of getting them those first customers and the expertise that will help them secure them. And then finally, I'd say the last part of network, and Diane, you can move to the next slide here, is that the, it's an often overlooked thing, right? I think when a lot of people started first copying kind of the Techstars Y Combinator model back in, you know, 2008, 2009 timeframe, we saw that A lot of these accelerators thought that the innovation that the Techstars and the Y Combinator had was in the model, right? It was like, oh, well, we'll give you, you know, we'll take 6% for $20K, right? Or whatever that old model was back then. And they were totally getting it wrong. All right, it's all about the network. And you can see that with Techstars, you could see that with Y Combinator, that it's not just the relevant investors and the relevant customers, it's the relevant hires. Right? A massive part of the value that those accelerators provide is helping people get talent, right? And that's usually through a recycling of all the talent that comes through in the companies themselves in those accelerators, but also in their broader networks. So the second accelerator trend that you'll see now is just that the competition is severely increasing. All right? You, first of all, You are seeing a ton of funds that are now, and this was also precipitated because of the post-COVID boom where we had entities like Tiger Global, SoftBank, etc., etc., like, you know, family office kind of money really coming down into the VC space. Right. And that started pushing VCs earlier and earlier and earlier to get in on deals that they could actually afford and at more affordable terms. Now, as those later-stage investors have started to move out of the space, that has eased some of the valuations on these companies at these stages. But at the same time, now all of late-stage investing is just— it's a total bloodbath over there right now, and it's going to be for a while because those companies raised at massive valuations during the COVID boom. So you are still seeing these investors that are moving further and further and further into the accelerator space. Accel, Sequoia, and Andreessen, you know, formally announced accelerators, and they've been doing this now for a while, and they're only ramping those, those parts of their business up. And, you know, basically all of the resources that they used to use for kind of later-stage companies, because that market is so unattractive right now, they're moving it all to the earlier stage. Right, um, so that's a trend that you can continue to see. And unfortunately, they have big names, right? And, and I don't think most of the founders that come into accelerators aren't sophisticated enough to really understand that, hey, yeah, it's great if I join the Andreessen Horowitz accelerator or the Accel or Sequoia, right? I mean, those, those are the cream of the crop in terms of names, but if they don't invest in you after their accelerator I mean, it's the worst signaling risk you could possibly have as a company, right? But at the same time, they're great brands. You get access to great networks, so they're going to be really, really hard to compete with. And then I put Quebec International on here, not to single out Quebec, the province of Quebec, not the city, but there's something that we like to refer to at the Founder Institute as startup welfare. And basically startup welfare is something, and this comes out of every kind of, uh, and unfortunately right now the economic conditions that we have are kind of perfect for startup welfare, right? Because we come out of a huge economic boom, a bubble. It was a bubble, especially in the tech space, uh, which drove all of this interest, which drove more, um, you know, income for governments and all this stuff, and just drove all of this, these new politics that enabled more, um, policies to just throw money at early-stage companies, right? And look, that's— at the end of the day, it's a good thing early-stage companies need money. I think as accelerator managers, you probably know that that money is typically not spent very wisely. Um, it's usually not entrepreneurs or investors that are doling out that money. It's typically bureaucrats and administrators. Um, and we see a situation now where we have people applying to Founder Institute programs that have gone through like 2 or 3 other grant-funded, you know, public-funded programs, and they still don't even have an MVP, right? And they've collected tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes over $100,000 in capital, equity-free capital, right? So, you know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart, so I'm always for entrepreneurs getting more and more resources, but, you know, kind of this dynamic of of startup welfare, as we call it, it creates more challenges for the accelerators that are trying to actually build sustainable businesses. And the third trend is, and this is really a combination of the other trends, is that you're gonna see another accelerator die off, all right? We're already starting to see it. These are some of the more well-known ones that have died off. You're starting to see even some of the larger, you know, worldwide accelerators start to chop a lot of local chapters as well. These are all normal things. We saw this in about the 2012 to 2015 time frame as well. And, and the thing with these accelerator die-offs is that they're very rarely publicized. All right, these ones that are publicized, they're just publicized because they were kind of big, you know, just, just big name and, and kind of dramatic stories, right? And they were publicized. But most accelerators die off by just stopping accepting new cohorts, right? And it usually happens very, very quietly. So I can assure you that for every high-profile one that you see that kind of has some juicy story behind it, there's going to be 10 other ones that are not high-profile where just very silently into the night, the accelerator just stops accepting new cohorts, right? And it's effectively dead. You know, yes, they'll probably still provide— I mean, they still have upside in the companies and they'll provide advisory services to those companies, but you know, for all intents and purposes, the model has basically ceased to operate. So you're going to see that happen as well. And, you know, it's just a winnowing of what's going on right now. It's the combination of the education being democratized, the increased competition in the space, just the harder it is to raise these kinds of funds right now. But, you know, I'd say on the bright side, it's just a natural culling and the accelerators that do survive. And it's the same with companies. The startups that do survive during this time are gonna be the ones that reap the benefits because this is the time when you're going to see the companies that kind of define the decade get formed, right? So the risks are higher, but so is the upside. And finally, just to wrap up my portion here, and then I'll hand it off to Diane and Ryan, if you just look at these 3 trends and what it really means, and at least this is more my opinion, But there was a shared belief, I'd say, over the last 10 years or so where there were a lot of shared platforms, right? There were Demo Day platforms, there were accelerator application platforms, and a lot of these things are still out there and they're certainly helpful. And as an accelerator, I would implore you to get on every platform, to use every platform, because at the end of the day, the accelerators that survive are going to be the ones that efficiently can generate a ton of deal flow and/or, and hopefully it's an and, find innovative ways to then take that deal flow that they're generating and find the diamonds in the rough that maybe other people don't see as valuable as you do. Right. And that means that it's not one channel. It's not just putting yourself up on some listing and then getting some applications. It's getting your name out there. It's building a brand. It's generating resources, it's building partnerships, it's putting, you know, actually being a contributing member of the startup ecosystem, right? Writing a check is nowhere near enough, you know, especially if you are a specialized accelerator. I mean, the amount of free education that you can be providing out there, as I said, education is democratized, right? So if you can put more of that stuff out there and be some of the people that are democratizing that education, and build that inbound from the founders in your space, then you'll really start to own your own funnel and own your own inbound. And those are going to be the accelerators that survive. Okay, well, I think that'll wrap up my part. I'm going to hand it off to Diane here. I'll stick around for the Q&A portion, but Diane, take it away.

Great. Thank you so much, Jonathan. That was a really great overview of accelerators, and hopefully you all are seeing some similar trends, but I really liked how Jonathan put everything into this concise framework. There's just a lot going on in the startup ecosystem from accelerator perspective and investment perspective. So a lot going on, but that means that there is an opportunity for you to be the change in the world. So we are here to help you do that. How do you get quality deal flow for your accelerator? So we, Presented you with some of the challenges. Now, how are you going to work through the challenges? And this is where we, with our expertise, we can narrow this down to a few different areas for you. One is you have to define your accelerator thesis. And this is about the goals that you have for your accelerator. And then we'll talk about this concept called power law, which is where you can find— how you need to find both quantity and quality of founders for your accelerator in order for it to survive and thrive. So let's start with defining your accelerator thesis. And this is the goals for your accelerator. And many of you probably have thought about goals for accelerator, but maybe just in a general sense, or maybe you have certain quotas that you need to hit because of the requirements from a government sponsorship. Or a partnership. But let's try to dive a little bit deeper here. What are your vision and mission for your accelerator? And this is beyond just the straight goal of your accelerator, but really think about the impact that you want to have in the world because your execution on, on your accelerator must align with both the vision and mission. It's really easy to get lost in the details and minutia of of all the, of scouting and finding founders and being, trying to be everywhere and be everything to everyone. But the more closely you can align what you are focused on with your vision and mission, the better it will be for you to find the right founders for your program. So it's very similar to what we are teaching our founders. The more specific you can be, the easier it is to find your target customer. The same is true for accelerators. Also think about your goals in terms of descriptive versus impact. And I see this a lot with accelerators, especially the new accelerators. And I'm using accelerators in a general term. This could also apply to incubators. There's a lot of gray area here. So incubators, accelerators, boot camps, really any of these structured programs that are helping founders. So I will just be using accelerator as, as a general term here. A lot of these accelerators are thinking in terms of maybe the descriptive aspects of their goals. It's a certain stage. We're focused on early stage. We are anticipating that that is what you are focused on as well. Those are the tips and best practices that we are going to cover today. You're thinking about maybe an industry focus or certain geography, and those are all great. And then you have on the opposite side impact goals. Maybe you're trying to provide resources for an underrepresented representative founder group, or maybe an underrepresented location, um, or providing access to capital where maybe there hasn't been before. You want to be a first mover in that location. That is great as well, but you really have to think about the balance of the two, because if you focus just on one or the other at the early stage, you're going to be missing out on a lot of quality founders. So it really helps to think about your accelerator goals both from that descriptive perspective and the impact that you want to have in the world. Also think about what is your, what do you want your relationship to be to the ecosystem? A lot of accelerators tend to operate in a vacuum and we have found that that is absolutely not the case for success, especially long-term success. How do you want to be a steward in your ecosystem? How can you provide value? How can you look at all the stakeholders in your ecosystem and provide value to each of them, not just the founders who you are scouting for your program. So think about how you are able to provide value to mentors, other partner organizations, the investors and angels in your community. Try to think about— put on your hat of how can I create a strong ecosystem where you can be the hub of that ecosystem. And now people see you as that ecosystem leader. Think also about your immediate goals, medium and long-term goals. A lot of accelerators are thinking about just, I need to fill my current cohort, I need to fill my current cohort. And this is where I was seeing a lot of questions as far from program managers on how can I make my accelerator sustainable, meaning it can continue to operate cohort after cohort after cohort. And continuing its success. So you have to think about what are the immediate needs of your accelerator, and maybe that is filling that pipeline of founders, but also long-term. How is this— how is what you're doing now going to create that long-term value? How is that going to feed back into the ecosystem? And so it's about that cycle of startup ecosystem that's going to propel your accelerator forward and keep you sustainable in the long term. I hinted at the power law, and this is something that Jonathan talks a lot about in some of his other events. So if you see him on other events, I highly recommend you join those events. Power law is a concept usually heard about in, in terms of investing, where a small percentage of founders are going to account for the largest percentage of success. This is especially true for early stage accelerators, and this is our secret sauce, is you have to balance the quantity and quality. If you think on one end of the spectrum, all of those online programs, and Jonathan talked about the democratizing education and content, those programs and those organizations are focused on quantity. They just need a massive amount of founders to view their content. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have more of the later-stage accelerators, say the Y Combinators of the world. They're focused more on quality. But for an early-stage accelerator, you have to have a balance of both. And this is also how you can have both those immediate goals accomplished as well as those long-term goals accomplished. So let's dive into each of the quantity and the quality. Quantity: always be scouting. And I'll go into each of these in a little more detail. You want to always be scouting. You want to own your audience. I'll talk a little bit about some marketing strategies that have proven effective and then how to connect the ecosystem. So tactic number 1 is to always be scouting. The concept with early-stage founders, and especially idea-stage founders, they don't know what they don't know, and they don't necessarily know that the solution to all these problems that they have going on is you. So they're not actually looking for an accelerator or an incubator. All they know is they need help. This is overwhelming and they need help. And as we showed you in the beginning of the presentation, there are a lot of people vying for the founder's attention. So there's a lot going on. Founders are very confused right now as to where is the best place to get the help because they can get content and they can get access to resources everywhere. But they want to know specifically, how is someone going to help me personally and help me as a founder on my unique startup journey? So you always have to be providing value, not just when your applications are open. And I see this a lot. It's the build it and they will come. You send out applications, you have that big email push, and now what's happening? Maybe some applications are trickling in, but you aren't seeing that consistent deal, the consistent flow of founders coming into your program. It's because you have to structure your scouting in such a way that you are always providing value so that founders are aware of you when they mentally know, okay, I need to find a program that can help me on the way. Some ways you can do this is to increase your thought leadership in this space. This can come from speaking opportunities. We'll talk about events a little bit later, but also you providing your own content. We're seeing LinkedIn is still a very viable source for providing that leadership content. So you always want to be top of mind so that when founders have that inkling of, okay, I need to take my, my idea to the next step, they think of you, not just when they get an email from you saying the applications are open. You also want to own your audience. Jonathan mentioned that there are a lot of platforms available for applications. You don't want to rely on just a single platform because platforms can come and go. Clubhouse, we'll just leave it at that. But you don't want to rely on any one platform because if that goes away, then part of your business model goes away. So you need to have a way in order to keep your list and build and maintain your list. This is providing value again over the course of the year, not just when applications are open. So how can you continue to provide value and nurture your lists? Really think about how you are able to earn the right to continue to have these founders on your contact list because they are giving you a share of their inbox real estate. And a share of their time. So you really want to make sure that you are providing value at every step of the way. Part of how you can do that is to create original content. What are your unique viewpoints in the ecosystem? Maybe what, what experiences can you share? How can— for those of you who have already run a cohort or two, how can you talk about and provide value around your existing graduates of your program and your alumni? So think about the, the content that you can create there so that you have not just an audience, but a captive audience. A few marketing strategies. We don't have time during this presentation to go over all of these marketing strategies in depth, but I wanted to give some high points on some of the strategies available and what has proven to be effective for a program like Founder Institute. There's outbound, inbound, and we use mostly an event, an event marketing strategy. So we are event-driven in terms of our scouting strategy. Outbound refers to you forcing your message onto founders. This is done with cold emails. It is done with ads. You can build an audience with this, but you're relying on a very low conversion rate. So you have to go for the quantity aspect of things in order to find those founders. But The outbound strategy is focused just on the quantity. On inbound, it's a little bit better. This is where you are working to pull founders in. They are coming to you. How are they doing that? It's with content, it's with social media, it's with SEO strategies. It's building that information that founders want to consume. Again, this is more of that quantity strategy. but now you're targeting founders who are more looking for those specific resources. So we're edging closer to that quality aspect on that spectrum. So this is a better strategy. What we have found to work especially well are events. Events can range from in-person events. They can range from webinars similar to what we're doing here, content-focused panels. Maybe it's just a networking event. You can even go so far as to put on conferences. It's especially with the way that the world is now. There's a lot of different options available for running events. What's great about events is it targets both the quantity and the quality aspect of trying to find those founders because events are very low commitment. People want to get the value that you're providing with the event. So it's a very subtle appeal that's going to reach out to the masses. However, there's enough friction involved with attending events just like you all are doing today to where you are bringing in those founders who are more on the quality aspect because they had to do something and take initiative in order to come to the event, whether it's virtual or especially in person. So you're able to hit both the quantity and the quality aspect prospects through event marketing. And we run a lot of events at Founder Institute. Events are kind of my life. We'll just move on from that. And finally, on the quantity aspect, and then I will kick it over to Ryan to talk about quality, is to connect the ecosystem. So you've heard me mention about providing value and especially providing value to your ecosystem a few times. It is extremely important. It's really good to think about how, how you can fit into your unique ecosystem. How can you be deal flow for other upstream accelerators? Maybe there's other programs that you can work to. How can you work together? Figuring out ways to be collaborative instead of competitive in your ecosystem is going to work the best for you. Let's figure out ways to break down the silos. How can you get the investors to talk to the founders? How can you get other partner organizations to meet with the founders, breaking down the silos? And if you can do that by providing value, that's great. One of the resources that we have at Founder Institute is called the Ecosystem Canvas. This is a canvas that is specific for ecosystems. We have, I was probably over 100 now that we have developed for each of our programs, and it ties in hundreds of resources for founders, everything from legal partners, coworking spaces, mentors. It works really, really well to break down those silos and tie everybody together. So if your community needs somebody to break down those silos and be leading that flag for the founders, why not have it be you? And again, this works on so many different levels. Now founders have been introduced to you at many steps on their founder journey when they are ready to interact with you on a deeper level. You are already top of mind. I will kick it over to Ryan to talk about quality.

Awesome, Diane. Great content there. And just a reminder, if any of you have questions or topics you'd like us to dive deeper in, we're gonna do about 10 minutes of Q&A. So I'm gonna keep this part pretty short. One of the things to keep in mind too is, you know, it's always been a balance of quantity and quality. The reality is that if you go for quantity, then naturally through just your funnels, like quality will exist. So if you, if you have maximum optionality of who can take your program, and then that gives you the ability to, to pick the best and that's where, where quality can come from. So the first thing I'd like to cover is you want to assess the founders and not the ideas, especially in the earliest stages. That's obvious that the idea in pre-seed, but it's also pretty true for the seed stage when they actually have a product and traction. Most notably, like an example here is Udemy. When they came to Founder Institute, they had a different idea and concept of what they wanted to do. And through our processes, they eventually pivoted to what Udemy is now today. And so it's really about how do you find really great founders? Because the truth is, no matter what, even if they're, you know, they've got a really great idea, it will be adjusted at some point in the future. So the founder is pivotal to everything. And then one thing I always look for when investing in founders, but this is also true for accelerator programs, is you want someone that's coachable, but you also want someone with high conviction. And that's really, really important because there is this confidence heuristic where the founders that are more confident in what they're doing, they actually tend to raise more money and be more successful. And that's just human nature because they're able to convince people to join their team. They're able to share their vision more. And so, you know, you really want to find founders with that deep, deep conviction of what they're doing. And then, you know, that's sort of the fire that will continue to grow as they build their companies. But at the same time, you don't want a founder that's going to talk over you or that isn't open to feedback, you want them to be open, honest, and coachable. And so this ties directly into what we've seen and learned from our Entrepreneur DNA assessment. For those of you who don't, who haven't taken this or haven't seen this before, maybe our team can put it here in the chat. Um, the Entrepreneur DNA assessment is a test that we created, you know, at the very beginning of Founder Institute. It's gone through many iterations since then, but it was a way for us to to find great founders based upon their, the big 5 personality traits that they had, not based on their ideas. So when we actually accept founders into the Founder Institute program, 50% of the weight of that decision is based on the DNA assessment. Maybe 25% is based on the idea itself. So we really do look for great founders, not just great ideas. And it turns out that, you know, after having 100,000 people go through this this test, we've been able to kind of map what we, what we see as a successful founder. And there's a lot of research on this. You can go to the link to find more, but it really comes down to this. You want a founder who is open. They have high openness, but also high fluid intelligence. And what that really means is that they're able to learn quickly through their high fluid intelligence, but they're also open to new ideas. So what does that mean? It means that they're adaptable. And we know that especially, you know, this day and age with the advent of AI, things change very quickly and your founders need to be able to respond and adapt to change. So high openness and high fluid intelligence is a sign that they're able to not only be very smart and learn quickly, but they can also adapt quickly because they're open to new ideas, they're open to feedback and learning. And last piece here is like, what are the founders like real objectives here? You know, I can't tell you how many times the founder's like, I just need funding. And it's like, no, you need to go out and build a product and build a team, and then you can go out and get funding. And so there's always sort of like, you want to look at like the, the message behind what they're saying and see if you can really figure out what it is that they're looking for. Because the reality is that if they don't have a team and if they're not able to build a team, then funding is just not going to happen. So even if you gave them funding, it wouldn't necessarily make a difference. Let's go to the next slide. This ties back into thesis, but like, remember what your goals are as an organization. So as you're looking at founders, you wanna make sure that there's a way to make sure that one, they're aligned with your goals, but two, I always look for how can you kill two birds with one stone? What I mean by that is there might be a founder who's working in cybersecurity, let's say, and you're contemplating accepting them into your accelerator. Well, you already have a portfolio company that does cybersecurity, and so maybe there's a way for those two companies to work together. And so there's ways to strategically construct your portfolio to maximize value across it. And it doesn't have to be, you know, accelerator candidate to portfolio company. It could also just be, you know, maybe there's a mentor or maybe there's someone on the board of the company that wants to join your program that would be great to have in your orbit, in your ecosystem. And so that's where you really want to, um, to figure out if will this company and founder add value to the, the organization as a whole and to your mission as a whole. Let's go to the next slide. This is really important. We touched on this a little bit earlier, but in this day and age, it's more about engaging and connecting people more so than it is about curriculum. In order to do this, you need to build a great community because that community, whether it's mentors or founders or corporate partners, that community is, is going to be the source of referrals. They're going to be the source of value creation. Um, it's going to be the source of introductions and really kind of the growth of your organization. And so from the outset, you should really have this community-first mentality. And that's something we do at the Veteran Fund is we bring together leaders from the business, military, and mindfulness communities to help support the portfolio companies, but also to support the fund itself. And so, um, it's— you can always crowdsource feedback, especially with smaller cohorts. Maybe you have, um, you know, a group of 100 mentors, but then you have a smaller group of like 10 elite mentors, or you can call them EIRs or whatever that looks like, and you actually get them involved in that application process. The more you engage these people and the more that they, they utilize your platform, the more that you're going to be top of mind so that they refer founders to you and that they're out there being an advocate for you in ecosystem. And so these outside stakeholders, it's important to make sure that you're engaging them because that's going to lead to value that you don't necessarily map out or see in the very beginning. And the last piece here is like, you know, the everything is people. So if you get quality mentors, that's going to eventually lead to quality founders, not just because the mentor is some like guru that's going to turn, you know, a founder into an exceptional founder, but it's also about who's involved with what you're doing. And, you know, a great example would be if you're looking at investing in a portfolio company, if they've got an incredible board or incredible team members, you're going to want to invest in them. Well, it's the same thing when a founder wants to join your program. If you've got incredible people on your team and you've got really great partner organizations, they're gonna want to join your program versus others. So, you know, I always say that quality mentors equals quality founders. And as you go along in this journey, you want to kind of test and iterate along the way. Something we do and all accelerators do is you don't want to make it super easy for founders just to apply to your program. And, you know, it's a I think you could kind of argue both sides of this, but we believe that there's what we call good friction during the application process because you're gonna find out who actually wants to join the program, who's motivated. So you wanna throw some hurdles in front of them. Nothing too extreme, but you wanna make sure that they're actually serious about joining the program or else it's just a big waste of time. And you know, this really comes down to this this third bullet point, which is engagement and competency. What I've found running programs is that the most engaged founders tend to be the most, uh, the ones that get the most value. And when you're screening people in the beginning, whether it's giving them some Entrepreneur DNA assessment to take or having them fill out like a big application form, what you're looking for is competency. So if they're like answering questions with like one line, versus like a well-thought-out written paragraph, or if you can tell that they use like ChatGPT to, to write it, um, you want to make sure that you, you don't accept those people. Because at the end of the day, um, the existing behaviors that you're seeing now will come, will persist. And I've seen this, you know, across 10 years of many cohorts. The founders that do the best in the program, they do the best in real life. The founders that do the best in the application process, they do the best in the program. One really interesting piece of data that I've seen is when founders go to incorporate their companies and they have to sign legal documents and they upload those things to our system, you can, based upon how competently they do that, that's a signal that those founders are really strong. And I've seen those founders actually go on to raise millions of dollars and be really successful. So there is a competence factor that you're also trying to look for as well as an engagement factor. Next slide. I'll pass it over to Diane to just kind of do the deal flow summary.

Great, thank you, Ryan. So we talked about founders being— having a lot of options today. Jonathan did a great job going over the accelerator trends. Um, founders also want a lot of value, but they aren't necessarily willing to work for it. So we talked about Introducing some friction along the way to make sure that you can balance that quantity and quality. Talked about the power law and then providing value, continuing to provide value to all the stakeholders in your ecosystem as well as founders. So it's really easy to have tunnel vision when you're running an accelerator and just think about the deal flow. But the deal flow will come once you are a strong member of a strong ecosystem. So at this point, I would like to have Jeanette come on stage and she's going to talk briefly about the bootcamp that we hinted about earlier. This is where we are going to go into additional strategies on our best practices. Jeanette?

Thank you, Diane. I'm always learning from you guys. So briefly about Accelerator Lab, as we mentioned earlier, we have more than 15 years of experience how to run accelerators all over the world. So this is is why we started this bootcamp. So the start date is September 7th. If you're interested, just follow this link. There is a short application form. We basically need your name, your LinkedIn, uh, your contact, and, uh, you will book a time to speak with me. So my goal is to learn more about your needs, um, what kind of accelerator are you running or you're planning to run, What kind of challenges do you have? We will be running this bootcamp as a very kind of curated experience for a handful of accelerator managers. So we want to learn as much as possible about your challenges and then incorporate this in the, the experience itself. So I'm looking forward to meet everyone, learn more about your current acceleration programs. And take it from there.

Thanks, Jeanette. That is it for the presentation portion of our event. We are going to jump into some Q&A and answer your questions. And I understand we have one— we have at least one question in the chat, if Ajaan can bring that up. But stick around after the Q&A. We will jump into our networking tables where you have the opportunity to meet each other and meet other program managers, we'll also be around at the tables so we can answer questions more directly. Also, if we could bring the rest of the hosts on screen so that we can all answer those questions.

All right. Okay, there's a lot of great questions here. I don't mind just kind of jumping into the first one is how many accelerator boot camps have you done before? I've trained over 500 leaders globally. Accelerator Lab was a private program that we would use to just train people that wanted to run a founder institute program. So we've had, I think, over 10 of these cohorts. This is the first one that we're actually launching with the public. Not for people that want to launch Founder Institute cohorts, but just to help with their own accelerators. If you want to launch a Founder Institute program and use our software and best practices, that would be great. We'd love to talk to you about that, but that's not the intention of the bootcamp. The bootcamp's to add value to your program.

I'll answer this question also. I see here from David, David Rowley's asking, um, how far have you guys gone to model the steps into a staged semi-automated software assistant. So this is definitely something I see with a lot of accelerators, and it kind of gets back to, you know, there are some things that software is not great at, right? Believe it or not. And I think one of them for sure is the introductions to investors. I've seen a lot of investors, a lot of accelerators, and even just a lot of standalone companies you know, put a lot of time and effort into building, oh, we're gonna have this, you know, it's almost like a marketplace where investors can meet great companies and they could, then they could connect and the companies can get invested in, you know. And unfortunately, that's just really not the way the world works, right? A lot of investors, they don't want to get access to a company that everyone else has access to, right? It's that in and of itself is a negative signal. So I think You know, there definitely is a ton of things that software can do to help accelerators and to help companies, right? I think definitely with large language models, you know, again, just answering a lot of the basic questions would be one way. Our sister company VC Lab just introduced one just to answer questions about building venture funds and things like that. Definitely, you know, we have network search tools. And we have, you know, office hours tools and, you know, a learning management system. And, you know, so I think a lot of that, those, that kind of software is definitely helpful. But when it comes to introductions, when it comes to really building out the business, I think it's, that's where, you know, the components of your program need to be really the handholding, right? And that's where the mentorship, the leaders of the accelerators, and just the larger network that you've created really come into play.

And Aihan, you have a question from Jeff who's joined us today. Can you explain the cost structure for joining an accelerator? How do you evaluate the cost or the ROI on joining an accelerator?

I'm happy to jump in here. There's a couple different levers you can pull, and there was another question here in the chat that was was very similar. You can find a way to charge founders money, you can charge them equity, or you can find someone else to pay for it, like a corporate sponsor. And what I found is like, you usually want a combination of each of these. You need to have some sort of cash flow to support the organization, and then you also need to have the, the long-term equity upside. Um, accelerators that don't have equity upside, I think, aren't sustainable in the long run, and you're also not really incentivized to help. I think that's a really big piece that's important, is you want to find founders that have a growth mindset and realize that, you know, your program is going to help them for a very long time. It's not just this, you know, predatory program that's going to take equity from them and prevent dilution at all costs. Those founders tend to not be successful because they realize, I need to give a little piece of equity to access value and to grow the business. And that's really what they're doing, even if they're raising money from Any other questions that we see?

And Ahan, if you can point those out for us as well.

Yeah, I think Holly had a question here. It's, what's the best way for the idea people to connect with the right accelerators? So, you know, and I guess I'm interpreting that question, Holly, to mean like, founders at the idea stage. I think that's what you're asking. And I think that's where a lot of the components that we've talked about today are pretty important, right? Where— okay, good. That is what you're asking. In any industry, in any vertical, in any kind of, you know, business where you're trying to help startups with your accelerator, there's just going to be a lot of common questions that they're going to ask. Right? And common challenges that they're going to have as they start to build out the business. And the more that you can be present when they are searching and trying to find the answers to those initial questions and those initial challenges, the better off you're going to be in terms of getting your brand in front of them and starting to build a relationship with them even when they're, you know, at the idea stage. Maybe it's even before they even have the idea that they end up coming up with to come and become part of your accelerator, right? So that's where I think one of the big takeaways I hope that people get from today's event is really just to provide as much value as you possibly can, right? And a lot of the things that I think as accelerator managers that we take for granted, that we think may be obvious, are not obvious to a lot of other people. So just putting that stuff out there in the public, um, you know, I think one example that we used recently, if you go to fi.co/benchmarks, okay, um, we get a ton of questions just saying, oh, you know, you're telling us we're not ready for funding, or why aren't we ready for funding, right? What are some of the the benchmarks that I need to be ready for funding, um, you know, and, and obviously those benchmarks change as well with the ebbs and flows of the economy, right? So we just put a pretty simple chart out there just based off of all the deals that we see, and, um, and that has been a massive driver of traffic for us. But, you know, at the same time, it's just providing a ton of value to any entrepreneur who's, you know, who's Googling like, hey, do I have the right metrics that I need for funding or things like that, right? They're coming to us to get that information. Then maybe they'll come to one of our free startup events, right, where again we're just providing value. All right, all of our, all of our startup events are free, and it's just providing value, connecting them with investors, connecting them with mentors to teach them things, um, you know, and it's just all under the Founder Institute umbrella. So I think just being present, being there to answer the questions that, that you know that these founders will have as they go on their startup journey that's how you get to them at that idea stage, right? And it all comes back to the concept of, look, a check is not enough. You know, they need education, they need help. And since a lot of that stuff is expected to be free now on the internet, you might as well be the one that's putting it out there. All right.

Thanks, Jonathan. We have time for one last question from Dinica, I believe, and Ahan is going to put that up. What, and then we'll jump into the networking portion. So stick around and we can answer more questions with you one-on-one there. Uh, and you can also meet the other program managers who are on the call today. What types of equity models have you seen work the best?

I'm happy to answer this. You know, there's a lot of different models out there. Um, some people take warrants, some people invest. Invest in the company. Others have some strange thing where they invest, but then they charge half of that investment as like a program fee. So there's lots of interesting ways to do it. I prefer simple, and I, I think that the programs that provide funding tend to attract founders because their laser, their vision is locked in on, um, trying to get money, and that's what they're, they're focused on. And so if you are perceived as a source of capital, whether you have a fund that's associated with you, whether you, you know, are able to introduce them to like strategic investors, whatever that is. If they can see that there's money tied to your program, then they're more likely to, to want to participate in it.

Perfect. Well, that is a wrap for the presentation and Q&A portion of getting quality deal flow for your accelerators. On behalf of all of us here at FI, thank you so much for taking your time out of your day to learn more about accelerators, and please reach out to us if you have any additional questions about Founder Institute or about the boot camp that we are running to help you run your programs better. Networking portion. This is how it— for those of you who are new to Airmeet, this is how it is going work, our producer is going to hit a magic button and all of us are going to disappear. And then you will see virtual tables on your screen. Jump onto a table. We'll be on the tables. Other people will be on the tables. This is supposed to mimic the in-person portion after an event where you can talk with people. You'll get a little screen that will pop up, just kind of like a mini Zoom meeting if you're familiar with Zoom meetings. And we can have conversations. You can continue to share your contact info, LinkedIn, and we can continue the conversation. So thank you all again for joining us. We will see you on the other side in the networking rooms. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks, everybody. Take care.