There are incubators that turn early stage startups into later stage, slightly-better-funded startups, but until Founder Labs there’s been little that covers the period beforehand. Planting itself in the “pre-idea, pre-founding, pre-everything” stage, the Founder Labs experience turns a rough collection of 20 or so people with complementary skills into a set of startups, with pitches, prototypes and customer development as a continuous cycle for five weeks.
I just went through round 5 of Founder Labs, and anyone watching closely might spot that I also did the program last year, in its second incarnation. I firmly believe Shaherose and her team are on to something awesome with this idea, so here’s a little more about my experience for people who want to get involved in future rounds.
What Founder Labs Is
- A way for smart, talented people to meet and brainstorm startup ideas together — then follow through
- A crash course in customer development, pitching, and in some cases, rapid prototyping
- A growing community of entrepreneurs, mentors and advisors giving feedback at a very early stage
What Founder Labs Is Not
- Funding
- A way to recruit that elusive engineer for your dream idea
- A low-impact side project (it fully absorbs your time, trust me!)
So, why do Founder Labs, and what can it give you?
There are several problems entrepreneurs face at the beginning of the startup journey. You may have hit on a great idea, or simply a hunch that something is interesting, but you don’t have a product or team or any real idea whether it will work. Depending on your skills, you start researching or building an early product, because without a product you don’t have anything; but team members are harder to recruit when it seems like they’ll be employee #1 and not a true cofounder. What you need is people to brainstorm with and develop the idea with together, but unless you have friends who are just the right mix of talent, background and chemistry, you have to network like crazy and hope you get that special spark.
Founder Labs provides a place to hit it off with people over ideas and visions, then a mentored framework in which you develop the ideas together, show them to advisors every week, and receive valuable feedback at a rapid pace. Many early stage entrepreneurs don’t even want to talk about their ideas, and this process really highlights why that’s a terrible approach. Without sharing, you don’t have feedback; without feedback, you are developing in a vacuum. Six months later, a product emerges fully formed… that nobody wants.
The key to the Founder Labs process is customer development — do people want to buy/use what I’m planning to build? How can we test this quickly? What other problems do our target users have? Who else might be a possible target user? What is the most important thing we could build first for them?
In many ways, this is product management at a micro level.
The Labs process makes teams think about the other aspects of their pitch and potential product, too. How strong is the team, and how can you best present the team as being the ultimate kickass combo for this space? How will you make money, and how can you test people’s willingness to pay, or drop-off rates through the funnel? How can you get traction and validate your idea without a product? And, of course, how can you pitch an idea and a vision coherently in 4 minutes or less?
The whole process is certainly something you could go through by yourself if you have an idea and/or small team, although the two most valuable parts of Founder Labs are the community of fellow Labs attendees, and the awesome mentoring team. Pitching to Dave McClure, Steve Blank, Eric Ries and countless others is certainly a way to get over that fear of talking about your idea!
Founder Labs is spinning up to get bigger and better, so keep checking their website for details, and do give me a heads up if you’re interested in applying to the next round. You don’t have to leave your day job to do the program, but from experience, I’ll tell you it’s tough juggling the two. If you’re not sure that you want to make the full commitment to something like Founder Labs, try out a Startup Weekend or two as a taster; it’s a similar experience, though more focused on product execution. Good luck!