Why I’m not applying to the Founder Institute
Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my mind.
The Founder Institute’s Bay Area semester is coming up, and I initially started frothing at the mouth at the chance. After all, it’s opportunities like this which drove me to Silicon Valley in the first place… right?
Maybe not.
The Founder Institute’s programme looks fantastic. And very useful. Educational. Focusing. Intensive. An invaluable way for an entrepreneur to get a full picture of the business side of startups, the real driver behind the roadmap, etc.
It also looks extremely familiar.
In Edinburgh I have to admit I was a training junkie. I did EPIS, NESTA, the Ken Morse workshops, Ignite Cambridge, and Astia (UK and US). Plus some fantastic one-off sessions such as Bill Joos’ pitch training workshop which will undoubtedly be the reason I successfully raise capital.
But at some point, the wheels have to come off, and you gotta put all the training to work.
Reviewing the Founder Institute’s curriculum, there’s stuff in there I’ve seen time and again in the past. (Which is encouraging, rather than offputting.) There’s actually sessions missing that I think would be interesting, such as focusing on lean methods like customer development and metrics-based iteration, though a lot of it is common sense once you know the basic principles.
The main value of doing a programme like this one – especially this one, as it’s compatible with a day job – is forcing you to put aside time and focus on your startup, to make it a reality. And, primarily, the fantastic networking (and investment) opportunities. But, you know, I have those through Astia – and I haven’t used them yet, because I’m not ready to.
So, for me personally, the only real gain I might get from the Institute is a cofounder and mentor. I could definitely use a mentor, but there are ways to reach out to people that don’t involve a fee and equity, and a huge time commitment that I would rather not have right now.
So, dear Founder Institute, don’t take this the wrong way. It’s not you, it’s me. Maybe we can catch up in a year or so? Great. I’ll call you.
(Aside: If you’re not me, especially if you have a solid idea and little real exposure to the business side of things, you really should do the Founder Institute or something similar. It looks to be very useful, for the right person. And if you think I’m deranged and should change my mind, feel free to comment.)
One correction. Every week, Founders in the Institute are given suite of company-building assignments. The sessions are designed to inspire you to build the business between the sessions.
If you are in love with your idea, then you probably are right and you shouldn’t do the FI because your love for the idea will get pounded out of you.
I saw that happen first hand in the first week in Denver, it was brutal.
My expectation, however, is that those of us who are able to graduate (it’s not clear that I will!) will have the potential to own not just an idea, but an actual business with a chance of success.
There’s a huge gulf between an idea and a business. FI is a kind of “Scared Straight” program to help people understand the difference.
The fee is so small, $600.00, if your idea is real, you would gladly pay $600 just to get feedback from the experts teaching the classes. They are real experts, who have started and successfully built companies, every single one of them.
The equity portion is also small and what you learn about dealing with the VCs will save you much more in equity than it costs. The time commitment is immense, but it going straight towards building your business.
The time commitment is immense and real, but it is going straight towards building your business. If you can’t make the time commitment, you shouldn’t apply; someone else who can and is ready to build a good company can use your spot.
Thanks for the comments guys, this dialogue is what I was hoping for when posting this.
Adeo, I’m aware there are homework exercises and groups, obviously a valuable part is working on the lessons being taught rather than just blindly listening. On the other hand there’s a limit to how much one can do in a week, especially due to unknowns; outside of the real circumstances of running one’s business in the real world, there’s always some element of thought-experiment to things. I’ve come up with extremely detailed and complicated financial models for business planning exercises in the past that were great from the point of view of the course, but utterly useless from the point of view of the business!
As my post is written from my personal circumstances, I’ll continue in that vein: $600 to get expert advice and connections on a business is obviously great, if you’re fully invested in that idea and prepared to fly with it. But, despite being an entrepreneur already, getting feedback on something I wouldn’t be ready to take forward at the end of the programme is not quite as good a deal. (And yes, I’m aware a big part of this is my own situation, not the Institute’s fault, as I tried to get across in the post. I can go into more detail on that, but keywords include full-time, visa, broke and UK.)
It’s also not the only programme out there that teaches you how to take an idea and make it a business, and I’m not exactly clear on what I would learn over the weeks of the Founder Institute that the week-long intensive sessions of, say, Astia didn’t already cover.
Ultimately it’s about what one can gain from the programme and where one wants to be at the end. If you want to be out there building a business at the end, that’s great, if you’re not prepared to do that then as Matt says, let someone who is take the place. Although I do wonder if graduates from the Founder Institute generally go and spend a few months rapid prototyping and validating their idea and market, or rush straight to VCs hoping the tech part will sort itself out… I saw some comments saying the ideal combination is to do Y Combinator first, and then Founder Institute – I wholeheartedly agree. Something that really focuses on getting a product out there and trying it out before you start doing 5-year projections or feature triage or term sheets seems more ‘modern’ to me than this mini-MBA.
TechStars, Astia and Y Combinator are less structured for companies that are usually further along than with the Founder Institute.
The Institute takes idea stage entrepreneurs and encourages them to lay the foundation for a successful and well thought out business.