How do you start an accelerator? Story of Foundership journey...
That was the question in 2021....March /April onwards...First forward to as of 30th Sept 2023 with 32+ Startups in Foundership Accelerator....
I thought to share the Story of the Foundership journey so far....
Before I dive deep, what's Foundership? Foundership is a Global Emerging-Tech Accelerator.
How do you start an accelerator?
That was the question in 2021....March /April onwards
@bimleshgundurao & I had to experiment with several formats.
Run cohorts to help Founders.
How do you make money?
Run cohorts and let Founders pay?
But, Founders don't have money when they are starting up.
Fair enough.
Run cohorts somehow...
But how do we run?
We somehow ran the entire 2021 without any earnings as such.
No money for Bimlesh and myself in the entire 2021. Toughest!
But....
Served 200s of Founders in several cohorts.
Served a SaaS acceleration cohort with 7 startups...
But something was missing...
SaaS accelerators in 2021?
Naah, we are the last one to arrive.
Many SaaS accelerators are doing a fantastic job; how will we position ourselves as unique and offer unique?
Many of our friends shared the same feedback... thanks @KhadimBatti @pallavn @abhishekrungta and more.
Also thanks to @RajanAnandan for sharing feedback too.
The entire year of 2021 was about to come to an end.
We still needed to figure out our finest landing experiment ...
Cohorts on NoCode, Healthcare, and SaaS Cohorts were on ...
Bimlesh and I had agreed: that we would experiment rapidly and find the perfect landing.
The magic happened....
We invited several of our friends and connections to join a Web3 cohort to learn /unlearn what crazy thing is this crypto/NFT/L1/L2 etc.
We were fortunate we had a superset of Web3 doers already.
The Web3 Cohort kickstarted with Web3 Doers masterclasses for incredible participants: Nikhil from MediaNama, Pallav Nadhani, Abhishek Rungta and more
https://twitter.com/santoshpanda/status/1479491294783102976
"The cohort produced super accolades for Foundership"
A few web3 Doers shared they will fund if we start the Web3 Accelerator.
That's it.
Thanks to our friends and supporters in SaaS cautioning not to start SaaS Accelerator.
Thanks to our web3 Doers and friends shared funding intent.
Thanks to @BKartRed @sanjaynath @AshishFafadia at @BlumeVentures for great feedback during the early days.
+ Dozens of Founders & Angels for their support & feedback.
We kickstarted the Web3 Acceleration Cohort in June 2022.
We got super support from @0xPolygonLabs and many web3 platforms & protocols.
We got super support from coaches and communities.
2022 became the BUSIEST year in my 15 years as an Entrepreneur.
Surely Bimlesh's BUSIEST year too.
https://twitter.com/santoshpanda/status/1610175975979089920
The Foundership team got lucky, with many incredible team members & advisors joining. @finallrounder @skipiit @rashmiranjan @ssmumbai and more @FoundershipHQ
First forward to as of 30th Sept 2023.
️️️️️
--4 Web3 Cohorts
--32 Global Web3 Startups (selected out of 550+ applications)
--70+ Coaches. 40+ Capital Partners. 10,000+ Community Members in 40+ cities worldwide
--10 have raised funding with a $75mn valuation
️️️️️
We just announced our Web3 Cohort 5 program applications, where we are bringing "GenAI to Web".
Starting with Web3 Cohort gave Foundership a perfect start to create a unique accelerator model.
Web3 is an emerging tech. In addition to Web3 cohorts, we are expanding to start Gen AI Cohort with our unique model in Q1 2024, then the IndiaStack cohort, and then one emerging tech sector at a time.
Our unique playbook is ready to build a Global Accelerator VC for Emerging-Tech Startups for founders from India and the US.
Our detailed report for Q2 and Q3 is here.
Follow us on our social media to stay updated and share this story post on Twitter and LinkedIn.