It’s that time of year again. When applications start flooding in from all over the world for our Summer Camp for Startups. This year we doubled the money we are offering per company — $50k for 6% — so we are seeing some especially strong applications.
But I wanted to shed some light on our selection process to give potential applicants a chance to stand out.
Step 1) Be awesome. The thing we care most about when we are selecting is the team. Tell us about yourself. Why you are committed to solving the problem. Why you and your team have the skills to do it. Give us a reason to get excited about you.
It is all about the team, so make sure you knock that part of the application out of the park.
Step 2) Simple. We can usually tell within a minute if a team has a deep understanding of what they are doing because they can communicate it clearly and simply. If I’ve been reading for a minute and I have no idea what you are really doing, who your customers are, and what the core problem you are trying to solve is, you are not going to make it past the first round.
Step 3) Break through the noise. We will be hosting office hours in cities across the country — New York, Boston, DC, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Boulder, San Francisco, Austin — if you want to get in your chances improve dramatically if you can state your case in person. Can’t make it to one of our events? Email me, tweet at me, get my attention. I’ll make time for anyone who is interested in learning more about Coolhouse.
We don’t wait for the application deadline to start reaching out to companies, so the earlier you get your application in the better chance you have of breaking through the noise.
Step 4) Get a referral — Last year our first offer went to a team that had reached out to everyone of our alumni before reaching out to me, and had detailed questions on our program. Reach out to the founders at TRNK, Project Travel, or one of our 13 other portfolio companies.
Ultimately it’s about getting our attention, and convincing us that you are going to solve a big problem.
May the teams with the best products win.
We accept applications till April 15th.
Apply
