Our Expa Labs Experience.

In April 2016, Navied (my co-founder) and I read about Expa for the first time announcing a new program called Expa Labs. The New York Times article detailed a list of tech elite investing in early stage companies through a program called Expa Labs (Labs). Aside from the $500K investment, 6 months of free office space at Expa HQ and only 6 startups being accepted to the program there is a lot under the hood that makes Expa special.

Applications

We were shipping the first prototype of Dovetale when we applied to Labs. The application was 4 written questions and a founder focused video. Pretty straight forward and it really didn’t take a long time to fill out. We submitted the application May 3 and waited about a week until we received an email inviting us to San Francisco for the finalist Interview. Short application and turn around time meant that applying wasn’t a burden — we could still focus on building and stick to our timelines outside the program.

The Interview

Navied I prepared for the interview by reading Hacker News and other “My <insert incubator> experience” articles. Looking back, it probably did nothing for us, because the entire experience was different. You’ll come to learn that Expa is an intimate experience. All of the partners deeply care about your company, and we came to see many of them as part time teammates. The interview was 45 min long. This is a case where more time was better — early stage companies often have trouble defining what they do in a 10 min interview or elevator pitch because there are so many unconfirmed data points. The important part of the 45 min time slot is that it allowed us to leave without missing anything. I remember sitting around the table of partners, who collectively have founded Uber, Foursquare, AddThis and MetroLyrics. If there was any table I wanted to sit at that sunny San Francisco morning — it was that one. I also remember the interview not feeling like an interview. It felt like a dinner conversation. They wanted to get to know us and cared deeply about process.

Welcome to the Mafia.

About 4 hours after the interview, we were walking down Market Street and got a call from Eric Friedman congratulating us and that the program would begin June 6. Only 6 companies were accepted. Much like the interview process, this felt special, intimate even. Since the interview, Expa has always felt like a family — the “Uber and Foursquare mafia.”

In today’s startup climate it’s all about buying yourself more time to experiment, and Expa understood that since the start. We came in wide eyed and focused on the execution of our product, while they knew things were going to change. On day 1 we met the impressive list of founders and their companies, all of which hadn’t officially launched. 3 teams were based in NY while 3 were in SF. Much like the SF office, the NYC space is beautiful and far outside our budget at the time. The space has been critical to our early development, we utilized every resource and often times bumped into partners to get advice, help and introductions. After about a month I came to realize that this wasn’t like other accelerators or incubators.

It’s not an incubator.

I’ve come to learn that Expa’s foresight into what it means to build a company is different. Expa is a startup that helps build startups. Expa started with the studio model, building companies from the ground up with one of the partners. Expa Labs scaled the studio model by outsourcing this same process to the larger tech community. We have breakfast series every-second week with no more than 15 people, our “demo days” are much different than you’d expect and the Expa core team works at the same office that you’re building your company in. It creates an atmosphere where you want to impress those around you without it feeling like you are under a microscope. One of the quotes (among many) that stood out to me in the program was when someone asked Eric to pick his favorite company. He answered, “My favorite company is the one I’m spending time with right now.”

Everyone wants to feel special, and I feel like smaller program sizes and more involvement help create this type of environment.

The $500K

There’s a lot of chatter about what defines a seed, series A, pre-seed etc. When I met Garrett Camp for the first time; one simple thing stuck with me. He explained that a lot of companies argue over the nuts and bolts of deals (in early stage) and that investors should simply adopt the small, medium and large brackets for investment. It’s cool if you think about it. Here are the terms in each bucket. Take it or leave it. $500K is a lot of money and with the proper allocation is more than enough for any lean technology company to get to product market fit. In fact there’s enough money there to completely fail, restart and find product market fit. A big theme with this capital is buying yourself time. Personally, I think that’s what it’s all about.

“Demo Day”

Demo day at Expa isn’t like demo day everywhere else. It happens twice a month and it’s a true demo day. Companies demo their latest features, products or really anything they want. It’s not a lavish event with investors and a huge audience. There are probably over 20 companies operating in the Expa network so a list of 6 Expa Studio/ Expa Labs companies are chosen to participate for a 10 min demo. After each demo day Naveen (Partner at Expa) likes to say:

“Give everyone feedback. If we don’t use the product, there’s a slim chance that others will.”

Demo days are great because they help the community keep up to date on each business — often times learning from each in different ways.

Final Pitch + First Look

At the end of Expa Labs there’s a 45 min boardroom style presentation in front of the partners where each company dives deep into their businesses. It’s a great wrap up session with intense feedback and our respective summaries will be shared with the LP’s for a First Look at the companies.

I’ve been close to a lot of accelerator groups now and Expa is doing something really exciting and different. I really believe they are changing what it means to start a company and how you do it. You can feel it.

If anyone has questions about the process, program or in general, happy to hang! Just shoot me a message mike@dovetale.com