Hello Founders!
After a year of hard work we are proud to announce Founder Academy Sacramento, a Sacramento-based, Silicon Valley training and mentoring program for entrepreneurs.
The Founder Academy is being launched by experienced entrepreneurs and business leaders who are filling a critical need in the local ecosystem by providing training, tools and mentorship to Sacramento’s best and brightest entrepreneurs.
Learn By Doing
In our 12-week, hands-on, mentor-driven training and launch program. The program consists of weekly evening sessions conducted at several locations around the downtown — midtown area.
Classes are interactive and collaborative and will be lead by mentors who are successful business veterans who offer advice and share their experiences. The curriculum covers a broad range of topics from team building to intellectual property protection to exploring sources of capital.
How We Got Here
Startups today look very different than they did in the last 10–15 years. They need less funding to get started, less traditional business services like office space, custom servers, etc. to even start to build a prototype. You *needed* to be in an existing hub (i.e. SF Bay — even NYC was not considered a hub of startup activity and culture the way it is today). Sadly, Sacramento didn’t make it onto any lists for startup culture, innovation or growth.
Luckily, almost all of that has changed for the better. The entrepreneural culture and community in our region that has been in infancy for some time has finally taken root. Our region has so many new places to go, events and people willing to jump in with their time and experience to make things better.
We are blessed with a number of groups that work at the earliest stages. Hacker Lab, Startup Grind, AngelHack, etc. as well as organizations that promote moving the highest achievers from the hack events to the next level. We have the UC Davis Big Bang and Graduate School of Management, UC Davis Engineering School, Sacramento State Business and Engineering Schools that teach people the theoretical models and high-level basics of running a business.
With these short boot-camp program’s entrepreneurs get the feel of the time/energy commitment required to launch a company but are quickly graduated and left to fend for themselves.
YCombinator, 500 Startups, TechStars, are next, right? Well, more than often that is simply not the case. Entrepreneurs are confused about the stage of their company and feel that they can just go ask for $1M for a SEED round, then quit their jobs or hire the first technical talent and get moving, usually all without a strong team, a strong product or customers.
While it’s possible that someone will fund your idea or slidedeck it’s just not probable.
What tends to happen is that companies take time to apply to those awesome programs and then they don’t get in, when they should have been working on their product.
Some may get a VC meeting (or two), or interest from an angel group and an invite to present at a dinner but that likely goes nowhere. The majority are told they need more traction (that’s a nice no).
The fundamental flaw here is that they were not told the truth and were not enabled by the community to succeed. There was no support network for them and no understanding of the commitment and metrics needed to move from the stage of leaving a short-term generalized program to sitting on a rocket ship.
Here is where Founder Academy will help
Founder Academy will be a first-of-its-kind business incubation program designed to help grow both technical and non-technical startups in the greater Sacramento region.
Our 12-week, hands-on training program is focused on execution and achieving milestones rather than on the theory of business.
Our teams will be learning and launching products, testing success and refining their product / service using key metrics
- The Founder Academy Sacramento business incubator will be founder-focused, and not confined to technology-based businesses or even VC-fundable businesses.
- We will work with a wide range of startups and early stage small businesses in food, retail, commerce, technology, hardware, health, and science that can benefit from modern business process/thinking to solve business problems.
- We will provide access to a mentor community of experienced entrepreneurs, business veterans and peers, where companies are invited to continuing education classes & events (free & paid), access to co-working space, access to a diverse peer mentoring and advisors network who work at all stages of the company lifecycle, both public and private.
- The range of services include in-person & online training, networking events, co-working space provision and access to capital sources.
- Graduates participate in a shared equity pool where founders all receive a % of each other’s companies.
- Mentors are eligible to share in the shared equity pool, whose allocation is voted on by the graduates.
- Graduates have access to low-cost / no-cost, services including legal, incorporation, tax, banking, marketing, design, and funding sources at local banks, angels & VC’s — both during the cohort and afterward as alumni.
Our Mission
Help entrepreneurial founders build thriving businesses in our region through a rigorous training curriculum that brings the real-world perspective of business mentors and the ongoing support of a community of local business professionals and fellow entrepreneurs.
Founder Academy works on a model of real-world, hands-on education which involves peer mentoring from other successful founders and CXO’s. We bring in members of the local community and trusted providers (legal, tax, banking, marketing, etc) to offer practical and actionable advice, to help our founders do a deep dive into the issues that matter.
Curriculum
Our founder classes and startup support network are extensions of proven Silicon Valley and university startup methodologies combined with a local perspective that embraces innovative business ideas whether non-tech or tech-centric.
Mentorship
Our Mentors are experienced business leaders and successful entrepreneurs who will work with local founders and share their business building experiences and methodologies so founders can increase their odds for success.
Community
Through our open & collaborative community model, we support other local entrepreneurial groups in roles as mentors, speakers, sponsors, and judges. Our free events facilitate quality introductions to members of the startup community.
Our intense 12-week program will help entrepreneurs of growing companies get from the early stages of development to the early stages of growth where they are more clearly understanding how to make and report on their progress while building a successful company.
Once you are a Founder Academy graduate, you will always have a home and a network of fellow grads, mentors, sponsors and directors who are activly pulling for you!
By engaging successful company founders and company CEO’s, CTO’s, etc. in a simple model where the mentors can gain a reward from the work they have done this model of accelerator no longer becomes one of favors or prestige and free pizza, it becomes one where a group of smart people are right-aligned with the outcomes of success.
We Provide
The place, The people, The Services, and The Resources needed to grow a thriving self-sustaining business
Continuing Education (Lifetime both paid and free), Legal Services ($2k), Tax & Accounting Services ($1,200), Electronic Cap Table Management ($500), Marketing, Sales & Design Services ($6k), Banking Services, Mentor Network (Lifetime), Business Connections (Lifetime), Access to Capital (Lifetime), Access to Talent (Lifetime)
We’re open to retail, food, ag, healthcare, real estate, fintech, nonprofits, and other industries where design, technology, and modern business practices can create sustainable value
Success Means : Companies can start, grow and stay in the region and become an enduring part of our community
What We Measure
Job Creation, Traction, and Follow-on investments for our Graduates to stay in the Greater Sacramento Region
Engaging our business community to grow and support our peer-based mentoring network
Building a Deal Flow pipeline for our most promising young companies to local, regional & national funding sources
We can’t wait to get started
Apply Now for Founder Academy Sacramento’s first class starting Summer 2016. What can we build together?
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