What can Ignite do for you?
Over the last year we have helped over 50 companies across the UK go from MVP stage all the way up to raising a Series A round. If you are someone who is unsure about the upcoming programme you can hear from previous founders’ experiences. Here’s a quick snippet of what some of our Pre-Accelerator founders had to say about Ignite!
Michalis from Visavis
Visavis are changing the world of dating — taking you away from the screen and back into the real world of face to face interactions. They are the world’s first offline dating app. Here’s what founder Michalis had to say:
“Participating in the Ignite Pre-accelerator was a catalyst for our personal and entrepreneurial development. The diversity of the programme workshops, combined with regular meetings with the mentors provided our team with extensive insights on the crucial stages of the new product development process — from building a high fidelity MVP without code, to getting our first customers.
The nature of the programme pushed us to obtain the data and insights that we needed to stress-test our hypotheses and further develop Visavis while maintaining a “bootstrapping” mindset. After launching the Visavis mobile app, Wil & Gabi advised us to avoid spending any money on user-acquisition, and this constraint elevated our levels of creativity. We ended up running a series of creative experiments that helped us to acquire our first 300 users, all with a zero marketing budget.”
You can read a more in-depth post about their experience here!
Ben from Fair Custodian
Fair Custodian is a privacy tool that allows users to understand and control the personal data they’ve shared online. The team simply came in with an idea and the passion to build something together.
“The Ignite Pre-accelerator was the perfect opportunity for our team to take an idea and develop it out into a plan and a full product whilst following recognised startup principles. The structure of the programme followed the development of our company closely and taught us the most pertinent lessons when they were most relevant for us.
Fair Custodian has a very tech-heavy founding team and this was acknowledged by the programme directors, who gave us solid advice and recognised when we were relying on developing technical products rather than working on our business plan and validating assumptions. This has been a lesson that we’ve carried through to all aspects of the business and we’re keenly aware when we are relying on an assumption
I’d recommend taking part in the Ignite Pre-accelerator to any person or team who have an idea or a product in the early stages and want to kickstart their business under the guidance of experienced, knowledgeable mentors in a fast-paced environment.”
Check out what they are up to now @ www.faircustodian.com
Rebecca from WeAreAuburn
WeAreAuburn is a digital lifestyle publication all about confidence. Here’s what Rebecca had to say about the programme:
“The greatest thing I learnt from the Ignite Pre-Accelerator was to believe in my own capabilities and understand my strengths. As a young solo founder I questioned my ability but Wil, Gabi and the team worked with me to build my confidence and help me understand that passion, determination and the willingness to ask questions was more important than experience. The course introduced me to some great businesses and founders with complementing skills and we are still helping each other out to this day, it is great to have this local network of entrepreneurs that completely understand what each other are going through.”
Super excited to see where this goes — you can follow the journey here.
Still not convinced? Just apply and see what happens — what have you got to lose!
Applications are still open and just involve a short form where you can tell us about the team that are applying and what you’re working on.
