The Founder Institute is a start-up incubator designed to mentor and educate young/new entrepreneurs and help them get their companies going.
It is being launched by the folks at TheFunded.com, which is an online community allowing entrepreneurs to research, rate and review funding sources.
They are currently accepting applications for their summer semester. It begins in mid-May and runs for 4 months. The application deadline is May 10th, but the good news is the application is quick and easy to fill out.
The founders will go through an extensive 4 month training program that includes access to lawyers, CEOs, and investors. They will also meet with potential investors.
The program will consist of 75-100 founders. They will be mentored by an impressive group of successful start-up CEOs and other experts on early stage companies.
The Founder Institute has come up with a novel economic model that includes all of the participants in the program sharing in the upside of the entire group. They've also created a new class of stock - called Class F common - designed to better protect the interests of founders.
It looks like a great program for developing a business idea and new company.
This is actually incredibly exciting.
Per usual, I am a fan of the business incubator concept -- I think it's a solid way to pool talent and train successful entrepreneurs but what's really exciting here is this idea of collective upside.
One of the biggest strengths of programs like these is that you get a -lot- of entrepreneurs in the same room at the same time, the problem is that they are all technically "fighting" for the same resources. If you make it so that the success of one is tantamount to the success of all of them, I think you help foster teamwork and improve the overall success of the program.
With the pedigree of the people working on this project, I'm sure it will do well. Looking forward to hearing more about it.
Posted by: Steve Spalding | May 04, 2009 at 11:57 AM