Recently, the Lagos chapter of the Founder Institute, (A Pre-Seed Acceleration), program, graduated 21 founders of start-up ventures, from its first cohort.
After a 14-week, rigorous round of sessions, with certified entrepreneurs, acting in the capacity of start-up mentors, the founders, from the first cohort of the Founder Institute, Lagos chapter, are set, to add value, to the start-up ecosystem, in Nigeria and beyond.
You can sign up for the second cohort here
Based in Palo Alto, California, USA, the Founder Institute was founded in 2009, by Adeo Ressi and Jonathan Greechan, to improve on entrepreneurship values.
Founder Institute (FI), is an organization that assists entrepreneurs, in building enduring companies, with a support network invested, in their success and through a structured business process.
The very common phrase, peculiar to start-up entrepreneurs is, “I lost money” and this leads to more than 90% of them, failing to scale, in their first 2 years of commencing a business, irrespective of, whether they were able to raise funds, or, not.
This and other obvious reasons, led to the launch of the Lagos chapter of the Founder Institute, in the first quarter of 2019, to set the ball rolling, for building scalable business models, across the African continent.
The institute operates on a Silicon Valley entrepreneurship model and had, thus, carefully selected its Lagos Directors, with proven experience, in the design and scaling of business models that attract investment.
“The model of the Founder Institute, isn’t like Seed Accelerator, nor Angel/VC platform, for hackathon challenges and pitching, but a Pre-Seed Accelerator, helping teams and Founders, to validate, launch and support their businesses, with mentoring and structured processes”, stated Wande Adalemo, one of the four Directors of Founder Institute, Lagos.
FI has a proven methodology and a rugged curriculum that, will shake, discipline, test and help founders, to gain traction and ultimately, make their idea/start-up, more market ready.
“The FI model was created, for corporate executives. Every aspiring entrepreneur is, a potential FI graduate”, stressed Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr, another Director of Founder Institute.
The Founder Institute model will take you first, through the idea stage. With tons of ideas generated daily, you may want to try out some models yourself.
When you, even, get your capital, you will, probably, still end up in that cycle of trial and error.
This is not far-fetched, as most potential entrepreneurs lack enough knowledge of the product market. Where does FI come in here?
The FI model will validate and improve this same idea, strategy, and pitch, find Co-founders, early team members, advisors and finally, launching your company, through a step by step progress.
At the prototype stage, your business has a market value proposition, thus, the FI model, gets expert feedback, for making smarter product decisions, secure advisors, who would look into existing data, to give you current insights, as well as, partners to grant you access, to a market that, they already belong to and key hires.
At the early company stage, when your organization starts to generate revenue, the Founder Institute, grants you expert insight on data, to gain more traction, secure advisors, partners, key hires, at the prototype stage, but in addition, you get to meet investors.
A global overview of the Founder Institute
- The Pre-Seed Accelerator is, in over 60 countries around the world, spreading over 175 cities.
- The graduate portfolio value is, over $20billion.
- It has more than 30 graduate companies, with $700 million, raised from investors.
- Founder Institute Graduate companies include fast-rising start-ups across 6 continents, like Udemy, Realty Mogul, Travelcar, goplaceit, Appota and many more.
- The Founder Institute is, the only program of its kind that, focuses on people, versus ideas, accepts founders, with day jobs and shares equity, with all participants.
Africa is said to be the world’s last frontier and entrepreneurship, coupled with the ability to leverage technology, to scale, with the opportunities for entrepreneurs, to rise and solve some of the continent’s most pressing challenges.
For this to be achieved, the city of Lagos, being the 5th largest economy in Africa, has an important role to play, in fostering entrepreneurship, on the continent.
“What Africa needs the most, are daring entrepreneurs, who have the capacity and support, required to solve certain problems, which is, why Founder Institute is, an important part of the fledgling Lagos ecosystem, as it has a time-tested curriculum that, increases the chances of start-ups survival”, stated Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr., Director, Founder Institute Lagos.
Since 2009, Founder Institute has helped, over 3,500 Graduates, raise over $800M funding, get into seed-accelerators, generate traction, recruit a team, build a product, transition from employee to entrepreneur and more.
If you think you are ready to go through the FI’s Hard Core, Navy-Seal Curriculum and ready to take on, not just Lagos, but the larger African market and beyond, then, sign up, here, for the second cohort.
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