The Founder Institute (FI) Program is “pencils down” for us. Assignments are done in full and our work on the core program is completed. We decided to just get it done and finished this week's and next week’s work, so we are truly done. Today, for the first time in four months, no 9 pm Zoom call (2-2.5 hours) and no assignments.
Internally we joke that we just got our F3TCH Ph.D. and in many ways that is not an exaggeration. We have put in a tremendous amount of time- 20-30 hours a week on top of our normal workload. The main document is 108 pages long (12 font) with over 47,000 words. This does not include the PowerPoints, the spreadsheets, and the added pages and legal material that had to be accomplished.
This was not a “gimme” program, on the contrary, we lost more than 80% of the cohort during that time. That is a lot of folks, but it mimics the startup world. Many did not want to commit the time, some did not want to issue a warrant, some did not do the work, and some just discovered that maybe there really was “no there, there” in other words they really did not have a business. The numbers are meaningful, only 40% got in, and less than 20% survived to the end which means that about 1/11 of companies applying will reach graduation.
Congratulations on finishing to Ronke, Leslie, Cynthia, Aleksandra, Stephen, and Blake. Our journey is not done. In fact, it continues and I look forward to our monthly cohort meeting to keep pushing us all forward.
Out of the programs we have undertaken, this was the best so far. A special thank you to Mike Sherbakov and Ben Cote, our local leaders. The investment in time you made is appreciated.
Taking the rest of the day to clean my workspace, sort documents, clean emails, and get some rest. Tomorrow is back to pushing to get to our milestones.
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