Introduction.

We aspire to build a startups incubator addressing an under served segment of the market, where startups not matching a set of criteria do not get further support, financial or other.

We assist people starting from an idea, concept, or any other subsequent stage to progress and perhaps to raise funds for their startup. In the process, beside providing development and mentoring, we focus on developing the necessary mindset which will accompany the (co)founders to their startup career.

We have already put in place partnerships that augment and enhance the incubation programme and always develop additional if a startup project’s circumstances demand so, in order to become successful. The (co)founders are always the decision maker, contrary to other offerings in the market that require equity and as a result, impose decisions to protect their interests.

At the same time we maintain our integrity and are able to give our opinion when asked either by startup founders or investors.

Background.

The incubation programme is built from the ground up based on the assertions presented previously and has already worked with a capable number of startup founders mainly from Africa, India and South America and less from Europe and North America. The experience drawn from this engagement was valuable in assisting the process of refining and optimization so as to reach a market-fit stage.

Programme's approach.

We implement a personalized approach to the challenge of assisting founders to progress through the stages of the startup life cycle. There are enough obstacles in actually delivering this, however we have done our research and formalized a methodology to deliver it.

A core aspect of our approach is to always strive to thoroughly discuss the subject in question bringing in the conversation different perspectives and leaving it to the founders to make the final decisions in an effort to develop a sense of ownership.

This is also to embody the necessary confidence in decision making by ensuring they have taken enough data and information into account to come up with an informed view and subsequently decision.

Methodology.

The methodology of the startups programme in general is mostly a blend of Scrum and Lean. Each expected deliverable is in essence a sprint, e.g. phase 1 outputs, which is in turn broken down to subsprints. We assume the role of the Scrum master and coach the startup founders, who assume the role of the development team. We facilitate the organization of the tasks and make sure they have the support they need to complete them.

Sprints' and subsprints' duration varies not only among the items in question but also adapts on the circumstances of each participant's life style and timezone. A blend of asynchronous and synchronous work mode is used to achieve this, coupled with (sub)sprint briefs, wraps and reviews.

The above mentioned are combined with a Lean methodology using visual templates to map each startup's business model. This is a very important aspect as we have observed that too often founders have deficiencies in certain aspects or are unaware of aspects of their business model which in some times render them incapable of comprehending the challenges ahead e.g. scaling or impossibility to do so. The earlier those are identified the better for everyone as even a pivot might be necessary to be considered.

One very important outcome of this methodology is that it directs the founders to become extremely focused on the client's pain points and needs, so as to ensure the solution is fit for purpose and no resources, that tend to be really scarce, are wasted in developing unnecessary at the moment features.

The blended methodology is streamlined to ensure improvement, efficiency and with each iteration of the programme we apply the same exact methodology to further identify and define optimizations for the programme itself.

The business proposal in summary.

A corporate venture program may choose from a number of different methodologies to accelerate participant startups to fulfill the goals of the stakeholders involved. Scouting or other methods are usually leveraged to list potential program participants.

An interesting option would be your corporate venture or a startups accelerator to finance the incubation of a number of startups with the possibility to be further accelerated by your program. Now you could define a number of parameters those startups should satisfy before or after the incubation period or just ask that the solution they offer falls into a certain category or industry.

Lastly, you may just opt in to donate or sponsor the platform in general, fostering its development. For the sake of transparency I have set up a SFC profile at OpenCollective platform which I intend to use for financial or other reporting purposes.