Idea: Invest in the best founders before they start their next startup.
- Think: Thiel Fellowship for 23+ year olds.
- Give founders 1+ years of freedom to work full-time on their next startup idea.
- This is Personal Capital.
- Give founders 1+ years of freedom to work full-time on their next startup idea.
Why? The most critical time in any startup’s development is actually before conception.
- Old Model: Insight → Funding
- New Model: Funding → Insight
Problem: Founders often stay too long at their last startup and/or rush into their next startup because they need money.
- Solve their money problem so founders can focus on the World’s Biggest Problems.
Solution: Be the first investor and Shadow Co-Founder to the most promising founders.
- Coach founders through their idea mazes.
- Build rapid prototypes with founders.
- Help founders raise seed/Series A funding.
Deal: $100K if you quit your current job/startup and start something new.
- We get 20% equity in your next startup or 10% equity in your startup studio.
Mission: Be the world’s earliest angel investor.
- I aim to invest pre-startup and ideally pre-idea.
- Founder Rounds are the new Pre-Seed Rounds.
Vision: Create the The Next Y Combinator.
- Invest at the earliest stage in the most promising founders and help them build their best startups.
- Goal: Invest even earlier stage than Paul Graham in 2005.
- Build a huge Founder Tree and support hundreds of great founders.
- I’ve informally coached founders for the last decade, and have been growing my own Founder Tree through former Labdoor employees starting their own startups.
Timing: Opportunity now to build a brand investing in founders pre-YC (even pre-startup).
- Founders are increasingly looking to stay independent (off the VC track).
- We help founders keep their optionality as long as possible.
- Rolling Funds now make it possible to raise money publicly to fund these founders directly.
- We intend to raise this fund from the world’s best Seed and Series A investors, to whom we’ll operate as a full-service scout program.
Opportunity: Encourage the best founders to create their own startup studios.
- This solves the fundamental misalignment between founders and investors:
- Founders shouldn’t have to go all-in on each idea.
- Investors should back founders long-term, not just for one startup.
- Give founders the freedom to take many shots on goal and winning whenever they win.
Founder Accelerator is on my list of solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems.
- This idea is a work-in-progress. If you’d like to riff on it, hit me up @neilthanedar on Twitter!