37/52: Lab rat

#CapitalAtRisk

Above: Deal Terms by Alex Wilmerding

The 2010s was the decade of the Entrepreneur. The 2020s will be the decade of the Investor.

“Certainly, it is always difficult to establish whether a prospective investor has truly absorbed the material with which he has been presented”.

Alex Wilmerding

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16 weeks of Cohort 16

I’ve mentioned a few times in the ‘In other news’ part, below, that from the many thousands who applied I have been selected to join Cohort 16 of the VC Lab programme from the Founder Institute. The sessions for Cohort 16 officially started today so I wanted to share how the VC Lab came about and what it is for…

The Founder Institute was established in 2009 by Adeo Ressi, so right around the time I started getting seriously interested in startups. Adeo has an incredible background, not least his startups resulting in nearly $2 billion in exits before he was 30, serving on the board of the X-Prize, and creating the FAST Agreement (later adapted and given to Y Combinator and renamed the SAFE Note). The Founder Institute has helped launch tens of thousands of startups all around the world but Adeo wasn’t satisfied with just that.

Adeo wondered if he could create some sort of programme for VC firms. He had obviously seen the accelerator work well for startups so could it work for the increasing number of new and emerging managers…?

And in 2020 the VC Lab was born.

Closing time

The aim of the 16 week programme is to get participants towards the ‘first close’ of a fund — some participants are new managers, some emerging¹.

The overall objective of Adeo is to help launch the next generation of VC firms. That’s firms, not funds. So while the VC Lab programme is what they call a ‘closing programme’ it’s only for people who want to create a VC firm, not just a VC fund². Sounds good.

The Oath