The startup journey demands grit, courage, trust, and tenacity. Founders wrestle with delivering new structures, business models, processes, products and services, and experiences. As you embark on your journey, you need a partner who can help you set yourself up for success.
IdeaSpace’s flagship Acceleration program is a year-long program for early-stage startup founders, encouraging them to strengthen their team and culture, business idea, product or service, and financial fundamentals; refine their business through learning sessions mentoring; and connect with a community of founders, partners, and potential investors.
Out of hundreds of entries, 30 startups eventually enter into a pre-acceleration program, where they go through a four-day bootcamp and six weeks of working on identified business and technology goals. The top 20 startups then move on to the four-month acceleration program, where they receive more one-on-one mentoring hours, get access to more specialized learning sessions and resources, and work to improve their market and technology readiness levels.
At the end of the program, the top three startups receive an equity investment.
Once they graduate from the acceleration program, the startups enter our Alumni program, where they continue to receive access to specialized learning sessions, month-long workshops, Google for Startups events and initiatives, mentor hours, and other perks and resources critical to support them as they move forward with their startup journey.
We also have the IdeaSpace Opportunity Fund, which is our platform for investing in startups outside of the IdeaSpace network, with the goal of helping IdeaSpace achieve financial independence.
The External Relations team handles donor engagement and marketing and communications for IdeaSpace. The External Relations program works hand in hand with the Alumni program to set up potential avenues for collaboration for corporations, the academe, development agencies, and startups. Moreover, the External Relations program handles marketing and communications for all of IdeaSpace’s programs to help them reach relevant stakeholders.