FoundersBoost

FoundersBoost Fall 2024 Demo Days start next week in Vancouver! Don't miss your chance to meet all of our incredible pre-seed companies this cohort at demo day and connect with your local ecosystem in: November 25 - Vancouver November 26 - Toronto December 3 - Italy (Virtual) December 3 - Los Angeles December 4 - New York Be sure to register early as space is limited. Find all the details and register at https://lnkd.in/dZvS6rkM #preseed #startupaccelerator #demoday

Another amazing Demo Day by the FoundersBoost Los Angeles team. The pitches were absolutely amazing and I'm always inspired by the growth made over the short 2 months. Congrats to the amazing founders! And a shoutout to the investor panel who asked amazing questions of our founders: Miki Reynolds, Jon Vlachogiannis, & Ilona L.! THANK YOU to Prospera Law, LLP for being the program & demo day sponsor; BLANKSPACES Coworking for hosting the program & Demo day at your incredible new Venice location; and to Escalon Services, LLC for being our demo day sponsor. You all make this happen! INVESTORS: If you missed this event, you can still see these founders pitches next month at your Global Investor Showcase presenting startups from all chapters. See the comments for the link to register. Final shoutout to the incredible FoundersBoost LA Team: Lydia Timlin-Broussard, Arezu Aghasey, Paul Genberg, Ron Leshem, Leonard Tatum, Tyler Lucas, Jenna Fuentes! #DemoDay #Investors #VC #Angels #Accelerators

I learned some cool things at FoundersBoost yesterday, sharing a panel with Dwayne Forde and Neshay Ahmed! I've got to teach at FoundersBoost for the last few years on pitching, crafting story and sales psychology for complex/enterprise sales which as many of you know I can talk endlessly about. As always, I learnt a ton! A few highlights for me below: 1. Dwayne Forde shared about Design Partner Sales. Find a design partner at the very, very beginning to validate your start-up idea (without charging them at first) and build something useful with a referencable partner that will help you pry open the vertical you want to play in. 2. Developmental Sales in a Start-Up. Shout out to Reuben Tozman for laying this out: essentially, get super curious and be open and build whatever the heck your client needs. We've done a ton of this at Blossom Social, to the point of whipping open figma in a meeting and mocking things with our client's live, and it's led to some of our largest breakthroughs. 3. In the time of AI being human is a superpower. Like you, I use ChatGPT all the time, so I can all smell an AI-written sales email, auto-posts and worse AI linked-in responses. It feels disenguine – which is great for us! Because the more the automated masses rely on AI in their attempts to connect, the more powerful our human-to-human connections, community and value-driven sales will become. Foundersboost, acts as a "pre-accelerator" pairing start-ups with a host of mentors to help you validate your idea and get ready to take the leap and go all in. Great presentations by: Vishen Maharaj Matt Glossop Akinbusola Adesina Ali Cemilcan Ciftarslan. 👏 👏 Thanks so much Margaux Sophie von Büren Stefan Morrow Tuba Khan for having me. Appreciate all the work you're doing to foster founders in Toronto!

Tonight we kick off the first of our Fall 2024 Demo Days in #Vancouver! Join us downtown to connect with the local startup ecosystem and meet our latest alumni! Find all the details and join 👇👇 https://lu.ma/4kjmxj2m #preseed #startup #demoday

🌟 Exciting News!🌟 We’re thrilled to announce that Zendawa has been selected as part of the #Cohort3 of the Visa Accelerator Program! 🎉 This milestone is a testament to our mission of transforming access to essential medicines by empowering #neighbourhoodpharmacies with innovative technology. Through this program, we’re joining an incredible network of fintech disruptors across Africa, all driving positive impact and redefining financial and digital inclusion.  🚀  Read more : https://lnkd.in/dA674zTk Here’s to shaping the future of fintech and healthcare in Africa. 💡🌍  Fintech Association Of Kenya TechCabal Tech Safari Business Insider Business Daily Africa Endeavor Kenya CIO Africa by dx5 @ #Zendawa #VisaAfricaFintechAccelerator #Innovation #HealthTech #Fintech #AfricaRising

For those of you who like lists of investors, I know you're going to love this list of lists of investors! This is a great resource for founders by Kevin Jurovich.

Congratulations to the two recipients of a $1 million grant from the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), secured by California State Senator Anthony Portantino for tech startup growth programs. The grant recipients are FoundersBoost and SmartGateVC LLC. FoundersBoost, Hacker Fund, and the Alliance for SoCal Innovation, proposed a program titled the “Glendale Growth Alliance.” The second recipient is the “Venture Building Program” by SmartGateVC LLC, which seeks out industry-defining ideas and injects the capital, talent, and industry connections necessary to power pre-seed to seed transformation. SmartGateVC Principal Armine Galstyan shared, "We are excited to continue our collaboration with the City of Glendale. We have been working within the Glendale tech ecosystem through SmartGateVC and Hero House, focusing on early-stage AI startups in the last three years…" FoundersBoost CEO and Co-Founder Blake Caldwell said, “We are thrilled to be part of Glendale’s tech growth and to contribute to building a dynamic, inclusive startup ecosystem. The Glendale Growth Alliance supports the entire startup journey—from sparking inspiration to building capacity, and ultimately raising seed capital….." Read more about these firms and the process at https://lnkd.in/geP7FQT9

It was a privileged to speak on the Venture Panel at the Pegasus Angel Accelerator Demo Day along side some incredible investors. Congrats to Lucas J. Pols for putting together an amazing program and to the amazing founders on their great pitches, including Amantha Bagdon of RxPost (giving the special shoutout to our FoundersBoost Alumnus). All around great event with great attendees! Loved it.

We’ve got a 🚀🧨 of a company update at HyperTribe. Not only have we recently welcome some incredible new investors onboard, but we’ve been selected to represent the best of creative tech in the UK by Innovate UK 🇬🇧 as part of this delegation. So pleased this week to meet new friends, connections and partners… I know this is just the beginning of this journey with the UK government’s innovation arm and we’re excited 😆 I’ll be at Slush so let me know if you’re attending and would love to meet! Check it out and give the HyperTribe page a follow if you want to keep updated on how we get on.

DEADLINE EXTENDED to Friday the 13th (Tomorrow). This means there is still time for people to apply to FoundersBoost programs in LA, NYC, Vancouver, Toronto, & Italy. Accepted startups will get free mentorship and connections, while becoming bonded to 5-8 other amazing startups on your same journey. If you have a product with market validation of some nature, this program is for you (if you'e raised or have revenues over $1M, you're probably too far along). https://lnkd.in/gCsR8pRa Insider note: LA apps are quietly staying open until the 14th (11:59 pm)...I just didn't want to edit the video, so I kept it simple above :) #startups #Accelerators #VentureCapital #VC #highgrowth #mentorship