Our Education Model
The training programs we offer are geared towards training the next generation of successful founders.
What is needed to make enthusiastic people interested in launching a company into successful startup teams is a clear and well-proven concept that teaches the necessary basic knowledge in a way that sticks.
In the six years we have been training and developing talents, we have always applied our very own Education Model with the help of internationally recognized experts and excellent mentors. The focus is not only on the conveyed information but also the way in which we create understanding in our program participants.
Ultimately, this knowledge is supposed to be applied correctly in the emerging startups.
For that reason, we put a special focus that all methods and contents we teach can be applied in real contexts.
We link up all talents and teams with their respective markets and potential customers from the very beginning of the program. That way, insights and results are not just drawn in theory, but directly on the market.
We have poured all education concepts and principles we use to design our founder training impactful and memorizable into one model that makes all the high-quality components visible
Education With a System
In every single one of our programs we trains along the principles of the Founders Foundation Education Model. It is a holistic and methodologically proven approach that systematically maps the complete startup lifecycfle from idea over growth process to the financing phase.
In cooperation with a uniqe network of international mentors, we specifically train founders to take the first (or next) steps of their journey according to the maturity of their business model, either in Startup School, the Lab, or during the five-months Accelerator.
We do not follow a “one size fits all” approach, our focus is always on the individual talent.
Read more about Education Model by clicking the individual infopoints.
Every Founders Foundation startup program has a specifically designed curriculum that fits the maturity level of both business model and founder team.
The programs are modular and successively build on the contents of the previous program level, creating a seamless learning experience.
The best European startup experts and startup entrepreneurs share their knowledge and experience from their practical operational perspective. That way methods, strategies, tools, and processes can be used directly
The wheel does not need to be re-invented time and time again. There are excellent examples for new business models, tech applications, strategies, methods, and concepts. When building a company, a look beyond familiar contexts is really worthwhile.
The Founders Foundation uses international best practices in founder training as inspiration, jumping-off point, and benchmark. Founders learn how to adapt, transfer, and apply best practice examples to their respective business model to maximize profit from synergy and learning effects.
Every founder needs a network that can withstand some pressure. In the Founders Foundation, every founder becomes part of a program batch, effectively their direct peer group.
Within this peer group and the Founders Foundation Community, the founders share positive as well as negative experiences, make use of synergies, and grow with and through each other.
The founders learn and experience that a culture of openly dealing with mistakes and giving feedback constructively, supporting each other as well as celebrating invididual and collective success are elementary building blocks for innovation and progress. In such a culture, every member of the group profits and improves.
The Founders Foundation develops program-specific curricula for imparting entrepreneurial expertise, uses and applies best practices, and fosters a strong peer group culture among the founders.
Doing something is almost like wanting to do something, just more awesome. The Founders Foundation has developed its own lean startup principle focused on that idea. That way, knowledge and expertise is not only simply taught but immediately put to use on the real market und constantly iterated through feedback from real customers.
CREATE
We at the Founders Foundation provide expertise directly from practical experience and make it applicable. Lean, operative approaches and immediately applicable actions create the necessary momentum. Proven methods of iterative validation are the formulation of hypotheses and MVPs (Minimum Viable Products).
Depending on the problem or the solution, the MVP can be used to not only test technical products but also sales strategies, marketing concepts or new tools in cooperation potential customers.
Je nach Problemstellung oder Lösungsidee können mit dem MVP neben technischen Produkten auch Vertriebsstrategien, Marketingkonzepte oder neue Tools mit potenziellen Kund:innen getestet werden.
ASSESS
What cannot be measured cannot be assessed. For that reason founders learn to collect quantitative and qualitative data in the Founders Foundation along the complete startup development to gain insights on the success of implemented measures. An important key is the constant integration of customer feedback which makes the evaluation of hypotheses and MVPs possible.
The founders learn to distinguish between pure gut feeling and healthy intuition and to recognize and question their own confirmation bias.
OPTIMIZE
Interpreting customer feedback correctly is key for the success of a startup. Using data- and target-audience-oriented evaluation of customer feedback on various activities can help to refine ideas, hypotheses, and MVPs like product, strategy or concept quickly and iteratively. This fast and methodical iteration cycle protects founders from investing too much time, money, or other ressources in bad ideas or assumptions and helps them to quickly opening up a market successfuly and acquire customers.
EDUCATE
The Founders Foundation develops program-specific curricula for imparting entrepreneurial expertise, uses and applies best practices, and fosters a strong peer group culture among the founders.
Every Founders Foundation startup program has a specifically designed curriculum that fits the maturity level of both business model and founder team.
The programs are modular and successively build on the contents of the previous program level, creating a seamless learning experience.
The best European startup experts and startup entrepreneurs share their knowledge and experience from their practical operational perspective. That way methods, strategies, tools, and processes can be used directly
The wheel does not need to be re-invented time and time again. There are excellent examples for new business models, tech applications, strategies, methods, and concepts. When building a company, a look beyond familiar contexts is really worthwhile.
The Founders Foundation uses international best practices in founder training as inspiration, jumping-off point, and benchmark. Founders learn how to adapt, transfer, and apply best practice examples to their respective business model to maximize profit from synergy and learning effects.
Every founder needs a network that can withstand some pressure. In the Founders Foundation, every founder becomes part of a program batch, effectively their direct peer group.
Within this peer group and the Founders Foundation Community, the founders share positive as well as negative experiences, make use of synergies, and grow with and through each other.
The founders learn and experience that a culture of openly dealing with mistakes and giving feedback constructively, supporting each other as well as celebrating invididual and collective success are elementary building blocks for innovation and progress. In such a culture, every member of the group profits and improves.
EXECUTE
Show Model
Doing something is almost like wanting to do something, just more awesome. The Founders Foundation has developed its own lean startup principle focused on that idea. That way, knowledge and expertise is not only simply taught but immediately put to use on the real market und constantly iterated through feedback from real customers.
We at the Founders Foundation provide expertise directly from practical experience and make it applicable. Lean, operative approaches and immediately applicable actions create the necessary momentum. Proven methods of iterative validation are the formulation of hypotheses and MVPs (Minimum Viable Products).
Depending on the problem or the solution, the MVP can be used to not only test technical products but also sales strategies, marketing concepts or new tools in cooperation potential customers.
Je nach Problemstellung oder Lösungsidee können mit dem MVP neben technischen Produkten auch Vertriebsstrategien, Marketingkonzepte oder neue Tools mit potenziellen Kund:innen getestet werden.
What cannot be measured cannot be assessed. For that reason founders learn to collect quantitative and qualitative data in the Founders Foundation along the complete startup development to gain insights on the success of implemented measures. An important key is the constant integration of customer feedback which makes the evaluation of hypotheses and MVPs possible.
The founders learn to distinguish between pure gut feeling and healthy intuition and to recognize and question their own confirmation bias.
Interpreting customer feedback correctly is key for the success of a startup.
Using data- and target-audience-oriented evaluation of customer feedback on various activities can help to refine ideas, hypotheses, and MVPs like product, strategy or concept quickly and iteratively. This fast and methodical iteration cycle protects founders from investing too much time, money, or other ressources in bad ideas or assumptions and helps them to quickly opening up a market successfuly and acquire customers.
CORE PRINCIPLES
Show Model
The Basis for Education
Visionary thinking and action-oriented pragmatism are not polar opposites but rather go hand in hand when it comes to entrepreneurship: We need courage and ideas to blaze new trails so that we can solve solve the biggest challenges and problems of our future. At the same time, we also need to be fast to implement these ideas and solutions and establish them on the market. For that reason, our founders learn both to “think big” and to simply go for it.
Entrepreneurs train entrepreneurs – because companies are not launched by staying in business theory but by becoming practical. That is why our mentor and expert network consists of successful entrepreneurs and pragmatic businesspeople who are at home in the startup scene. They know from personal and practical experience what is most important when starting a new company and support our founders with their knowledge and access to their business network.
Tech startups need agile strategies, proccess and tools to develop excellent products for their customers. So that our founders can built such an adaptive working infrastructure we provide them with Open Content for a toolbox comprised of proven methods and strategies for audience and product validation as well as the most state-of-the-art startup tools and cloud applications.
The scientist’s main tool is the scientific experiment, the aspiring founders’ best tool is customer feedback. The OWL region has a proximity to multiple sectors of industry with many global leaders in the mix which is a huge regional advantage. This “unfair advantage” gives founders working in B2B access to immediate customer feedback on the market which in turn helps to create a solid and well-founded data source to build the validation and development of their business idea on.
CHANGE IS OUR PROOF OF EFFECTIVENESS
600
TALENTS
40
Million €
So far, the Founders Foundation has trained more than 600 talents on their way to launching a successful startup using our holistic Education Model.
The startups who have been fostered along the principles of the Founders Foundation Education Model have collected more than 40 million Euros of venture capital.
This is how the Founders Foundation has become an important destination for leading VC funds in Germany that looking for new B2B investment opportunities.
Every startup starts with an idea that is supposed to evolve into a solid business model. On their way to that goal, many founders experience the same stages and are faced with the same questions.
We call that journey that startups go through from an idea to scaling and market establishment the “startup journey”. We have developed individualized startup programs for each step of the different phases.
So, when does your journey start?
E-Learning for the Entrepreneurs of the Future
You want to have access to the basic information that you need for your personal startup journey at any time and as often as you need? The free version of our e-learning course offers exclusive content provided first-hand by 20 founders and VCs from the German startup and tech scene and by our very own Founders Foundation experts. Start your very own startup journey with us!
You Have Questions?
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We are happy to answer your questions about our programs, our mission and the events we are hosting.
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