MatthewI was very fortunate to participate in an intensive course held by the Founders Space Accelerator from Dec 1 to Dec 12, 2014.

I found this course to be extremely useful and cannot recommend it highly enough. As I said, this was an intensive course: for ten weekdays we had on average four lectures every day, each lasting one and a half hours. That is very convenient for someone like myself: I do not live in San Francisco and cannot take a course lasting from two to seven months (and this is what other accelerators offer).

The lectures covered the topics that founders really need: presentations, sales, legal setup, negotiations with angel investors, etc. The mentors were all excellent: there was not one lecture that was a waste of time. On the contrary: there were several mentors who are stars and whose presentations were unforgettable.

Being a founder is emotionally hard as you put in a lot of effort, being unsure of the result. Clearly, this is an exceptionally competitive business. But the mentors were giving as much encouragement as they could and the atmosphere of creative brotherhood and cooperation was immediately created, and it lasted throughout the course and beyond (as all of us are now connected). I should say that our group was multicultural: there were people from France, From Korea, from Canada, as well as Americans.

Founders worry: is my project any good? Well, the projects of other founders taking the course with me were exceptionally promising, and having been selected as well, so I could not help thinking that it may mean… that my own project … may actually be… not bad as well!

I should note that since the course was very intensive, there was not a lot of one-on-one mentoring, but the Founders Space conducts longer training courses as well, and I would highly recommend them as, I imagine, mentors would then have more time for one-on-one talk.

In sum, I do not know how a short-term program could possibly be better organized and made more informative. That is why I recommend it with one reservation only: when all is said and done you need to make your project a success so as not to let Captain Hoff and his team down. Your training over, it now becomes your task to make your dream come true.

Matthew Maly
CEO of PsyClue
Los Angeles