Founders Talent Accelerator is Ireland’s pioneering initiative aimed at fostering innovation by assembling the nation’s top talent to form co-founder partnerships, conceive startups from scratch, and vie for €100k investment opportunities. Founded on the premise that a diverse founding team is paramount for startup success, the program is meticulously crafted to curate a cohort of individuals possessing ambition, technical prowess, domain expertise, and problem-solving acumen. The initiative unfolds in two 12-week phases, with the first phase focusing on co-founder matching, ideation, and pitch preparation, while the second phase prioritizes growth acceleration through tailored workshops, mentorship sessions, and investor pitch support. Notably, the program boasts a diverse cohort, with 50% comprising female founders or underrepresented minorities, drawn from varied professional backgrounds and geographic locations.
- What was your background before you became Managing Director of Founders Talent Accelerator in Dogpatch Labs?
Before taking on the role of Founders MD, I spent my career working with tech founders internationally, identifying high potential startups and founders, knocking on garage doors in Silicon Valley – essentially helping companies through all stages from ideation and scaling to capital raising and exit.
One career highlight for me was helping to scale leading EdTech company, Chegg. This involved driving strategy, M&A and investing – which meant meeting with hundreds of founders, finding the great ones, acquiring them and helping them scale within a larger platform.
Over the last decade, I have also had the opportunity to invest in and advise many early stage startups meaning I have seen first hand the challenges that founders face when navigating the first few years and raising capital. I think that is what attracted me to the role as Founders MD the most – We have an opportunity to democratise access to entrepreneurship as a career path by removing the barriers that stopped people – particularly women and underrepresented minorities – from taking the first step and building the infrastructure to help them succeed. Founders is providing a path and support for Ireland’s most exceptional talent to enter their entrepreneurial journey. This support is critical for the success of early stage ventures and I am delighted to get to play my part in it.
- Can you tell me more about the Founders Talent Accelerator programme and what’s involved in it
‘Founders’ is Ireland’s first talent accelerator, a programme designed to bring together Ireland’s most exceptional talent and offer a network for these individuals to find a co-founder, build a startup from scratch, and pitch for €100k investment. The programme is built on a belief that a well balanced founding team is the most significant determinant of startup success, and that in curating a cohort of diverse talent who have the ambition, technical skills, domain expertise, and problem-solving ability to create innovative, globally impactful startups, we can create stronger companies from Day 0.
The programme is split into two 12 week phases; As an overview, Phase 1 entails an extensive co-founder matching programme, ideation support, customer discovery and the creation of venture-backable companies, with the opportunity to pitch to an investment committee for €100k of pre-seed investment. Phase 2 focuses on accelerating the growth of the portfolio companies through bespoke, expert-led workshops, regular founder mentoring sessions with industry specialists, and investor pitch preparation support – which all culminates in a high profile investor showcase on site at Dogpatch Labs.
You can find out more information on their blog.
- Tech tends to be a very male dominated field. What does the make-up of the programme look like? What surprised you about the amount of people applying?
From the outset of developing the programme, we knew that in order for Founders to create maximum impact in the Irish startup ecosystem, ensuring diversity of talent would be critical. It is our intrinsic belief that founders can come from all walks of life and so all applicants were considered based on their ‘founder potential’. For our first programme, we received over 530 applications from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, geographic locations, ethnicities, age demographics and genders. For our very first cohort, we were delighted to accept over 40 exceptional individuals, with 50% of the cohort being either female founders and/or identifying as an underrepresented minority. Additionally, we were thrilled to accept both regional and international founders, who relocated to Dublin to take part in the programme.
There’s no denying that diversity is crucial for creating a thriving startup ecosystem; we know that venture capital-funded companies with diverse leadership teams are 30% more likely to generate higher than average revenue (Intel). Equally, McKinsey have reported that diverse teams are significantly more likely to outperform homogeneous teams in terms of innovation performance and are 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies with less diverse teams. We’ve seen this first hand, with 5 out of 8 of our portfolio companies that received investment through the program having diverse cofounding teams.
- Where do you find those that apply from? Are there any particular fields or backgrounds that are suited to the programme?
The short answer – everywhere! Some have come from ‘big tech’ such as Google and Stripe, some from the health sector, some straight from university and others from startups and scaleups, to name a few. The backgrounds of our applicants are incredibly diverse and the cohort are completely sector agnostic.
The best way we categorise our cohort is using the terms ‘builders’ and ‘sellers’. ‘Builders’ are those that have the innate skills and technical capabilities to build and code tech products. Whilst ‘sellers’ are those with commercial expertise to commercialise the business and take the product to market. The optimum co-founding team will have a well balanced distribution of both technical capability and commercial acumen, hence why 50% of our cohort will be ‘builders’ and 50% will be ‘sellers’.
- Can you provide some more information about what’s involved in terms of learning from some of the mentors, funders and founders? Who are some of these mentors and how can they assist the founder?
We are delighted to have the support of incredible mentors and founders such as Bobby Healy of Manna Drone Delivery, Dee Coakley of Boundless, Aine Denn of Altify, Michelle Dervan of SkillsTrust, Nicola McClafferty of Molten Venture and Marc McCabe of Nomad Capital to name just a small few. Our mentors support the programme through delivering bespoke workshops and fireside chats for our cohorts, helping them to progress their businesses and overcome obstacles to growth. Additionally, our mentors provide individual sessions and office hours for our founders to gain their advice and expertise on their business propositions and help them see around corners before they get there.
- Do you have any success stories from the programme already?
We are delighted to have made our first 8 portfolio investments at the end of 2023. These exceptional founders have met complimentary co-founders, identified key problem areas and are building startups that we believe have the potential to be globally impactful. We are delighted to support them on their startup journey by providing pre-seed investment and bringing them onto the acceleration phase of the programme.
Founders Portfolio 2024
- Glitch has democratised access to real-time AI growth tools for B2B SMEs
- Inspeq AI is a platform to improve AI applications faster, cheaper and more reliably.
- Gemell provides software to revolutionise fabric visualisation in the textile industry.
- Cocu is an AI tender writer with a model trained on individual business data to optimise success.
- Talio helps content creators collaborate with followers and unlock product insight for brands.
- Shōden unlocks effortless sales message personalisation through integrated composer UI.
- GamesGrid amplifies brands’ reach and engages audiences through the power of games.
- NocoMed is a measurement and reduction platform for carbon emissions.
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- How do you work with Dogpatch Labs and the NDCR eco-system within the programme?
As the programme is run full-time, in-person, from Dogpatch Labs in Dublin, our founders are fully immersed in the ecosystem from the outset. Our founders have been a fantastic addition to the Dogpatch community of hundreds of successful founders and startups, providing an uncapped opportunity to build their network and connections in the ecosystem.
Additionally, there is fantastic synergy between the NDRC supports and our Founders programme. Our Founders and NDRC cohorts regularly collaborate for workshops and fireside chats with high profile founders, creating a true hub of learning and growth.
- What are some of the most frequent misconceptions about the programme and how do you go about proving these wrong?
One of the most frequent misconceptions is that people think they need an idea or a team in order to apply to the Founders programme. This is not true. At Founders, we invest in individuals, not startups, teams or ideas. Therefore, we believe in sourcing the most exceptional talent, and providing them with the opportunity and support to meet a co-founder, iterate ideas quickly and build a globally impactful startup. There is no need to have an idea to apply, just tell us why you’re exceptional!
- Do you have any plans to grow the programme to other parts of Ireland in the near future?
Founders is open to applicants from all corners of Ireland at present – exceptional talent knows no bounds! As previously mentioned, we had cohort members join us from regional hubs such as Cork and Galway this year. Should you have any further questions, please do reach out to a member of our Founders team (joinfounders.co).
- Are there any other businesses either in Dogpatch Labs right now or the wider D&I eco-system that are involved in Diversity and Inclusion that you are big fans of?
There are so many impactful initiatives and businesses that we have the opportunity to collaborate with here in Dogpatch Labs, such as Black Girls in Tech, ShoutOut, Crann Impact, NEIC Entrepreneurship Programmes and Diversity in Tech Week.
One stand out business would be Inclusio, who’s science-based culture, tracking, and learning platform provide unique data insights and expert support to companies that need to rapidly enhance culture, improve diversity and inclusion in the workplace, inform decisions and become the exceptional employers and businesses they aspire to be. They have been members of Dogpatch since 2021 and are creating great waves in empowering businesses to implement D&I improvements.
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