How will it work?

Entirely free to founders - no equity and no cost. Our goal is to support more founders early in the journey, as there are so many more teams than we can fund in our portfolio alone.

The program will run six weeks, Tuesday, September 8 - Tuesday, October 20. Each week will feature two to three speaker panels, typically taking place in the morning US Pacific Time to accommodate time zones from the US East Coast to Europe and Asia. Applying for the program gives founders access to every event. In the final week, we'll celebrate the completion of the program with a half-day Summit (open to the wider public).

The program is entirely virtual.

Each week will feature two to three panels on one of the core early-stage company-building components: Product Development, Customer Acquisition, Building the Early Team, Fundraising, and the Founder Emotional Journey. All founders in the cohort are invited and encouraged to attend the panels each week to get a broad overview of the startup journey.

Check out Program Details (from the navigation bar above).

Applications are open Monday August 3rd and close on Sunday, August 16th at 11:59pm PT. We will review applications on a rolling basis and confirm enrollment in the program as applications come in.

Check out the application (from the navigation bar at top right).

All events will take place virtually.

All early-stage founders are invited to apply. We will select a cohort of ~100 teams.

All who apply (even those not selected for this year's cohort) will be invited to attend the half-day Summit on October 20, 2020, featuring guests like Max Levchin (Founder & CEO, Affirm; Co-founder & CTO, PayPal), Afore Capital founders Gaurav Jain and Anamitra Banerji, Alfred Lin (General Partner, Sequoia Capital), Ruth Zukerman (Co-founder, Flywheel and SoulCycle), and more.

At Afore, we say that nothing is too early. Founders who would get the most value out of the program are ones who have their starting team and idea in mind and have begun developing product.

Multiple co-founders from the same team are welcome to attend. Each team need only submit one application. (We'll ask for co-founder names/emails at the end of the application).

Founders spending three to six hours per week attending the speaker series and engaging with the community will likely get the most out of the program. The program is designed to be part-time alongside your day-to-day.