The first edition of Startup Next Program is approaching culmination after its successful run for one month. The program commenced on Friday April 24th and by now six sessions have been held including the last session held on Saturday May 23rd. Startup Next Program is on last stage which will conclude on Saturday May 30th.
The Startup Next program is a pre-accelerator mentorship program. Startup Next is all about taking in a small group of high quality startup teams to provide mentorship and valuable connections to help them make significant strides towards building a sustainable business.
The program focuses on mentoring startup founders and challenging them to answer questions so that when the program is finished, each founder and startup is more attractive to accelerators and/or seed investors.
Over the course of 5 weeks, this program hosted a series of events where participants got to interact with and learn from some highly experienced mentors and speakers on topics such as Customer Development, Pitching, Product/Market Fit, Market Sizing and Funding. Throughout the program startups were asked to track their progress made over the weeks.
Startup Next is one of the programs of UP Global. UP Global supports new ventures, provides resources for entrepreneurs, and connects the community. It was incepted by Andrew Hyde in 2007 when he developed the concept of Startup Weekend in Boulder, Colorado. Later on in year 2009, it was acquired by Marc Nager, Clint Nelson, and Franck Nouyrigat who decided to operate as a non-profit with the goal of exposing more people to the transformative power of entrepreneurship. Since then, UP Global has evolved globally and now they have marked their presence in over 500 cities and catalyzed the entrepreneurial journey of over 150,000 aspiring innovators. Startup Weekend, Startup Next, Startup Digest, Education Entrepreneurs, and Startup Week are other flagship events by UP global.
Startup Next takes place in more than 20 countries including Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Spain, USA and others. Startup Next programs have been previously held in Bangalore however this is its first edition in Mumbai.
Lead Angels Network is the facilitating partner for Startup Next Mumbai 2015. “We are involved at every stage right from short listing the participating companies, providing them with the right mentors for each session to making the right introductions with stakeholders within the ecosystem” explains Monaaz Mistry, Head – India Operations at LeadAngels.
Lead Angels is an alumni focused angel network started by a team of three originally from IIT Bombay- Sushanto Mitra – Founder & CEO and ex-chief executive of Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship; C Amarnath – Advisor and retired professor of mechanical engineering; Bipin Kumar – Founding member and manager. LeadAngels have chapters in Mumbai, New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.
Focus of LeadAngels is to assist investment into early stage ideas and companies founded by students and alumni of premier institutions. The company works closely with these institutions, their incubators, alumni associations and student entrepreneurship cells.
The main goal of Startup Next is to mentor and advise a small group of high-quality teams to get from Problem/Solution Fit towards Product/Market Fit. During the program, we help teams focus on nailing their pitch and bridging the gaps in their offering.
The best part about Startup Next for founders is the small time burden needed (once a week), so it allows startups to keep building the company while getting expert mentorship on your product and direction. No equity is taken.
At the end of the program VCs, Accelerators, Incubators are invited for a round of pitching by the participants. Participating teams from all over the world also have a chance to qualify for a global demo and pitch to investors in the US.
During the entire run of scheduled program for this year, speakers and Mentors list includes names of:
- VC Karthic- Entrepreneur-at-large
- Faisal Farooqui: Founder & CEO, MouthShut.com, Entrepreneur, Speaker, Pensive Thinker. Co-founder Zarca Interactive, Inc.
- Vikas Verma: Entrepreneur, Business Leader & Start-up Coach
- Venkatraman Pichumani: Founder, Chief Running Evangalist at YouTooCanRun Sports Management P Ltd
- Sushanto Mitra: Founder & CEO, Lead Angels Network,
- Monaaz Mistry- Head – Operations at Lead Angels
- Atul Tibrewala– Owner
- Ajay Ramasubramanium- Director India (Business Development) – Ryerson Futures Inc., & Program Head – Zone Startups India
They are working with 5 teams currently ranging from field service mobility to travel solutions for the disabled etc. The program is currently in operation however Startup Next has helped dozens of startups get into top accelerators and raise millions of dollars in seed funding. Readers can see the success stories and case studies here: http://startupnext.co/success-stories.
To know more about their various events, you could follow Startup Next India on Facebook & Twitter and the startupnext.co website where information about new batches would get published.
