Starting a Company? A Woman’s Guide to Top Entrepreneurship Courses, Accelerators and Bootcamps
9 min read
For women who want to start a company, Female Founder School provides the blueprint that takes you from idea validation to launching your first product. Join our Startup Program to gain the founder skills you need to confidently build your business.
You’ve got it - the business idea that will finally liberate you from your overbearing manager and allow you to work from the cozy mountain cabin that you daydream about in your Monday morning all-hands. You share it with your close friends and try to keep your cool when the conversation over brunch goes in a direction favorable to seamlessly contributing your brilliant idea. You decide, you’re going to do this. After all, it’s calling you. Yes! You’re an empowered woman and nothing can stop you!
…Okay, now what? To the omniscient Google! You start to do some research and it quickly becomes overwhelming! Growth marketing, a website, a mobile app, prototyping, MVPs (what the?), finding a co-founder? Wait, do I need to incorporate and get a patent first? Where to start? The doubts start rolling in, “Maybe my idea isn’t a good one.” “I don’t have entrepreneurial experience.” “I’m not technical.”
Take a breath, perhaps open your Headspace app. You’ve got this! Starting a new business can be overwhelming and it’s not unusual to feel intimidated and directionless when you just start out (and frankly, throughout the company-building process). Fortunately, there are a number of different courses and programs out there to help you get your startup legs under you and to enable you to make the most of your valuable time (we get it, you have a full-time job, perhaps caregiving responsibilities, a social life, and a self-care routine to maintain).
I’m going to walk you through different types of entrepreneurship-education programs and help you navigate which ones are best for you, given the stage that you’re in, type of company you’re building, learning preferences, and program costs.
ACCELERATORS
You may have heard about accelerators. Accelerating sounds good, should I apply? Accelerators can take different forms, but typically an accelerator is a time-bound program (usually three to four months), with an immersive, structured curriculum. The goal is to speed up the rate of business growth, condensing what would take years for you to learn on your own into a few months. Accelerators usually end with a pitch event where companies present their business concepts to investors to raise capital.
Benefits:
Accelerators can be very valuable for accessing mentorship, learning the basics of launching a venture (especially on the legal side), gaining a stamp of legitimacy, and building a network. So it’s no surprise that there are hundreds of accelerator success stories, including Airbnb and Dropbox.
Downsides:
However, when you’re just starting a business as a first-time founder you’ll be too early for most accelerators. The majority of them will take you through an application process and want to see that you already have a product and some paying customers. Many accelerators are also in-person which may require you to uproot yourself from your current job and stay in a new city for three to four months.
Furthermore, most accelerators cater to startups who are trying to build businesses that appeal to venture capitalists: aka you’re trying to build a high growth (at least $1B) business that you sell or take public within seven years. As such, they usually take equity, or ownership in your company. If you’re just starting out, it’s better to wait until you decide what type of business you want to build, before selling a piece of your company (essentially what happens when you raise money). Additionally, maintaining ownership and decision making power and building a sustainable business at a responsible growth rate sounds pretty good to me…I could go on…
For Whom:
At any rate, consider applying to an accelerator if you’re at a stage where you have some sales on the book and venture fundraising is the route you want to take.
Reputable Accelerators:
Among the best known accelerators are Y-Combinator (link), 500 Startups (link), and Techstars (link).
Also look for industry-specific accelerators where you have access to industry-experts and potential customers. For example, Elemental Excelerator’s cleantech program (link) focuses on lives: energy, water, food & agriculture, and mobility.
Village Capital works with global, impact-focused companies (link)
Alchemist Accelerator is focused on enterprise software companies (link)
Check out the all-ladies Women’s Startup Lab (link), which has an awesome reputation among alumni and the numbers to back it, with 55% of their portfolio having successfully raised funds.
If you’re looking for local accelerators so you don’t have to uproot your life, start by researching local incubators and tech centers. For example, the Southern Tier Incubator in Binghamton New York has a free Accelerator Program for founders (link).
Several large companies have also launched accelerators, including Google’s Launchpad (link), to support and build relations with potential customers or acquisition targets.
PRE-ACCELERATORS
Okay so what about a pre-accelerator? The criteria for participation in pre-accelerators varies, but typically these programs help founders get to an initial version of their product (also called an “MVP”), prepare for revenue, and apply to accelerators.
Benefits:
In addition to learning the business building essentials, another advantage of a pre-accelerator is that most curriculums spend significant time on “customer-discovery” (talking to customers to deeply understand their pain points and behaviors), which will help you build a product or service that people ultimately want to buy. Remember, the vast majority of startups fail because they haven’t found a market need, or in other words, aren’t solving a problem that customers are willing to pay for.
Downsides:
On the other hand, pre-accelerators can have many of the same downsides as an accelerator: They may require you to uproot your life for one to three months. Programs can be expensive or may even ask for equity in return for support, which can have far-reaching consequences down the line.
For Whom:
Founders looking for support validating their business concept, building their first product, getting initial traction, and applying to traditional accelerators could stand to benefit from joining a pre-accelerator.
Reputable Pre-Accelerators:
Startup Boost (link) is a program developed by former managers at Techstars, hosted in Toronto, Austin, Detroit, Los Angeles, London and Dublin. It doesn’t take equity and is free for accepted applicants.
AngelHack’s HACKcelerator (link), supports teams that have won hackathons with mentorship and resources through its twelve-week pre-accelerator program.
BOOTCAMPS / WORKSHOPS
And how about these so called “bootcamps” in cities and towns across the country?
No not that kind of bootcamp…startup bootcamps.
Benefits:
These weeklong or weekend bootcamps for new entrepreneurs can be awesome for getting inspired, learning the fundamentals, connecting with other new founders, and understanding what it takes to build a business.
Downsides:
The downside is that the support doesn’t usually outlast the duration of the in-person bootcamp and sometimes there is a tangible morale drop-off immediately after the program. Moreover, actually establishing a strong foundation for a business, or identifying the right product for a customer who is willing to pay for it (“product/customer fit”), requires spending several weeks and months doing interviews and market research, while continuously revising your business idea.
For Whom:
Bootcamps are suggested for individuals who are interested in getting a taste of entrepreneurship or who have recently started a company and could benefit from being connected to a local network of founders and mentors. Topic-specific programs like Fundraising Bootcamps are useful for founders who are hyper-focused on that stage of company building and have limited experience with that particular skill set.
Reputable Workshops/Bootcamps:
Techstars Startup Weekend (link) is a 54 hour bootcamp-like experience that takes you through the highs and lows of starting a company and is intended to motivate you to take the leap to entrepreneurship.
Founder University (link), based in San Francisco, is a two-day curriculum for founders who have launched their products but haven’t yet raised a Series A.
Otherwise, we recommend checking out local incubators for local workshops.
Fundraising Specific Programs:
Founder’s Gym is a leading 6-week online program training underrepresented founders on how to raise money to scale their tech startups (link).
ONLINE COURSES
Okay, so what about online courses? Imagine you get the kids off to school, you grab your favorite mug, make yourself a matcha latte, put on your slippers and settle in to watch a series of videos from leading experts and practitioners. Now I could get used to this!
Benefits
Fortunately for all of us, there are some excellent (and cheap or free) online courses that provide access to content from successful serial entrepreneurs and world-renowned professors. And the best part is, we can learn from the comfort of our favorite cafes or own homes, after our partners have dozed off, or while procrastinating finishing that annoying deliverable.
Downsides:
On the other hand, online courses do have significant downsides. One of which is that they focus on content but often don’t have effective mechanisms for actually applying it to your business. Moreover, there is often little incentive to stay accountable — hence why up to eighty percent of online learners drop off before completing a course (link). Most significantly, one of the greatest challenges of being a founder is the loneliness blues (link), and few online course providers have figured out how to effectively replicate a sense of community.
For Whom:
Online classes are helpful for individuals who are looking to start or have recently started companies and are hungry to gain knowledge with the flexibility of learning from anywhere and on their own schedules. They can also be useful to founders looking to learn a specific skill set (eg. paid advertising on social media).
What to Look for in an Online Course:
If taking advantage of the flexibility of an online class sounds like the right path for you, what should you look for in a course?
The content has previously been taught live by the instructors
Meets you where you are in terms of company building. i.e if you haven’t talked to potential customers yet, don’t take a course focused on digital advertising
Integrates accountability to keep you on track in spite of your busy-boss-lady-schedule
Has a strong community element. Building a company can be surprisingly lonely.
Fits with your schedule. Again, busy-boss-lady.
Focuses on application. Content is great, but you want a course that helps you drive progress through implementing best practices.
Cost. Is the value worth the money? You’re starting a company, so now is as good a time as ever to start thinking about saving some dough.
Recommended Online Courses:
Steve Blank’s free How to Build a Startup Course (link) covers the famous Customer Development Process, and provides insight into the key steps needed to build a successful startup.
Eric Ries’ well-known Lean Startup class is only $11.99 (link)
Y Combinator also started offering a free ten-week online course (link) with video content developed by their Partners. And they had over 6,000 female founders participate in 2019!
There are also numerous other online courses available on Coursera, Udemy, and Skillshare etc. that teach specific skill sets, for example designing your website, or building a prototype.
WHY WE STARTED FEMALE FOUNDER SCHOOL
This brings us to why we started Female Founder School (link). For women who are interested in starting a company, we provide the blueprint that takes you from idea validation to launching your first product. We pair the community provided by accelerators, with the flexibility of an online course — from the moment you’re thinking about starting a company.
Our three-month-long startup program (link) is built by and for women. We forgo traditional practices that have amplified inequity, like one-size-fits-all applications. We dismiss the idea that we have to move fast and break things (yes, we have to learn quickly, but we can do so responsibly). And we eschew the notion that you have to be based in Silicon Valley to be successful.
Join our Startup Program to gain the founder skills you need to confidently build your business.
Do you know of or have you participated in a program, workshop, or course that we should add to this list? Comment or contact us at Katie@femalefounderschool.com
Female Founder School
For women who want to start a company, we provide the blueprint that takes you from idea validation to launching your first product. We pair the community provided by accelerators, with the flexibility of an online course — from the moment you’re thinking about starting a company
