Fundability Before Fundraising
Startup Training Academy

Our first two Build Fundability (Academy Part 1) cohorts started in July 2023 and August 2023 and were both sold out.

We are tentatively planning a third Build Fundability (part 1) starting in January 2024.

We may offer the Fundraise Intelligently (part 2) cohort in March 2024.

If you are interested in either the Fundability or Fundraising academy, be sure to add your name to the respective waitlist. We will communicate with people on the waitlist to gauge availability and interest when scheduling the next cohort.

If you are VERY interested in either the Fundability or Fundraising academies, consider adding your name to the PRIORITY LIST (see next FAQ below).

We are pleased to see strong interest in our startup training academy. As of late summer 2023, the Fundability waitlist has over 200 entrepreneurs. The Fundraising waitlist has over 70 founders.

To sort through these large waitlists, we've implemented a Priority List with a $250 deposit. Founders on the Priority List will get the chance to register for the academy two business days before the general public. Your deposit will be applied to the academy price (so you will get full value on your deposit).

Similar to how Tesla created a pre-release reservation list (with a $1,000 deposit) for customers wanting to buy a Model 3, our Priority List gives founders the first chance to secure a seat in the academy (and get early-bird pricing).

We have separate Priority Lists for the Fundability academy (part 1) and the Fundraising academy (part 2). If you would like to be on the Priority List for both academies, then two $250 deposits are required (one for each Priority List).

We will announce to everyone on the waitlist when we open up the Priority List for the next cohort. So to get on the Priority List, make sure you join the respective waitlists.

We want to teach founders best practices to create their own successful startups. Knowledge gleaned from a class is good. Knowledge put into practice is better.

To encourage founders to participate in the learning and apply the best practices, $500 of your registration fee serves as a refundable deposit.

This deposit will be refunded back to the registrant if the student:

1. Attends all sessions of the cohort, AND
2. Completes the challenge course (which should take about 1 hour per week).*

Please note weekly attendance will be tracked and that only a small number of extraordinary factors (like coming down with Covid) will be accepted as reasons for missing a session. Vacations, work deadlines, customer meetings, most investor meetings, etc. will not excuse you from attending the training. Even if you receive an excused absence, you will be expected to review the recording from the sessions you missed.

* See the FAQ below for more details on the completion challenge course.

We invested thousands of hours -- yes, that's right, several thousand hours -- to build a startup academy to help entrepreneurs succeed. We know from working with hundreds of startups that listening to best practices alone is not enough. Founders need to put the training into practice if they want to build a healthy company.

We created the $500 completion challenge to incentivize students to:

1. Attend all of the training sessions (yes, we will take attendance), AND
2. Finish a short, manageable list of exercises that should take about one hour per week to complete. Details of the tasks that make up the completion challenge will be shared in the first session of the cohort.

Any student who does both of the above will receive a full refund on their deposit.

We expect that 50% to 75% of each cohort will meet the two requirements above to receive a refund on their deposit. We hope 100% of the students receive a refund on their deposit because we really want founders to succeed.

We are willing to consider discounts for specific situations on a case by case basis. You can send an e-mail to [email protected] to explain your situation and we'll respond to your request.

Yes, we absolutely encourage all co-founders of a startup to attend the same cohort together. It really accelerates decision making and helps if all founders are on the same page, working with same set of knowledge and best practices.

To encourage this, we charge just 50% of the registration fee for every co-founder from the same startup to attend the same cohort together. To illustrate, if the registration fee was $100, then the total registration fee would be:

1. For one solo attendee: $100
2. For two founders: $150
3. For three founders: $200
4. And so on...

Note: the refundable deposit for each additional co-founder is reduced by 50% (from $500 down to $250). Each co-founder must attend all sessions to qualify for the full refund. Multiple founders from the same startup can submit the exercises ("homework") as a team. For example, if two founders participate together and:

1. Founder #1 attends all sessions, but Founder #2 does not, and
2. The startup completes all the exercises

Then Founder #1 will receive a $500 refund on their deposit, but Founder #2 will forfeit their $250 refund because they did not attend all the sessions.

We guarantee your complete satisfaction with our startup academy. Register and participate in the classes for 30 days. If you are not 100% satisfied, email us at [email protected], show your commitment to the academy so far, and we will refund your payment.

By "show your commitment to the academy so far" this means you must attend all of the scheduled training sessions in the first 30 days and complete at least two of the tasks on the completion challenge course.

Since demand for our training typically exceeds the 20 seats offered in a cohort, it's not fair to ask for a refund because:

• Your schedule got busy and you couldn't attend the training sessions
• You don't put any effort into doing the assigned homework from the training
• You decide that doing a startup is no longer in your future

We understand that things come up and we try to be reasonable with our students. We only ask that students be reasonable with us in return.

We appreciate your kind consideration in these matters.

We are very confident that we've built a training program that can help just about every entrepreneur across every startup industry. We've drawn from the successes and failures of the five startups and three exits. We've built our program on the foundation of well-established entrepreneurial science, seasoned experts, and personal experience.

Sam has built training courses and content that have been incorporated into multiple startup accelerator programs.

Many of our core messages stand in contrast to the typical path taken by most startup founders. We see this as a good thing, since most startups fail. Instead of focusing on pitch decks, we emphasize fundability. Instead of random soundbites of tips and tricks, we focus on defensible, repeatable processes and tools. Instead of the "fake it till you make it" mantra of Silicon Valley, we focus on helping founders gain true execution skills so they become better founders -- and don't have to fake anything.

We have hundreds of quotes and testimonials from the more than 10,000 people who have attended at least one of our training courses.

However, this Academy is not a magic wand that will cure all your problems. Startups are inherently hard. Your success depends on many factors beyond our control, including your ability to learn, your ability to execute, your commitment to your venture, and even factors such as the global economy and state of the pandemic.

Even so, we are confident that we can help the committed founder who is willing to put in the hard work necessary to learn and practice the skills they need to build a healthy startup.

The first two Build Fundability cohorts do not  include the weekly coaching with Sam (sorry, but SV SBDC funding was enough to cover the cost of the training, but not enough to include coaching). Students can still ask questions -- as time permits -- during the weekly training sessions.

The regular cohorts will include weekly group coaching sessions exclusively for cohort members that serve as office hours or Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions.

Students can purchase 1-on-1 coaching from Sam separately.

In a word: No.

Why?

Because many lists of high-quality, real investors can be found for FREE!

We feel it would be unethical on our part to harvest these lists, and then package them up as if they were something unique and special that we charge founders to receive.

We feel that our training, coaching, and tools are unique and special. That's what we charge founders for.

We feel that the community we are building is unique and special. That's what we think founders should pay for.

Bottom line: we want to charge people for content that is valuable, not just the recycled "fluff" of a list of low-quality investors that plays off of a founder's "hopium".

Do we know investors? Of course we do. We have contacts with several dozen (not several thousand). Would we be willing to share these investors with you? Probably not in bulk -- similar to how you wouldn't give the contact info of your close friends as a way to make money.

If we wanted to exaggerate and oversell the benefits of our program, we would probably claim that "yes, we do introduce attendees to investors." Many other programs claim enrollment includes introductions to investors. Whether those investors are good investors is another issue altogether. We even found one shady program that guaranteed their students would get a term sheet from an investor!

But no, we do not offer blanket introductions to investors in order to drive more paid registrations.

Think about it. Raising startup funds has been compared to dating and marriage. Once you get funds from an investor, you enter into a similar long-term relationship. If I don't know anything about you as a founder or the health of your startup, why would I introduce you to an investor? If this Academy taught people how to find the love of your life, why would I promise to introduce you to a friend who might be a potential date if I don't know whether you will be a good match for him/her?

Similarly, before I meet a founder, see their work ethic, understand their capability, or have any evidence of fundability, why would I promise to introduce you to an investor? And if I did, how do you know the investor will be any good?

We made a conscious decision not to play off of the typical founder's addiction to "hopium" and sell them something that we probably can't deliver. Be wary of any program that promises investor introductions if you only sign up and pay their fees.

Can we introduce you to investors? Yes, we definitely can.

Have we introduced other founders to investors? Yes, absolutely, but only if we have a high level of confidence that they have built a fundable startup and that the introduction would not reflect poorly on our judgment. These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

No. No one can truthfully guarantee you'll raise money. Anyone who does is overselling, either because they are clueless or (even worse) unethical. Don't fall for these snake oil promises or sales pitches.

I have seen other programs offer a money-back guarantee that participants will get a term sheet in order to lure founders into buying their training package. Think about it. If a participant signs up for one of these sleazy programs and doesn't get a term sheet, then the operator of the program can simply offer the student a term sheet with horrible terms ("We will invest $1K in your startup in exchange for 98% of your equity"). Now the program has met satisfied their promise and the money-back guarantee would be useless.

We've built a repeatable, detailed program that helps you execute well.

You still have to put in the work to apply the principles, use the tools, and practice, practice, practice to get better.

Bobby Unser once said that success is where preparation and opportunity meet. It's my job to help prepare you, but it's your job to take advantage of the opportunities. If we both do our jobs, then good things can happen.

After finishing the Fundraise Intelligently program (academy part 2), attendees have the option of pitching to a live audience of real, live investors who are looking for startups with great potential.

We've arranged with PitchForce (where Sam has been a pitch judge many times) for students from the Fundraise program to get a free slot to pitch. Pitching at PitchForce normally costs $250. You can view past examples of PitchForce pitches (along with Sam's feedback to the founders and an explanation of the feedback) at this YouTube playlist.

Note: Founders must take advantage of this free pitch offer within 6 months of the end of their Fundraise cohort.