I believe that the continual creation of ambitious hard tech products and technologies is critical to creating the society we all want to live in. However, the pace of innovation, specifically around hard tech has slowed dramatically. To preserve our society, and the planet around us, we must focus on how to create a system that consistently produces innovative hard tech products and businesses.

The Root Cause

It seems to me that there is a lack of good financial / business strategy training for extremely early founders to make the highest leverage decisions about their startup. Startup founders are pushed to "move fast, and break things" when instead, to solve the toughest problems they often need to slow down and think critically.

Pre-Accelerator

There doesn't seem to exist a systematic support structure that coaches startup founders to create businesses that will ultimately be successful. Therefore, I believe a new pre-accelerator should be created to coach startup founders through the early critical planning and decisions made at the highest leverage time in the business.

Issues with Existing Programs

Traditional accelerators / incubators have the following issues:

• Most programs are funded by investors, corporate sponsors, or external parties that have many other motivations other than solving the actual problems the startups are looking to solve.
• Arbitrary timelines - Because of the constraints of funding, the timelines of other programs are arbitrary
• Lack of a high context, consistent coaching - Most programs focus on the creation of an eco system. While this has value, it means that much of the advice given to startup founders is given with extremely low context into the team or current approach.

Does this mean other accelerator programs are bad? No! In fact, I work at an accelerator, but they aren't intended to serve founders at the earliest stages.

My Program

Keenan Johnson's Pre-Accelerator (better name pending) is a program for extremely early-stage entrepreneurs to turn their aspirations into actionable plans.

The program:

• Funded by the startups themselves - Programs will almost certainly serve their funders. Therefore our program is funded entirely by the startup founders themselves.
• No fixed timelines - Interesting / hard problems have unpredictable timelines; so forcing a result in an arbitrary timeline is counter productive.
• Consistent coaching experience - Startup founders need a consistent coach to take them through the process. This high context help ensures that founders hear the right information at the right time.

Questions We Help Founders Answer

Our program helps founders develop answers to the following questions