We often get asked what founders can expect in Iterative's 12-week program. Here's a breakdown.
No Curriculum
Something founders are surprised by is that the program has no curriculum. What we do instead is work closely with you, the founder, on your startup's biggest problem, and come up with levers and strategies to unblock growth.
At the start of the program, we'll set targets to hit - we help companies to grow 5%-7% every week. That's not a cumulative number, that's on a week-on-week basis.
Here's how the program is structured, where you'll go through...
Partner Office Hours
Partner Office Hours are weekly 1:1s between you and Iterative's lead partners. A lead partner is someone who was a founder before - being a founder is a unique experience, and we think you'll only be able to receive nuanced advice from people who have been in your shoes.
These 1:1 sessions are where you'll update on your progress against your growth goals, and discuss challenges, priorities, and next steps towards the goal. You can think of Partner Office Hours as one-week sprints for your company's growth.
Group Office Hours
As you'll be enrolled with other batch mates, group office hours are where you’ll share your top challenges with 5-8 companies and your Iterative partners. These sessions are a great chance to tap into the collective learnings and experiences of your batch mates to gain ideas and perspectives to problem solve.
Expert Office Hours
Expert office hours are 1:1s with industry specialists with deep domain knowledge, from finance to sales to hiring. For example, if you're struggling with B2B sales, we'll connect you with someone who spent their entire career in that domain. Founders have to wear many hats and are not specialists - this is where you'll have access to a network of specialists who will help you learn what you need to learn.
Speaker Session
This is a closed-door session where we get experienced founders to candidly share their journey with you. Two reasons why we do this: (1) Founder stories in the media only show the highlight reel, which feels jarring as it doesn't reflect the realities of being a founder, (2) Having someone else share their struggles and challenges helps you realise that it's all part of the process of building a startup.
In the past, we've invited the co-founders of Airtable, Square, and Xendit to speak to the batch.
Fundraising Bootcamp
To prepare for Demo Day, we run a month-long fundraising bootcamp and teach founders everything we know about fundraising. Fundraising is a skill, not a talent - and we think founders can learn how to be good at it (companies in our batch program have gone on to raise over $160M after graduation). Here are a few previews of what we share with founders:
- Understand Venture Capital – We share inside stories of how venture capital works so our founders can pitch them better.
- Pitch Structure – We teach all of our companies an effective pitch structure that gets investors’ attention.
The founders then have to prepare a pitch, and every week they present and iterate based on the feedback received. We also recruit friendly investors from our network so you can practice before Demo Day. Founders from the past batches have found this helpful as they get more feedback to improve on.
Demo Day
At the end of the batch, founders pitch to our network of 400+ investors. Our network spans beyond SEA, and founders have access to investors from the US, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong. For each batch, we make an estimated 300+ introductions.
Our goal is to significantly increase the value of your startup - and one way to demonstrate your company's value is to grow quickly. If this is what you're looking for, apply to our program here.
