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Greetings all,

(First, check out this post on LinkedIn that I just put up. Thanks in advance for interacting/commenting/sharing/etc..)

In this week’s episode of Ventures, my guest Mike Anderson and I discuss the launch of a new startup incubator program hosted by Prota Ventures (learn more and apply here →  https://www.protaventures.com/labs). We talk about the program’s background, motivation, vision, details, mentorship and investor opportunities, cohort model, and more. Prota has an enormously successful track record of incubating and investing in startups at their earliest stages.

This new incubator is for those who either want to work as a startup CEO on an existing idea, bring their own idea to the table, and/or propose a general market area for us to incubate a new startup idea together within.

Check it out: Introducing the New Startup Incubator Program Hosted by Prota Ventures (Begins Oct 4th, Apply Today) :: with Mike Anderson

Who should apply?

Tons of people have startup ideas, of course, but the three types of people who should apply to this program are those who are serious about being the CEO of a startup AND:

1. Have their own idea that they want to get off the ground…perhaps also to find more co-founders and get support / marketing / business development / strategy help.
2. Want to work as startup CEO on one of the ideas already being incubated (see the list here)
3. Have a passion and/or special interest in a market area and want to come up with a startup idea with our cohort together.

At Prota Ventures, my partners and I have been incubating out new startups for about seven years now (where VendorHawk was one of our first companies), and we have always worked with founders thus far on an “ad hoc” basis as introductions arise. While we will, of course, continue to do that for founders a bit further along in their journeys, we are starting a new cohort-based, quarterly incubator for founders at the very earliest stages (pre-idea or idea). By grouping founders together in cohorts, we get to create a dynamic that is new to us (Prota), but not new to the startup incubator/accelerator world. By working alongside others who are also incubating startups, it allows peer-to-peer learning that can be both powerfully helpful and extremely fun.

It also, of course, allows us as mentors/investors to maximize classroom and office hour session efficiency, since founders will be relatively at the same stage in their startup’s growth (i.e. ideation / pre-product, and most likely pre-team).

Also, we definitely expect that people in this cohort will already have day jobs and this will be (very) part time for them. We’ll have community based chat in Slack and plenty of async communications to allow people to work on the schedule that fits them best.

If you - or someone you know - fits one of the three descriptions above, please give the podcast this week a listen and apply here so we can communicate together leading up to the Oct 4th start.

Have a great rest of your week!

~Will