Articles by Topic

I was reviewing a program's curriculum last month and something jumped out at me immediately. Week 1: Business Model Canvas Week 2: Customer Discovery Week 3: Financial Modeling Week 4: Go-to-Market Strategy Week 5: Fundraising Basics Week 6: Pitch Practice Looks reasonable, right? Except when I asked the program director, "How's founder engagement?" she said, "Half the room looks lost by week three. And the other half keeps saying the workshops feel disconnected from what th

A program director reached out to me a few months ago with a dilemma. Her accelerator had been running as a "generalist" program for three years—accepting founders from any sector, any stage, any background. The pitch was simple: "We help all great founders, regardless of industry." Sounds inclusive, right? Except it wasn't working. Mentors were stretched thin trying to advise a SaaS founder, a hardware startup, and a HealthTech company in the same cohort. Workshops felt gen

I was on a call last week with a program manager who'd just finished a brutal stakeholder meeting. Her funders wanted to know: "What's our program actually doing ? How do we know it's working?" She had metrics—application numbers, cohort sizes, demo day attendance. But when they pushed for the deeper story— how does your program create impact, and why should we believe it works—she realized she didn't have a clear answer. That's when she asked me: "Do I need a Theory of Cha