The actual program itself requires some design work in order to accommodate the program goals. In most cases, the program goal is to turn a participant into a successful entrepreneur and allow them to learn what they need to do to create a healthy business.

Goals

Before you move on to design and operate the actual programs you need to consider the actual goals of the program:

• Is it to accelerate the startups you take in to funding?
• Is it to create new companies by matching ideas and co-founders?
• Is it to create internal startups which are going to innovate inside a current business?
• Is it to collaborate with existing startups to create new value for the company or institute you're working for?

It could be any or all of the above. It's good to articulate these goals and quantify the output you think will allow you to safely say you've achieved that goal or not. This allows you to do some research on potential blockers to reach those goals and things you could stimulate during the program which are great early indicators of success.

Layout

Here's an overview on how we lay out most of our programs:

Our program blue print assumes that some fundamental workshops are front-loaded in the first week(s) after which the program gets a cadence which is similar to the Scrum process. Teams can work in sprints to run experiments, learn new things to validate or invalidate their business idea and check in through coaching sessions and progress sessions.

Coaching and tracking progress

We typically run these programs in two-week cycles during which:

• The team checks in with a dedicated coach at the start of each cycle to discuss the results of the last cycle, set new learning goals and think of experiments to run for the next cycle.
• The teams have a progress session intermediately with each other to report on their progress so far, get feedback and see if people can help each other meet their goals for the cycle.

During these cycles the program manager can pepper the program with fun and meaningful additional events, which serves the program's goals. Examples are:

• Speaker dinners: have a successful startup founder share his or her story over a dinner.
• Meetups: connect the participants to experts, potential co-founders and other people over casual meetups.