I've received dozens of polite, respectful responses to the first round of "Sorry..." letters we had to send out. They pretty much all ask the same question, "Why wasn't I accepted into the program?" I am going to try and respond to each one individually with some feedback over the next two weeks, but here is answer for most of the applications: It's not you, it's us.
The very thing that makes us attractive to work with makes us very busy because in addition to doing the mentoring most of us are running another business. We aren't limiting the number of companies that we select because of a lack of cash - quite the contrary - we've been turning away people who want to put their money into the fund. We have to limit the number of companies because of a lack of time. After reading so many impressive applications, I know that all of the mentors are wishing that we could accept more of them!
In filtering down the applications, we focus the most on companies that we think we can help the most and have the best chance of succeeding. You could have an amazing company idea for a new type of medical device that would save lives and make lots of money. Even though we might believe in the product and the founders we just wouldn't have a lot to contribute to making that a success and so we'd probably pass on it.
When I say, "It's not you, it's us" what I mean is that in most cases there is nothing at all negative about your company idea or your founders. Figuring out which companies to focus on was a matter of adding up all their strengths - we really didn't talk about negatives.
Things that made an application stronger:
- one or more of the mentors has experience in that market
- we think we can accomplish a significant milestone within the 10 week program
- the product is sold and marketed over the Internet
- the company has unique competitive advantages
- the company has paying customers
- the company has a balanced team with both business and technical resources
- the product is a good fit for word of mouth marketing and social media
- more...
