🍌 Envision: Founder Updates, Job Board, & Banana Capital Workshop!
Envision X Banana Capital
Happy Q2 Envision Family 🧡
We hope you all had a great start to Q2 of the year! What are your goals heading into April?
We've had a wonderful Q1 at Envision running our 5th Cohort. Our companies have been working so hard, connecting with our amazing mentors, and achieved a ton (stay tuned!).
We also have a few updates to share with you, from launching our Job Board to hosting a community-wide open invite workshop on Fundraising with Turner Novak of Banana Capital.
What's New
We’re launching the Envision Job Board.
Our job board will showcase job openings at our portfolio companies founded by some of the most talented young, underrepresented founders in the world and will also serve as a medium to help underrepresented operators break into the tech world.
If you have an interest in working at an amazing startup or changing careers, then be sure to check out our Job Board section for exciting startup roles at our portfolio companies.
Gives - resources, opportunities, and learnings from our community
Tired of getting no response to cold emails sent to investors? Here is an article on how to write a cold email that gets a reply, featuring our very own Behailu (co-founder of Archetype, EC4).
Considering/currently fundraising? Check out this super relevant article to avoid founder mistakes during fundraising to help you secure the bag.
Struggling to find the right investors for your startups? Signal is a free tool for founders to find the right investors and for investors to attract the right deals. “You’re welcome😉”
Sequoia is starting a new 8-week company design program that comes with $1M upfront investments for seed-stage companies and founders in Europe. Check it out here [US-based cohort will open this summer]
Community Building: Here is a helpful resource on finding and hiring community managers for your company.
Soma Fellows Spring 2022 is calling! Win $100k to build your best ideas. More info here.
Hiring your first engineers is hard. Check out this Twitter thread from our workshop with Eliot Horowitz, Founder & CTO of MongoDB, on building early-stage engineering teams.
Ask Envision
An opportunity to get your company-building questions answered by our community of founders.
Founder Q #1: Hiring and employee/intern retention
“How do you hire and retain contractors/interns when you don't have competitive pay/benefits?”
Answer from our community:
“I’d focus on getting to profit or start to think about fundraise (if you choose) as soon as possible. Generally, it’s hard for great people to stick around & feel appreciated without competitive pay even with a good employee development plan. You might end up spending more time on additional management (which is not the best leverage for founder’s time/optimizing team output).”
“Emphasize the connection to the mission and tangible benefits the individual gets from taking on the role.”
“Definitely understand their career goals and make sure they know that the work they’re doing connects to that. Also, make sure they feel a level of autonomy and not like an intern even if they are an intern; this might look like asking their opinion on certain stuff pertaining to the work they do for you (eg: if they're a marketing intern and your gonna change something about marketing ask them their thoughts).”
Founder Q #2: Building an engineering team
'“How do you run an effective vetting process for a lead engineer?”
Answer from our community:
“Let a trusted tech advisor run a sanity and reference check for technical interviews.”
“Get a technical advisor to interview for you and debate it out together. If you are vetting for a technical advisor, get other software engineers that you know well in your network to help you vet.”
Got more questions about company-building?
✨NEW✨: Job Board
Archetype - Developer Advocate, Founding Engineer(Frontend), Founding Engineer(Backend) | Billing and authentication layer for APIs.
Peko Produce - Digital Marketing Intern, Partnership & Community, Research & Content Writer | Vancouver's first "peculiar" produce delivery service, at up to 40% off grocery prices.
Stealth Healthcare Co - Business Strategy & Ops Internship | Redefining healthcare for low-income families and looking for strong hustlers to be part of our ambitious mission.
Contenda - Product Manager & Designer | Building a unified content repository that helps businesses resurface and repurpose technical content.
Fidelity Labs - Prin. Java Engineer, Ops. & Comms. Manager, Dir. UX Design | Fin-tech incubator focused on building new businesses to shape a better financial future.
Envision Updates/Announcements
Phoebe Yao, the co-founder of Pareto (EC1), raised a $4.5M seed as they scale their operations to develop the best virtual analyst for scaling businesses.
Devshi Mehrotra, Founder of JusticeText(EC1), won the 14th annual SXSW Pitch event and was enlisted on MIT Solv[ED] Innovators list.
We're excited to partner with Banana Capital on our upcoming Fundraising workshop.
Join us on Monday, April 18th at 8:30 pm PT as Turner Novak, General Partner at Banana Capital, delves into fundraising basics, some live pitch deck breakdowns, and answers all of your fundraising questions.
Asks – because it takes a village
Register for our upcoming Fundraising workshop with Turner Novak, General Partner at Banana Capital.
Got a question about how to build a successful startup? Send us questions you want to be answered by our community of founders!
We’re always growing our mentorship network! If you’re an investor, operator, or founder looking to support Envision companies with your time, fill out our Mentor Interest Form!
Looking to partner with us as an ally organization, sponsor, or resource partner? Shoot us an e-mail at eteam@envisionaccelerator.com and fill out our partner interest form here
Keep up with us on Twitter
Powered by our partners 🧡
Shoutout to Fidelity Labs for supporting Envision! Their mission is to inspire better futures and deliver better outcomes to the customers they serve - helping more than 40 million people invest in their own life savings.
They’re hiring a number of roles, check them out here
Thank you to Gust Launch as well - they help founders incorporate their companies in less than 2 minutes and provide support all throughout the entrepreneurship journey. Get set up with them here!