Founders Club Cohort 19 has officially graduated.
Over three months, a group of professionals and early-stage founders came together to do something that sounds simple on paper, but rarely is: find the right people, understand a real customer problem, test assumptions and start building.
On Graduation Day, 13 teams and solo founders presented where they had landed.
Some had built MVPs. Some had spoken with dozens of potential customers. Some had changed direction along the way. Others were still working through the questions every early-stage founder eventually has to answer.
And that is exactly the point.
Founders Club is not about pretending that three months are enough to build a successful company. It is about making enough progress to understand whether there is something worth building, and whether you are the right person, or team, to build it.
From AI to agritech
FC19 brought together founders working across AI, cybersecurity, fintech, agritech, construction tech, sustainability, sports tech and deep tech.
Different industries, backgrounds, countries and starting points, but many of the same challenges.
Who is actually going to pay for this? Is the problem painful enough? Do I need a co-founder? Are we the right team? Should we build this feature, or talk to another ten customers first?
These are not always comfortable questions. But asking them early is considerably cheaper than discovering the answers two years later.
Sometimes the biggest progress is finding the right people
One of the stories we followed during FC19 was that of Vinayak, Verner and Linda.
They entered the program separately, met through the cohort and decided to start building together.
At that point, there was no funding round to announce or impressive revenue chart to share. But there was something arguably more important at this stage: three people with complementary backgrounds deciding they wanted to explore entrepreneurship together.
Their story is also a good reminder of what Founders Club is built for.
Not everyone needs to arrive with a startup, a CTO and a pitch deck ready to go. Sometimes, the first problem to solve is finding the right people to take the journey with.
Graduation is a checkpoint, not the finish line
Graduation Day gave the founders three minutes to present what they had learned and built, followed by questions and feedback from the Startup Wise Guys team and mentors.
But there is still plenty to prove.
Customer interviews need to become customers. MVPs need to become products people actually use. Teams need to survive difficult decisions. And some ideas will inevitably change again.
That is startup life.
A big thank you goes to the mentors who worked with FC19, sharing their time and experience, challenging assumptions and helping founders see their businesses from different angles.
And congratulations to everyone who made it to Graduation Day. We have particularly enjoyed following founders such as Tony Nicalo, Bodil Elbrink, Petra Mesaric Horvat and the rest of the FC19 community.
Now the interesting part starts.
FC20 is underway. FC21 is next.
While FC19 graduates, Founders Club Cohort 20 is already underway.
And we are already looking for the founders who will make up Cohort 21.
Founders Club is a three-month, fully online program for ambitious professionals and very early-stage B2B teams who want to explore entrepreneurship, find co-founders, validate a real customer problem and start building, without having to quit everything on day one.
You don’t need to have all the answers before joining.
Figuring them out is part of the point.
Applications for Founders Club Cohort 21 are now open and reviewed on a rolling basis.
Ready to see what you could build in three months?
Learn more and apply before November 2 https://startupwiseguys.com/all-programs/the-founders-club/
