Hello there!
We're talking about the METRO Accelerator for Retail, powered by Techstars.
Be sure to check our website, 2018.metroaccelerator.com as it's continuously updated with all the
information we'll be covering today, but there's also a knowledge-base section that
answers some of the questions you may have in more detail.
And our website also has live-chat functionality so you can ask a question anytime!
So if you are running or know someone who runs a startup that wants to shape the future
of retail, then you're in the right place.
My name is Jag Singh, I'm the managing director of the METRO Retail accelerator,
and my name's Kelly Adam, and I'm the program manager.
For those of you that are new to this, don't worry, we'll cover the basics by talking
briefly about METRO and Techstars, and then we'll talk about the what the accelerator
actually is and what it can mean for you - including some of the perks and benefits, and also whether
it's a good fit for your startup.
We'll then cover the application and selection process, and finally we'll cover a few of
the frequently asked questions.
So what is the METRO Accelerator, powered by Techstars?
METRO Accelerator powered by Techstars is a highly selective mentorship program for
technology-first startups across the entire retail value chain.
It's a 90 day, mentorship-driven accelerator for startups disrupting the retail industry
I've been an entrepreneur, having built, and subsequently exited, several startups,
so I understand that an early stage startup is constantly fighting against death and they
literally have no time for anything other than being in front of people who can help
them make money – everything else is a waste of time.
I've been where you are, and as entrepreneurs, we know we have to be very selective and careful
of what we choose to spend time & energy on.
And that's why Techstars runs this program, in partnership with METRO.
Running accelerators is where our expertise at Techstars comes in.
Techstars is the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed.
We've run over 4000 events worldwide in over 150 countries, we've got over 10,000
mentors in our network, and already over 300,000 alumni as well.
Techstars is also about the doors it can open, and the connections we can help you make.
It's the network that we provide that helps entrepreneurs build their companies faster
and build it with a more solid foundation.
We help founders and teams connect with other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors,
community leaders.
And really it's just getting the door open to pretty much anything your company could
need.
If you need help optimising your SAAS pricing model, or if you've got challenges around
customer pipeline development and acquisition.
The network is there to help open the door for you to be able to get the meetings with
the people that can really move the needle for your company.
Mentorship is one of the biggest takeaways from the Techstars experience.
It's important to learn from those who have been there, done that.
We don't tell you what to do or when.
We create an environment that is conducive to helping your startup every day by surrounding
you with people who will mentor, inspire, and challenge you.
The industry's most talented mentors who will guide you and help you grow your business.
Our three month program is designed to help you gain traction through deep mentor engagement,
rapid iteration cycles, and fundraising preparation.
Our accelerator programs are split into two categories -- we have city programs that are
industry agnostic, and then we have corporate programs, like this one, that are run together
with corporate innovation partners and focus on a specific industry vertical.
We've actually got four of these in Berlin -- the city program, and three corporate programs.
Two with METRO, and one with SAP.
Now on top of the Techstars accelerators around the world, we're very fortunate to have
the firepower of Techstars Ventures.
It's a VC fund that is part of Techstars, and they invest in companies that go through
Techstars accelerators in addition to non-Techstars companies.
They've made some great early investments in companies like Uber, Twilio and Yesware,
but they've recently focused on co-investments in the most innovative Techstars alumni companies
after they go through the Techstars accelerators, like Digital Ocean, ClassPass, Sphero (who
made the BB8 robot in the recent Star Wars movies), and SendGrid, which recently IPO-ed.
There's been over a eleven hundred companies that have gone through Techstars accelerators
around the world, and 40 have gone through the METRO accelerator.
Out of those 1100, 930 are still active, and 130 have been acquired.
Techstars companies have raised over $4 billion dollars, and after completing a Techstars
accelerator program, startups go on to raise $3.5million dollars on average.
Those numbers might be impressive, but in my opinion, the statistic that is most mind
blowing is the one that shows 9 out of 10 Techstars companies are still active or have
been acquired.
That's pretty much the opposite of the famous quote about 9 out of 10 companies failing.
So with 10 years of results to show, this is all down to the quality of the network,
the quality of the of the mentorship provided, and the quality of the amaazing corporations
we choose to partner with.
Now let's talk about METRO.
METRO is a retail company which has a strong focus on food and is firmly established in
wholesale at an international level.
As a wholesaler, they want to be the partner of choice for the many small and medium-sized
companies out there.
Their aim, with this, is to make their customers even more successful.
Last year, they had sales of over 40 billion dollars.
METRO employs over 155 thousand employees, in 29 countries across Europe and Asia.
They're based in Dusseldorf, which is interestingly also the fashion capital of Germany.
The company provides custom solutions to meet the regional and international needs of its
wholesale and retail customers.
With its sales brands METRO/MAKRO Cash & Carry and Real as well as delivery services and
digitalisation initiatives, METRO sets the standards for tomorrow: for customer focus,
digital solutions and sustainable business models.
More than 20 million businesses buy from them every year -- and you've got to remember
that behind each business, there are at least 50 consumers.
METRO has a reach of over 1 billion consumers.
We put Founders at the core of what we do.
The METRO Accelerator for retail brings together the best of METRO & Techstars to offer Founders,
unmatched retail expertise ongoing piloting opportunities, not only with METRO but also
their long-term business partners, and tons of resources .
Each year, we at Techstars, choose more than 300 companies to join our three month mentorship-driven
accelerator, investing some money and providing hands-on mentorship and access to the Techstars
Network for life.
Kelly and I are responsible for finding 10 startups in the retail space, to join our
accelerator program in April 2018.
You will be accelerated in a 13 week, 90 day Techstars program with intense, hands-on mentorship
from Techstars Mentors.
You get access to Techstars resources for life -- not just for the duration of the program.
So in terms of mentorship, you'll be exposed to nearly a hundred mentors - these are people
who will help your startup better prepare for solution driven engagements with potential
large customers.
Mentors are amazing people, who have incredible backgrounds.
Some are angels looking for an early look at companies, and some are partners at VC
firms who want to pay it forward -- because we too were once sitting where you are today.
And some of the mentors are functional experts who love helping startups.
We've got some of the most senior people at METRO, including the CEO Olaf Koch, who are
deeply committed to taking METRO into the digital world -- in the last program Olaf
swung by no fewer than five times.
Can you imagine any other environment for startups where you find yourself having a
1-on-1 meeting with the CEO of a 40billion dollar company, not once, but five times in
the span of 3 months?
And then a bunch of meetings with other senior managers from similar multinational companies.
We also have experts from Google, Facebook, Amazon and other large companies who come
along and want to support the ecosystem.
It's a broad range of people who are exceptionally talented.
We have a process in place to curate the best experience for both mentors and startups,
so it's absolutely crucial that we find great startups that don't disappoint these amazing
mentors.
You'll also get access to 400 perks worth over $2M from over 100 companies, including
the likes of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
These perks aren't just credits for hosting though - we've thrown in perks from leading
law firms, and Silicon Valley Bank, and even travel operators who could get you discounts
for when you travel for a meeting with a venture capital firm in a different country.
We've also secured office space in the heart of Berlin for three months, and our global
partnership with WeWork means you'll then get deep discounts for office space across
their portfolio of properties.
To round up the program, at the very end you'll present in front of investors and corporates
at a Demo Day.
What I've seen with other startups is that the day itself isn't as important -- but
the process leading up to the Demo Day, where you'll be working with some world-class
presentation coaches and experts, and the process of refining your pitch, will actually
serve you for years to come.
You'll also have a lifetime connection to all the founders, alumni and advisors globally,
via our in-house social network called Techstars Connect -- imagine a super-curated version
of LinkedIn.
In addition, Techstars hosts FounderCons -- founder conferences every year, one in the US and
one in Europe where founders of any Techstars company can attend, and we also invite corporates
from around the world to match-make them with startups they find interesting, and can hopefully
do deals with.
Throughout the course of the program, we put a very large emphasis on fundraising for external
capital.
In addition, we invest twenty thousand euros as a token of our faith in your startup, and
you'll have access to a 100 thousand dollar convertible note, which converts at a $3 million
cap as well.
I'm happy to talk about the terms of the convertible note with anybody if they'd like.
You have until the end of first week of the program to decide if you want to execute that
note.
The 6% common-stock participation fee for the program actually comes with an equity
back guarantee.
So essentially what this means is if you go through the program and you finish the thirteen
weeks and you don't feel that you received 6% benefit from the program.
You can just tell us how much of that equity you want back.
And we'll give it back to you.
Basically this is our way of putting our money where our mouth is.
We want everybody who goes through to be happy with the experience that they have that Techstars
and we want to make sure that we're providing as much possible value as we can.
So nobody should come in expecting to exercise the equity back guarantee, that's not really
what it's meant there to be for.
But it's there to actually be a safety net to show that we really do actually put our
money where our mouth is there.
We're confident about this, but feel free to contact us if you'd like to know more
about it.
This will be the second year that the Retail accelerator will have run, and to make things
more interesting this year, we're announcing a strategic partnership with Procter & Gamble.
This is big news -- it means startups will be exposed to active connections with P&G
brand teams and executives, to inform solution design and go-to-market strategy.
Startups in our program will also have direct access to P&G mentors, with opportunities
to engage with global senior execs on business strategy.
The stages of our accelerator can be broken generally into 3 chunks.
Selected start-ups spend their first two weeks in what we like to call 'Mentor Madness'.
In this phase, the founders go through days where you'll meet up to 10 mentors each
day and pitch your business.
It is very important for innovative young minds to explore new grounds and be challenged
on their assumptions.
With 100+ mentors in the program, the startups find knowledge, inspiration, insights, supports
and long-term lead mentors.
It's all fairly exhausting but really really useful experience for the founders
The second phase, is about executing and continuously testing and reiterating as you go.
The main focuses here are concept testing, sales training, and launching pilots.
So there, you're kind of solidifying everything that you learned in the mentor madness phase,
and figuring out a strategy that you really want to execute on
The third and final phase is to prepare the teams for everything fundraising - working
on your pitch and getting investors interested.
This all culminates with a demo day to get in front of investors and the community.
If you haven't got it already - it's a fast paced program.
We say that in the 3 months of program, teams make as much progress as they would in 18
months otherwise.
Time is running out, so make sure you apply by February 2nd.
We'll spend a few weeks after that interviewing teams a few times, and you'll know if you're
in for sure by mid march.
The program itself starts on April 23rd, and we'll wrap it up in mid July.
I'm frequently asked about the kind of companies we're looking for, and the short answer
is that while we're stage agnostic, we do want serious teams and companies that are
able to execute, and possibly pilot with our corporate partners.
If you've already got feedback from clients, then it'll make life a lot easier when you're
sitting across the table from a multi-billion dollar corporation.
This is all very subjective, so the best thing to do is just apply -- we'll give you feedback
on your application.
We look at and review every single application and then we go through a selection process
which allows us to pick those companies who we think can be best.
Techstars companies have ranged from pre-product to millions of dollars in revenue, from Pre-seed
to heavily funded.
It's common for some companies to feel like they're too far along.
We've accepted companies with significant funding and/or revenue who got a lot out of
the program so we leave it to them to talk about why & how they made the decision to
go through Techstars.
Our website has links to blogposts and video interviews from founders who were in that
position, having raised lots of money before joining Techstars.
So some tips for the application.
Have a good team video.
You don't necessarily have to be reading off of anything.
It's really easy to tell when people are doing that.
It's quite distracting.
Just give a really clear and simple explanation what you're building.
And then when you write things and in the written section, you don't have to write really
a long essay.
Just really simple tell us what you're building.
Tell us why you're building it.
Tell us what you've done to validate the market, and apply early.
And most importantly, if you've actually built something, shows us, don't tell us
about it.
Send us a link to a YouTube video from one of your early customers ranting and raving
about how cool your product is.
Show us the problem, don't just tell us.
There's a reason Berlin has become a major spot in the past few years.
It's an ideal breeding ground for creativity and successful businesses with its high quality
of life and low cost of living, which naturally attracts great talent but still has an active
Angel and VC ecosystem.
It's worth adding that Berlin has an extremely high quality of life relative to the low cost
of living.
This allows companies to extend their runway much further than if they were to be living
in a place like New York or London or even Boston.
There's a lot of talent in Berlin.
Especially with the creative scene that we have here.
And a lot of funding.
There's an increasing number of VC firms that are popping up.
And if you have clients pretty much anywhere else in Europe, then there's a great hub of
being able to get connected.
Berlin is known for its open-mindedness and independent thinking here, so all of this
is why we continue to hear more and more about Berlin becoming a startup hub for a great
ecosystem here.
We'll run through a few frequently asked questions, but please go to our website -- we
have a dedicated knowledge base section there, and it's continuously updated as we get
more and more questions.
For starters, we do accept single founders.
We usually prefer for there to be a larger team like two, maybe three founders.
But if the solo founder is somebody impressive, who's already built a small team around
them, then that's someone we can work with.
Somebody who has entrepreneurial experience before.
Somebody who's built something incredible.
Preferably all the founders, and definitely the CEO, needs to be in Berlin for at least
80% of the program but you don't need to move your company to Berlin permanently.
You'll want to be here for the mentorship and the workshops and everything we do here
in Berlin.
Again, we really encourage the entire founding team to be here in Berlin.
But you definitely don't need your entire team.
So we've invested in companies that have had 40 or 50 employees already.
And lastly -- when it comes to convincing investors, and this is from personal experience,
having been on both sides of the table -- I've found that investors listen to other investors.
If you need to convince your investors, we've got lots of case studies and resource to pass
on to them -- but most importantly, I make myself and other members of the Techstars
leadership team available to answer questions and walk them through the program.
Many Techstars companies had raised significant sums of money before joining, and if your
application progresses, I'd be happy to put you in touch with the relevant founders
and their investors who will be able to vouch for the benefits of acceleration.
Thanks very much for listening in, now be sure to visit our website (2018.metroaccelerator.com)
you can find everything you need there to apply.
You can also stay tuned for the details of our recruiting tour that will be updated there,
and you can find out about the success stories from our last batch, and submit any more questions
you have and we can get right back to you.
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