Approaching entrepreneur College: using raw stock to pay tuition, want to graduate to start a business

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Tencent Science and Technology (Marjorie) Beijing time July 30 news, according to the U.S. "New York Times" website reported that many entrepreneurs dream of a short period of time to start from scratch, and the Global Entrepreneurship training incubator is just caught people's mentality, and a booming recruitment trainees for training. These institutions are very strict about the content of the courses and the level of students ' graduation, and also help to create a large number of successful start-ups.

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Can you build a technology entrepreneur from scratch in just four months?

This goal is fully achievable for the global training incubator founder Cato, launched in 2009. As long as you pay less than 1,000 dollars in tuition fees, students can attend lectures in founder Cato. Of course, students have only one purpose: they can build a company that can operate before they are finished. In fact, they also have to learn to create a company before they graduate.

Strict graduation Requirements

Before being admitted, students do not have to have a fully fledged idea, but they must attend a test organized by founder Cato. The agency said the test could predict the success rate of the students. Students can work during the day and have classes in the evening, but that's not to say the project is very simple. In fact, the project is very torturous, with 60% of the students unable to graduate.

The company, which is based in California's landscape city, says the agency has successfully helped create more than 500 companies. The aim of founder Cato is to Internationalize, which now has subsidiaries in a total of 27 cities in 14 countries worldwide. At the same time, founder Cato also wants to make a profit by holding a stake in a company created by its graduating student.

Boaz Fletcher, a 44-year-old Boasse Fley in Israel, is a consultant who advises the new company, who founded founder Cato in Tel Aviv this year. "Israel is a very surprising country in terms of technology," says Fletcher. But Israel lacks experience in building companies with sustainable development potential, and founder Cato's strength lies in the church's ability to create stable and lasting development potential. "The first batch of 9 trainees will graduate in September this year," the agency said.

The need for training

Founder Cato founder Adeo Lessy (Tencent Science and technology with map)

Founder Cato is the 40-year-old Adeo Lessy (Adeo Ressi) a person's vision. Lacey has created 8 companies. In the middle of the 90, Lacey helped create the New York Online city guide site, total new, which was then acquired by AOL.

Before the idea of creating founder Cato sprouted, Lacey sensed the need to train entrepreneurs. He first started a vocational school, taught the basics of entrepreneurship, and made a strict distinction between the content and the highly selected project courses, which were designed specifically for start-ups before they could invest in VC capital. TechStars, the famous American business incubator, is a typical representative of this elite project, with only 1% of applicants eligible to enter the TechStars organized curriculum.

Lacey said he hopes to reduce the rate of failure of the new company. Cloud storage File Service provider Dropbox very lucky, because hundreds of similar companies have never entered the consumer vision. "Why is this happening?" asked Lacey.

During his tenure as CEO of the venture-venture review website, Lacey thefunded.com The idea of starting founder Cato. Through the site, Lacey has a readily available company founder community data. Lacey can ask them, "What different measures have you taken in the early days of entrepreneurship?" And so on.

From Israel Tel Aviv to Chicago, founder Cato part of the course was designed based on answers from more than 2,000 executives about similar issues. The number of trainees in each training course was about 30, but only a small proportion of them were able to graduate. In a total of 15 lessons, students will learn about company revenues, costs and profits, marketing and sales, how to make reports and outreach, and finance, among other things.

Course content is targeted

Founder Cato will adjust the course content according to different markets. In Singapore, for example, the agency has added a course on how to do business in China. The senior and experienced entrepreneurs of local institutions are responsible for teaching these courses, and they are also able to serve as mentors for trainees.

The core idea of founder Cato is that many aspects of entrepreneurial spirit can be acquired.

Jose Luis Senent, a 43-year-old former Jos Louise Senet in Paris for 20 years, has no background in the tech industry or start-ups. Senet graduated from the Paris division of founder Cato in April 2011, and is now running a car-buying website called Autoreduc. He said the site is highly profitable and will expand its operations to Spain, Belgium and Switzerland this year.

"I can't imagine creating a company without the knowledge I learned from founder Cato," Senet said. I have too much knowledge of marketing, business models, and financing to learn. He also said the agency had arranged several mentors for him, who were constantly challenging his company's ideas and directing his company to the right direction.

Lacey says I want to help founders in the early stages avoid making rookie mistakes, such as bad web design and marketing plans, or the wrong corporate structure.

The 31-year-old Catherine Slang, Katherine Bicknell, a graduate student at founder Cato in New York, has since developed an application called Kindara to help women track the best time to conceive. Slang recalls that her company name might have been "Moonlight" (Moonlight) if she had not learned about naming and branding courses at founder Cato.

Slang said: "Founder Cato taught me that the company name must be easy to read, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and that internet factors are essential." "Her company is headquartered in Colorado State, the city of Boulder. So far, she and other founders of the company have accumulated 100,000 of dollars in financing from friends and relatives.

Benefit from developing countries

By opening up networks and providing opportunities to laymen who know nothing about start-ups, founder Cato aims to reduce the threshold for prospective entrepreneurs to enter the start-up sector. "founder Cato helped me build a relationship in the United States," said Eren Bali, a 28-year-old Udemy co-founder of the online teaching platform, Ellen Barry. When I came to America from Turkey in 2008, I didn't know anyone here. I started my business in America from scratch. "Barry graduated from a Cato in Silicon Valley in founder in 2009, and Udemy has now accumulated 4 million dollars in funding from investors.

Carlos Rozo, a 38-year-old Carlos Rozzo, is a graduate of founder Cato in the Colombian capital, Bogota. Rozzo said founder Cato corrected for me-the fatal mistake of starting a large and complex company and directing me to creating a company that could subsidize the niche market and refine the target customers. He later gave up the idea of creating a content-sharing platform, and instead created a software development company thotz.net that provided companies with information-sharing services among their employees. Rozzo said he had received a 50,000-dollar seed fund from Wayra investment, which was controlled by Telefónica.

The 48-year-old Alain Commenares (Alan Colmenares) founded founder Cato in Bogotá and Medellin, Colombia, last year. "Colombia is really lagging behind in seizing the opportunity to create a great start-up," says Commenares. "The first semester of the Bogotá sub-agency has ended this spring." Up to now, Commenares said, 5 of its 9 graduates have received at least 50,000 dollars in external financing.

The 37-Year-old Tuan Pham founded founder Cato in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, last year. Tuan Pham also said Vietnam lacked incentives to create start-ups and said: "It is vital that founder Cato agree to cooperate with us." Otherwise, we will have to rely only on the knowledge gained from books. "Tuan Pham is the founder of Topica Education Group, an online education institution in Hanoi, Vietnam, which currently employs 300 people. The Vietnamese sub-agency has helped create 5 companies.

Profit by students ' entrepreneurship

Executives at local institutions are generally experienced entrepreneurs in the region who often seek outside sponsorship to cover the cost of operating local projects. Because of the difference in the number of employees, the cost of a semester is less than 25,000 dollars, more than 100,000 U.S. dollars.

Commenares got the Bogota domain name sale company. Sponsorship of the Co Internet. About 80% per cent of the local founder Cato were sponsored by legal institutions, and most of the trainees eventually entered the legal institution. These legal bodies charge trainees an internship fee of about $1,000 per person.

Executives at local institutions share a stake in the companies they help create. The graduating student will put 3.5% of the company's shares into a common stock library (equity pool), which is valid for 10 years. Once within the validity period, the company is sold, merged or listed, 30% of the shares in the stock store will belong to the trainee's mentor, 30% belong to the trainee's graduating class, 25% belong to the local institutional management level, and 15% belong to founder Cato headquarters.

Founder Cato said 42% of the trainees had received external financing during the first six months of the company's creation, and about 10% of the companies had gone bust.

Crash model questioned

Can this rapid business model work on a larger scale? "I have reservations about the idea of learning business models in four months," said Len Schlesinger, dean of the Babson Eton School of Business in Wales, Massachusetts. I think most ventures take a long time to develop into a proud operating company. "This year's American news and World Report," U.S News &world, rated the business school as the nation's best start-up program.

"Students need to learn the basics of creating a company," says Scollesge, at the Graduate Entrepreneurship class at the Mason Business School. At the same time, they have to learn the creative frame structure, and to allocate time for actual experience and experiment. He stressed that he himself was not particularly familiar with the specific implementation process of founder Cato.

The pursuit of academic routes also pays for expensive tuition. The college's two-year MBA program costs as much as $110,000, according to the school's web site.

Founder Cato also receives students who work during the day and attends classes at night, which in some ways attracts the interest of older entrepreneurs. "Most young people don't have a business and they can go backpacking at any time," said Dave Lambert, managing director of Side Capital Management, the investment agency. But there is still a high quality entrepreneurial market that has not been fully tapped: it is not possible to resign from the entrepreneurial market for existing jobs. "The agency has invested in four founder Cato.

The average age of founder Cato trainees was 34 years, and 80% were able to complete their studies full-time.

However, some people still question the amateur entrepreneurship training model. "I think Gilani founder can really play a role as a catalyst for turning ideas into reality," said Aziz Gilani Aziz Cato, director of DFJ Mercury of the agency. But we are more willing to invest in those who can devote themselves to the creative process and invest in real global experts. ”

There are few who quit

So we're back to an old problem: Not everyone can quit their jobs to experiment with their ideas, and there's not enough room for every applicant who wants to participate in TechStars or other business projects.

While founder Cato does want to provide more entrepreneurial opportunities for entrepreneurs, it also helps some people realize that they may not be able to run a high-growth start-up.

Ben Cox, a 35-year-old Ben Cox, is a software engineer living in Santa Cruz, Calif. He dropped out of the program in June this year after only one week of classes at founder Cato's Silicon Valley division. "After looking at the financial data needed to set up my company and the recruiting team and consultants, I suddenly realized that it was not feasible," he says. ”

The founder and CEO of Evernote, an online chronicle application, and Fille Liebing Phil Libin, a mentor at founder Cato, said he spent as much time fighting and encouraging students.

"I asked my students, ' if I'm sure you're going to spend the next 10 years building a product that millions of people will use, you're not going to make money in the last ten years, '" Liebing said. From a financial point of view, this would be a complete failure attempt. Will you insist on doing that? The answer for most students is: No. ”

"It's not surprising," he concludes. Some people just give up the project because of the question I raised. ”