We reached the end of our ‘intensive’ program with our first cohort at EigenSpace and through the 12 weeks there were a lot of lessons learned. The founders we worked with were fantastic and helped us shape a better program for them. We operated a little differently than we initially imagined and worked with a broader range of founders than anticipated.
At our core we focused on ‘doing good by doing good’ and we are encouraged by the progress our founders have made.
What type of companies were in the cohort?
We started with nine companies at the start of May. Our goal is to fund five each cohort and our promise to all nine was that over four weeks we would help all of them and then narrow it down to no more than five to keep working with them the following eight weeks and beyond.
This first group was a mix of early ideas and products with a growing but small amount of customers in a variety of different markets. What we ended with was two early ideas that aren’t yet a product and three products that have early customers. Four of them could be described as tools for marketing and sales with one currently focused on Shopify stores, two on data problems related to marketing and sales, and one with a powerful full service tool for the restaurant industry. Our fifth company is a wildly creative tool for modern gamers and entertainment related.
The founders were from a few different places in Ontario, with almost all of them having professional experience that led them to build their company.
The investment process
Our primary goal is to help founders, our secondary (but important) goal is to make good investments. We want to invest in founders that want us involved and we intend to prove that before any legal docs are signed. For our first cohort we started with more companies than we were going to invest in and we got to know each other a bit better.
There were some good people that didn’t currently match what we do or how we help. They left the program after four weeks. We continued working with the remaining founders and invested in them with different timing based on their readiness with one that we simply missed the opportunity to invest.
This is different from most programs. They tend to accept companies, make an investment, and then deliver value. That helps them avoid missing deals and keeps their investment volume high. But, we still believe that at EigenSpace we want to demonstrate value before the founder commits equity.
The programming and purpose
Not knowing who was in our program and what stage they were at along with experience made developing too much detail in our program ahead of time difficult. We had a wireframe and filled it in as we worked with the founders.
What we started with is a general focus on 'what are the motivations of investors’ and then focused on content that will help frame how founders think about their company in the context of that motivation. A superheated investment market creates an interesting backdrop to well written posts from really smart people over the last 10 years.
With the founders what we still think is important is that they focus on the business they are building and create the opportunity for them to get lucky. That means developing measurable expectations and tracking or a framework to structure their decisions around. We aim to help the founders develop a more robust ‘purpose’ for them and their company in the context of the investment path they intend to be on.
The next cohort
What we intend to do with our next cohort is not limit our investments to five and start with up to fifteen companies. As we work through our process we will make investments when they make sense to both us and the founder.
We are now recruiting for EigenSpace cohort #2. If you know founders or are a founder looking for coaching and a little investment to help you get on a path to success, please get in contact with us.
We are going to host an info session on Tuesday September 21st at 5pm ET. You can sign up on our contact form for that as well. We plan to have some of our alumni companies speak to the program and answer questions.