Can you build a technology entrepreneur from scratch in four months flat?
Yes, contends a global training program called the Founder Institute, which was started in 2009. For tuition of less than $1,000, students attend classes with one goal in mind: to create a fully operational company. In fact, they are required to incorporate before they can graduate.
To be accepted, students don’t need to have a fully baked idea, but they must take a test that the institute says can predict their entrepreneurial success. They can keep their day jobs while attending class, but that does not mean the program is easy. The workload is grueling, and 60 percent of the students fail to graduate.
But this for-profit institute, based in Mountain View, Calif., says it has helped start more than 500 companies. It has done so by going global, with chapters in 14 countries, in a total of 27 cities. It aims to make money partly through its equity stakes in the companies created by its graduates.
Boaz Fletcher, 44, a consultant to new companies in Israel, started the Tel Aviv branch this year. “As a country, Israel is amazing at technology, but not great at building sustainable businesses, and that is one of the things the Founder Institute teaches: how to build an enduring, stable company,” he said. The branch’s first class of nine students will graduate in September.
The institute is the brainchild of Adeo Ressi, 40, who has started eight companies of his own. Back in the mid-1990s, he was a co-founder of Total New York, an online regional city guide that was acquired by AOL.
Mr. Ressi saw a need for nurturing entrepreneurs even before the idea stage. ...
...The institute aims to democratize the access that up-and-coming entrepreneurs need, partly by opening up networks and opportunities to those on the outside of the tight-knit start-up world. It “helped me build my network — when I came from Turkey to the U.S. in 2008 to start my company, I didn’t know anyone,” said Eren Bali, 28, co-founder of Udemy, an online learning company that has raised $4 million from investors. ...NYT
Okay. I'll be honest. If we had a Republican candidate who had done something like what Ressi has pulled off, I'd have a heap of respect for her or him. Maybe even vote... But no. In the Republican party, the people who rise to top appear to be the worst of the worst and they reflect the values of people like Mitt Romney rather than Adeo Ressi's.
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