GSF Academy Opens Applications For 4th Edition, Looks To Incubate 200 Startups

For early-stage startups, navigating the unknown and validating their MVP is one of their biggest hurdles. There is a gap between the increasing demand for mentorship and the availability of community-led programmes in the space.

To bridge this gap, GSF is inviting applications for the fourth edition of its cohort-based programme, GSF Academy. The three-month virtual entrepreneurship programme, which will begin in November 2022, will incubate 200 early-stage startups from India and Southeast Asia.

The previous cohort included startups from a variety of industries, with the majority of the cohort in the ‘initial traction’ stage.

Cheerio, Creatosaurus, DigiPhyNFT, Doctunes, Globlam, and Meetrecord were some of the startups in the previous cohort. Since 2020, the early-stage investor claims to have trained over 200 startups. Some of these have received funding from leading investors such as General Catalyst, Quona Capital, BEENEXT, Blume Ventures, Y Combinator, and more.

What’s In Store For The Startups?

The 90-day programme will bring together leaders, founders, VCs and CXOs from the startup ecosystem to facilitate weekly interactions and group activities among peer founders.

It will host two mentoring sessions on weekdays on company-building fundamentals, past startup experiences, and sector-specific learnings. Mentors will include Sequoia Capital’s Rajan Anandan, Spotify India’s Amarjit Batra, Lets Venture’s Shanti Mohan, and IndiaMART’s Dinesh Agarwal, among others. 

The early-stage investor will also hold community engagement sessions called Circle 8 on Saturdays, with a strong emphasis on community learning and engagement.

The weekend sessions will bring founders in groups of eight to collaborate on various business-building exercises. They will tackle challenges, uncover ideas, validate strategies, and get real-time feedback from a diverse cohort. 

Apart from the mentorship opportunity from leading industry experts, the cohort will have the opportunity to network with potential investors, mentors, and customers. The programme will culminate in a demo day where founders will pitch to over 1,000 leading early-stage investors. 

To prepare them for the demo day, the participating startups will also have access to an alumni demo day where GSF portfolio companies will help founders in the academy with key pitch elements and their business plans. 

You can apply for the GSF Academy here!

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