Our (small) attempt to level the playing field.

Two weeks ago, we launched the Lightspeed Extreme Entrepreneurs (EE) initiative, an eight week program designed to provide high potential founders with access to world-class people, ideas and practices.

The idea for EE arose from the following realisations:

1. Each of us is shaped by what we have been exposed to. Our ability to imagine new possibilities is a function of, among other things, what we have seen or experienced.
2. In the start-up industry, exposure to successful entrepreneurs and disruptive ideas is available to a relatively small number of privileged start-ups that have been funded by top venture firms. These funded start-ups have extensive access to our global networks of entrepreneurs, companies and thought leaders. As a result, there is massive information asymmetry. It is not a level playing field.
3. We believe there are a large number of high-potential founders in India who have the talent, determination, passion and commitment to build something special, but lack access and exposure. This limits their possibilities and shortchanges them and the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem in our country.

So we tasked ourselves with creating a program that provides all the benefits available to a Lightspeed portfolio company to high-potential people who can make the most of an opportunity like this. When we looked at programs in other venture eco-systems, we noticed that they were primarily intended to generate deal-flow / investment opportunities. This had two very significant implications:

• The filter to select participants was whether the team or idea was a fit for venture capital, and
• The cost of participating in the program was giving up equity.

Nothing wrong with either of these, but in the context of our desire to enable and inspire a group of talented founders, neither of these approaches felt right. So we instead decided on the following:

• The primary filter for EE is whether the applicants will benefit from and make the most of the opportunity, and
• There is zero cost to participating. Simply put, no strings attached.

I was prompted to write this blog post because while we have received over 200 applications, we keep getting emails from folks telling us that they’re really interested in applying to EE but are not sure their idea is ‘venture financeable’. We want to be clear – we aren’t here to judge the quality of your idea. While we are drawn to unconventional approaches targeting large markets, the core belief behind EE is that when talented people are connected to interesting people, ideas, and opportunities, magic will happen.

So what we’re most interested in is hearing from those of you who have the fire to do something meaningful, are consumed by an idea that you want to make happen and believe in your own capacity to drive change. 

If you fit this description, think you could benefit from the EE program and are prepared to fully commit one day a week to the program for 8 weeks, please apply here.

Extreme Entrepreneurs will run from early September to late October at Lightspeed’s Bangalore office. Participating teams will be exposed to world-class entrepreneurs, thought leaders and investors from India and Silicon Valley and will receive mentoring from the Lightspeed team over a period of 8 weeks. To learn more, please visit here.