We’re excited to announce that Bowery Capital and Silicon Valley Bank have launched applications for Year 2 of our free annual go-to-market bootcamp called Accelerate. Accelerate covers sales, marketing, hiring, and fundraising in a weekly workshop environment. We are planning to host it in-person in New York, NY from July — August 2020, but we have a backup plan to host it remotely over Zoom if need be. Now more than ever, it’s important to support entrepreneurs on their journey of learning how to build a disciplined business that’s ready to sell and market their products for the long haul. That’s what Accelerate is all about, and we’re excited to support entrepreneurs on this journey.
For Accelerate 2019, we accepted 20 startups into the bootcamp and received a post-bootcamp NPS of 92. Some fun snippets from last year’s program: one founder started negotiating an acquisition offer, another founder started raising a $5M seed round, two founders had babies mid-program, multiple founders landed their first big deals (some in the six-figure range), and another founder was selected to participate on Meet The Drapers and we helped her craft her pitch and story. You will hear from some of our past Accelerate alumni in subsequent blog posts!
WHY [apply]
The SVB and Bowery Capital teams have worked with hundreds of startups in NYC on their go-to-market strategies. One thing is clear – there is always room for improvement. Additionally, the bar for seed-funded B2B SaaS companies continues to rise – in 2010, only 9% of seed-funded companies were generating revenue; today, over half of them are. Whether you are looking to hone in on your ICP and target buyer persona, iron out your first contracts, build out a channel sales strategy, hire and ramp your first sales rep, or build a repeatable process that employees, investors, and customers alike can believe in, we are excited to share best practices that you can immediately apply to your business. We’ll provide the lessons you’ll need through this comprehensive bootcamp to help you get the revenue traction needed to raise seed and Series A rounds.
WHO [should apply]
Accelerate is for pre-seed B2B founders. We are looking for B2B founders and leaders who are currently focused on their go-to-market strategy, and are excited to both learn and share learnings with their peers in a workshop environment.
WHAT [is Accelerate]
Accelerate consists of eight 90 minute sessions packed with tactical lectures on go-to-market strategy. We will cover topics like: how to build you first sales playbook, spinning up your hiring and talent engine, building your all-things-business tech stack, and how to pitch VCs for your seed round. This is also an opportunity to network with 20 top pre-seed founders, Bowery Capital’s investment team, SVB’s enterprise sector team, and sales leaders from the NYC enterprise community. If we are able to host it in person, we will provide food and drinks each session with a celebratory graduation dinner at the end.
WHO [is leading Accelerate’s Go-To-Market Sessions]
Bowery Capital is an early-stage VC fund focused on cultivating the next generation of founders and startups looking to modernize the way business is done. Bowery also focuses on helping founders hands-on via their Acceleration Team with revenue generating support and go-to-market strategies. SVB provides targeted financial services and expertise through its offices in innovation centers around the world. With commercial, international, investment, and private banking services, SVB helps address the unique needs of innovators.
- Bowery Capital and SVB leading one of the Accelerate sessions in 2019.
Outline of Go-To-Market Sessions:
Session 1 : What’s in a Sales Go-To-Market Strategy? Outlining the Basics.
Session 2: Researching Your Buyers, Initial Marketing Messaging, Prospecting & Cold Outreach
Session 3: Pitching Your Product & Demoing
Session 4: Sales Process Map, Funnel Build, Creating Your First (All Things Business) Tech Stack
Session 5: Negotiation & Rebuttal Handling & Closing
Session 6: Talent 101 Recruiting & Building a Best In Class Team From Day 1
Session 7: Sales Ops, Forecasting, Finance — All the Benchmarks You Need to Hit For Your Next Round
Session 8: The Road to Seed & Series A — Let’s Build Your First Go-To-Market Playbook & Pitch Deck
Applications details:
1.) If you want to apply, please submit your application before 6pm on June 10th.
2.) Final decisions for this cohort will be sent out on June 17th.
3.) Workshops will be held at SVB (28th and Park) every Tuesday from 5:30–7pm from July 7th to August 25th.
We look forward to helping you work on your go-to-market strategy, and can’t wait to meet you!
