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Hey crew!

As we gear up to kick things off for 5050, here’s a preview of what we have in store for you.

Every day you wake up to build your life’s work to solve massive world problems — we wake up to support you on that journey. In 5050, you’ll learning what it takes to be an indispensable founder, figure out if entrepreneurship is right for you, identify the right company and team to build and get ready to start a deep tech startup. At the kickoff, we’ll share more about how we’ll support you in this journey, but we’ve outlined the basics in this doc to help you plan ahead.

What you need to do:

Click on your location to see your specific calendar. Let me know if you have a conflict. Sessions are 90% locked but if a critical number of folks can’t make it, we’ll change things up!
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San Francisco
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Boston
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Seattle and LA
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Confirm your attendance for the cohort camp! See below for details.
If you’re outside SF, buy plane tickets for the kickoff!

What a typical 5050 week looks like:

Attend a weekly workshop led by 50Y Partners.
Join your group for 1-hr office hour ready to share progress, ask for feedback, and get our help to set a fast iteration pace, accelerate progress and unblock any setbacks you’re facing.
During the week you’ll make progress on milestones for your newco/research, listen to content we’ve curated for you to learn from history’s greatest founders, hop onto Slack to ask or offer help, and engage in optional events like dinners with successful founders.

Before the kickoff, I’ll add optional events including personal growth sessions, research deep dives, coffee chats with cohort members and more to the calendar. We have coaches, industry experts, technology experts and other incredible people ready to jump in and support your journey too. Optional events don’t count towards the 80% attendance number.

Workshops:

One workshop per week, some in-person, some online. Sessions are always in person for folks in SF.
At 50Y we’re obsessed with studying the greats — founders who started and built generational companies. We’ve landed on 10 essential traits that without question every single great embodies. While on week 4, we’ll learn how to dial up all of these traits, each week of Explore we’ll help you cultivate each of these traits within yourself.
Pre-work: Every week, we’ll curate a podcast (or two!) about a founder who most strongly represents each trait. At the beginning of every workshop we’ll answer questions and offer ways in which you can grow these traits as you build your company.
During the workshop: We’ll equip you with the intricacies of deep tech entrepreneurship from technoeconmics to fundraising to moving fast. Most workshops are highly interactive, ie in the Story of Self workshop, we’ll help you craft the story, iterate on it and land on a version that you can use the next day on your fundraising, hiring, and customer calls.
Everything we do in 5050 is designed to accelerate the early days of building a startup. Nothing should feel like extra work, or a distraction. If it does, check in with Ale to fix that.

Office Hours

Week 2: Each of you will have a one-on-one office hour with a 50Y Partner. During 1:1s we’ll help you identify the milestones you need to hit to start a deep tech startup (these are not final, perhaps you discover an entirely new idea or strategy and that’s great too)
Week 3 - 9: Weekly 1-hour group office hours led by a 50Y Partner. Each group has 4 people/teams.
Seth Bannon, Alex Teng, and Scott Phoenix, this is the roster to support you in building a civilizational-important startup (see
50Y team
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)— they’ll offer feedback, share their experience, challenge your assumptions, and set a pace for execution. Each 50Y Partner is assigned to each group based on industry expertise. If we need more time, we’re always happy to schedule a follow-up call with you.
We’ll schedule group office hours based on the availability you share on the cohort onboarding form.

Cohort Retreat:

We rented out an entire 🏕 campground surrounded by redwoods ~ 3 hours away from San Francisco from Friday October 18 – Sunday October 20. Think hikes, campfires, s'mores, competitions, guest speakers, and a few surprises we can't share just yet.

Here is what you need to know:
We’ll cover all costs for the weekend including lodging, transport to the venue, and food. If the costs of getting here are prohibitively expensive, let me know if you need support for travel.
We'll leave together in buses on Friday October 18 at 10am from Fifty Years HQ. I'd advise you to fly on Thursday so you're well rested on Friday. We'll be back in SF on Sunday October 20 at 5pm.
This has been the highlight of every 5050 cohort thus far. Definitely one you don’t want to miss!
Please confirm your spot by responding to my email!

Build

We’ll let everyone know who’s been selected to Build by October 15 so you can plan ahead. 5050 Explore is all about learning what it takes to be an indispensable founder, figure out if starting a startup is right for you, and identify the right company to build. Build is about moving fast. You’ll set an ambitious goal and we’ll help you sprint towards these. Every week, you’ll attend group office hours and workshops too.

Beyond the scheduled workshops and office hours, how can you best leverage 5050?

Make an intentional effort to meet others in the cohort.
Past 5050s have met their co-founders, and first hires in the program. Others have closed a first round and landed their first customer because a cohort-mate made an introduction. Many others developed friendships — the sort of friend you’d call at 1 am on a Tuesday night when you need to gut check a hard decision with someone you can trust.
Lean on us for support
Listed below are the most common ways we help founders, but we’re happy to hop in and help with anything else. Best way to reach us? Shoot Ale a message.
IP conversations
De-risking your business/technology
Early ideation and figuring out the business (taking out the whiteboard and working with you when you’re figuring things out, and in the creative ideation stage is one of our favorite things to do!)
1:1 Personal growth coaching
Fundraising
Recruiting
Strategy
Storytelling & PR
Internal Operations
Sales & Partnerships
Office Space (no lab or hardware garage yet! But come work from HQ anytime)

Commitment:

We’re here to help you set the right direction, offer feedback and equip you with the tools and knowledge to solve world problems faster. Every week, we expect you to attend group office hours and workshops. We promise the time you spend learning with us will massively accelerate your progress. The only thing we will ask from you is to show up.

See you on September 14!

- Ale












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