Join your group 1-hr office hour ready to share progress and ask feedback. We’ll share advice, set a pace for fast iteration, 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.
As we approach the kickoff, I’ll add optional events including personal growth sessions, dinners with founders, research deep dives, coffee chats with others in the cohort and more to the calendar. We have coaches, industry experts, technology experts and other incredible people ready to jump in and help you in your journey. Optional events don’t count towards the expected 80% attendance to core sessions.
One workshop per week, some in-person, some online.
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 to 100, each week of Explore we’ll help you cultivate each of these traits within yourself.
Pre-work: Every week, we’ll curate a podcast 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 fundraising, hiring, and customer calls.
Everything we do in the cohort is designed to accelerating 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 1 & 8: Each of you has a one-on-one office hour with a 50Y Partner.
Week 2 - 16: Weekly 1-hour group office hours led by a 50Y Partner. Each group has 4 people/teams.
Seth Bannon, Alex Teng, and Scott Phoenix, we couldn’t have dreamed up a better roster to support you in building a civilizational-important startup (see
)— they’ll offer support, share their experience, question your assumptions, and challenge you to grow into a great founder. Each 50Y Partner is assigned to each group based on industry expertise and stage. If we need more time, we’re always happy to schedule a follow-up call.
We’ll schedule office hours based on the availability you share on the cohort onboarding form.
Cohort Camp
We rented out an entire 🏕 campground surrounded by tall redwoods ~ 3 hours away from San Francisco from Friday October 18 – Sunday October 20. Think 50Y founders, 5050 alumni, 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!
5050 Build
Build starts on week 9. 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 and team to build. Build is about moving fast.
You’re solving the world’s most important problems. The faster you ship civilization-important technology, the fewer people die, and the higher our chances to save the planet. Speed matters. In build, you’ll set an ambitious goal and we’ll help you sprint towards it so that by the end of the cohort you’re ready to take off. Every week, you’ll attend group office hours and workshops but lessons in these are much more action oriented, you’ll implement lessons into your company immediately to push things forward.
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 on a Tuesday at 1am 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 can help, 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 just 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 form HQ anytime)