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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 — and we wake up to support you on that journey. At the kickoff, we’ll share more in-depth how we’ll support you in building indispensable startups, but I’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 95% 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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Canada
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Confirm your attendance for the
cohort retreat
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! See below for details.
Fill out the 5050
onboarding form
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:)
Schedule a 15 min call with me. This will help me best prep your experience for the rest of the cohort. Find the link to schedule a time in the onboarding form.

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 ask for feedback and get our help to unblock any setbacks you’re facing.
During the week you’ll: listen to the content we’ve collected for you to learn from history’s greatest founders, hop onto Slack to ask or offer help, make progress on the milestones for the newco that we set during office hours, and engage in optional events like scheduling a chat with a cohort-mate or dinners with successful founders.
Those in San Francisco, come over for Tinkering Days → Come co-work from 50Y HQ on Wednesdays & Fridays!
As we approach the kickoff, I’ll add optional events including personal growth sessions, dinners with founders, research deep dives, 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 too. These don’t count towards the 80% number.

Workshops:

One workshop per week, some in-person, some online. Sessions are always in person for SF based folks.
At 50Y we’re obsessed with studying the great — founders who started and built generational companies. We’ve landed on 10 essential traits that without question every single great founder embodies. On week 4, we’ll dive deep into learning these traits. However, we are what we repeatedly do. Our character is a composite of our habits. Habits constantly, daily, express who we really are. Hence, each week of Explore we’ll help you cultivate each of these traits within yourself.
Pre-work: Every week, we’ll curated a podcast (or two!) about a founder who most strongly represents each trait. Before each session, we’ll ask you to submit questions and takeaways about them. At the beginning of every workshop we’ll answer questions and offer how 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. 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 all your 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: Each 5050 fellow has a one-on-one office hour with a 50Y Partner.
Week 2 - 9: Weekly 1-hour group office hours led by a 50Y Partner. Each group has 4 people/teams.
Ela Madej, Seth Bannon, Alex Teng, and Scott Phoenix, we couldn’t have possibly dreamed up a better roster to support you in building a civilizational-important starup (see
50Y team
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)— 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 Retreat:

We’re crafting an incredible retreat you. We rented out an entire 🏕 campground surrounded by tall redwoods ~ 3 hours away from San Francisco from Friday May 31 – Sunday June 2. Think hikes, campfires, s'mores, team competitions, guest speakers, and a few surprises we can't share just yet. 🤫

Here is what you need to know:
We will 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 May 31 at 9am from Fifty Years HQ. I'd advise you to fly on Thursday so you're well rested on Friday. We'll be back together in SF on Sunday June 2 at 5-6pm.
This has continuously been the highlight of every 5050 cohort thus far. Definitely one not to miss!
There is a small chance we can do this in later weeks in June so let me know asap if May 31 works.
Please confirm your spot by responding to my email!

Wait, these are 9 weeks, I thought Explore was 6 weeks.

😅! We were looking through the Build schedule and became really excited about all the incredible sessions we’re about to host for Build. BUT, felt like everyone in Explore would benefit hugely from these sessions. So, we decided to extend Explore so everyone can experience more of the program. We’ll then take a 2 week break and kick things back up for Build on July 7! We’ll let everyone know who’s been selected to Build by June 1st so you can plan ahead. And I’ll share the full Build schedule on the Kickoff.

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

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 that you’d call up on a Monday at 1am when you need to make a hard decision and just need a gut check from 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!)
Fundraising
Recruiting
Strategy
Storytelling & PR
Internal Operations
Sales & Partnerships
Personal / Professional Development
Office Space (no lab or hardware garage yet! But come work form HQ anytime)


See you on April 27!

- Ale












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