Dreamit Announces the Fall 2019 Cohort
The Dreamit Fall 2019 cohort at Kickoff Week in Philadelphia. Photo credit: Bob Stasio, Dreamit (@BobStasio).
Our team at Dreamit is thrilled to announce the new cohort of startups for our Fall 2019 Securetech, Healthtech, and Urbantech programs.
Over the next 14 weeks, these startups will work with the Dreamit team to de-risk their products, build their sales pipelines, pitch to new customers, improve their investor pitches and funding strategy, and present their businesses to venture capital investors.
In the first weeks of the program, the startups will be preparing for a “Customer Sprint.” During Customer Sprint prep, Managing Directors and Program Managers prepare founders to meet with enterprise-level customers and partners by critically analyzing and reshaping how to best present the company and product. Teams dig deeply into how to present the problem statement, value proposition, differentiation, use cases, and more. The Dreamit team will challenge key assumptions just like a customer might test them, and they will provide suggestions to streamline and hone every aspect of their customer-facing pitch.
In weeks 6 and 7, the startups will hit the road for the Customer Sprint. All tech founders are familiar with a “dev sprint,” and Dreamit designed the Customer Sprint with the same principles in mind. Founders create a game-plan and then focus intensely for 2 weeks on pitching, selling, getting feedback, and creating relationships with 50+ corporates in Dreamit’s customer network.
The customer network includes top enterprise organizations in our core verticals, such as Independence Blue Cross, Strategic Property Partners, Penn Medicine, American Express, IBM, Intermountain Healthcare, Blackstone, Related, and more. The products these organizations use often become the industry standard. During the Customer Sprint, founders visit the offices of these organizations to meet senior decision-makers, discuss pilots and/or sales, and initiate partnerships.
In the second half of the program, founders shift their focus to fundraising. In weeks 13 and 14, the program culminates in a two-week, bi-coastal Investor Sprint. Founders meet with 20 to 30 investors in one-on-one, in-person meetings at investors’ offices. Dreamit’s Investor Sprint is a faster, more efficient way to build relationships with investors, raise capital, find lead investors, and get meaningful introductions.
