FAQ

9Mile will accept applications for B2B-focused businesses. What does B2B mean? It implies that your primary customer is another company, not an individual consumer.

Each startup receives $20,000 in funding for the 3 months of the program.

Startups receive access to our wide network of mentors and advisors who have extensive startup, technology, business, and functional experience. Startups also get great perks such as free workspace, internet access, and hosting.

At the end of the 9Mile Labs program, the startups in the program have the opportunity to pitch their businesses to angel investors, venture capitalists, industry influencers and executives during the 9Mile Labs Demo Day. This is an opportunity for the startups to raise the next level of funding they’ll need to scale and grow their business.

In exchange for admission into the program and the seed funding, 9Mile Labs receives 4-8% equity in the form of common stock. Common stock implies that no board seats, unusual voting rights, veto rights, or other controls are granted to 9Mile Labs.

A complete list of 9Mile Labs mentors with short bios can be found on the Mentors page.

The 9Mile Labs mentors come from a cross-section of the high-tech industry. A majority of the mentors are successful entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business veterans from the startup world. Many are executives from the high-tech business world who have excelled in an executive or functional capacity. Yet others are VCs and angel investors who have worked extensively with startups.

After the Spring 2013 mentors are selected and announced, 9Mile will circulate startup abstracts and co-founder bios to all mentors. Following a networking event to allow mentors and entrepreneurs to mingle on an informal basis, 9Mile will orchestrate a “speed-dating”-style event between mentors and entrepreneurs. These interactions will allow both mentors and entrepreneurs to discover each other for a productive relationship.

9Mile Labs provides you a stipend that will sustain you for the three months of the program. The 9Mile Labs Demo Day at the end of the program will be an opportunity for you to pitch your startup to angel investors, venture capitalists, mentors, and industry executives. To prepare you for Demo Day, 9Mile Labs, along with the mentors, will coach you to help you secure your next round of funding.

Your startup is not too late to apply if you believe you can benefit from:

• Dedicated coaching and mentoring from a world-class set of entrepreneurs and professionals.
• A community of B2B startups working and building together.
• A guided and focused push to discover the product-market fit by applying customer development and lean startup methodologies.

Yes, we expect all startups in the program to work from the 9Mile Labs facilities for the 3 months of the program. After the 9Mile Labs Demo Day, startups are free to move where they wish.

We believe that one of the greatest benefits from the 9Mile Labs program is the cross-pollination of ideas and strategies among the startups in the program. In addition, the value of the daily mentoring and coaching from the experienced 9Mile team further improves your odds of success.

No. It’s your company, so you can run it from the location that best suits your needs.

While you’re no longer required to work out of the 9Mile Labs workspace after Demo Day, we offer the option to our startups to continue to use our facilities for an additional 3 months while they make other arrangements. During those 3 months, you may continue to consult with the 9Mile partner team and mentor network for advice and feedback.

A few times per week, we will organize dinners and networking events and invite our mentors to speak on a relevant topic. These will be presented as appropriate by highly-successful entrepreneurs, angel investors, legal experts, venture capitalists, investment bankers, etc. Sometimes, we’ll just organize a brief talk with Q&A by a CEO or CTO of a well-known local startup. We’ll even venture out to some of these companies and do the session there. All of these sessions will be very informal and give you plenty of time to interact with the mentors personally.

Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. Remember, raising the next round of funding at Demo Day is not a guarantee of a successful exit. Similarly, failure to raise the next funding round does not mean that you will never succeed at getting an exit. We promise you that the sheer learning you will gain and the number of doors this program will open for you will be well worth the effort.

You’ve probably heard that only 1 in 10 startups ever get an exit. All we’re trying to do is systematically improve those odds of success through right coaching and mentoring in the formative stages of your startup.

We look for few things in the startups we work with:

• A solid team (typically we won’t accept individuals) of 2-3 co-founders–at least 1-2 of these people will be technical.
• A significantly large target market with adequate head-room for growth.
• A well-thought out hypothesis for the business model that is articulated using the Business Model Canvas.
• The potential to build a sustainable advantage over competitors.

No.  Just fill out our online application.

Applications for the 9Mile Labs program can be submitted starting Jan 14, 2013. Application deadline is Feb 22, 2013.

After we receive your application, we run it through a very well-defined 9Mile success framework. This framework allows us to conduct our assessment in a fair and rational manner.

If we like your application, we’ll invite you for a face-to-face meeting regarding your startup. After we conduct this face-to-face meeting, we will let you know on or before Mar 8, 2013 if you were accepted into the program or not.

Before the program starts on Apr 8, 2013, we will organize a few networking and social events for you to interact with the rest of your cohort and with mentors.