Lightspeed today announced the launch of the third edition of Extreme Entrepreneurs (EE), anintense learning program designed to inspire and train high potential founders – even if they have begun journeys as “outsiders” to the startup world – who have the fire and ambition to build big businesses. Applications for the cohort starting January 2021 are now open – EE 3.0 will be a six-week program, live every Tuesday, that will allow founders to learn while they run their startups.
Founders get up, close and personal through Masterclasses with top startup icons – in the past EE editions,founders like Max Levchin (co-founder PayPal, co-founder Affirm), Alex Chung (co-founder Giphy), Vaibhav Gupta (co-founder Udaan) and John Thompson (Chairman, Microsoft) have been mentors at EE. Through Office Hours with Lightspeed investors, EE founders get the same strategic pressure-testing and brutally honest business feedback that Lightspeed portfolio companies get via board meetings. And through Clinics EE founders get to sharpen their chops on areas such as product-market fit, growth marketing, sales, hiring, product design and fundraising.
Extreme Entrepreneurs launched in 2018, with a mission to “bring outsiders in.” That is why the program charges zero-equity and zero-fees for participation. The only selection criteria for EE is whether the founders will benefit from, and make the most of the opportunity. No idea is too small, no founder is too early. In the upcoming edition, Extreme Entrepreneurs is making bold changes to have a bigger impact: EE will now run 2 cohorts every year;it will, for the first time, invite startups from Southeast Asia to participate; and it will be 100 per cent digital, removing all geographical barriers.
Vaibhav Agrawal, Partner at Lightspeed, said, “EE takes your blinders off – it inspires founders to dream bigger, illuminates new ways of thinking, and opens mind to new possibilities. When founders ‘feel’ and ‘see’ differently, it automatically changes the trajectory of their businesses. Just see how Raghu, Jaya Kishore and Rashid, founders of Yellow Messenger (EE2018) have executed post the program.”
