Startup Next: Google’s Top Pre-Accelerator is Back in Barcelona

Picture this: You’re an entrepreneur at heart, had a great idea for a business a few months ago and now you’re working your ass off to make it a reality. Today, you have an MVP, you’re interviewing your first users and perfecting your pitch, which is critical to raising seed money or getting accepted into a top accelerator program. Once inside, you’re confident that your young startup will scale to the next level, fast.

It seems easy. However, taking into account the failure rate of millions of other entrepreneurs and their great ideas, clearly it’s not.

Admittedly, becoming an entrepreneur is a growing trend right now. You may actually have a great idea, but if you want to stand out of the crowd of entrepreneurs applying accelerators and pitching investors, whether you’re in Barcelona or Bangledesh, a post-idea stage project with an MVP sketch and a passionated pitch is simply not enough.

Startup NEXT is the first pre-accelerator program in the world. Through top-quality mentorship you will test your idea (and your team!), and you will learn which metrics you need to focus on to get accepted into a top-notch accelerator program, find the right investors and grow your company.

In Barcelona, Startup NEXT is organized by itnig (an unorthodox accelerator) and the Opening Session for the upcoming Fall Edition is scheduled for October 31.

After the Opening Session, there is one 3-hour session per week for 5 week period, each one devoted to a specific topic – Customer Development, Market Sizing, MVPs, Product/Market fit and Fundability. Here you can see the breakdown of each session.

This program requires hard work, don’t think that you can simply show up and take away value with just 3 hours a week over a 5 week period. Nope. Top mentors will give you advice on each of those mentioned topics and will guide your progress in between sessions, but equally important is that you take your time during the week to do your homework (complete a small set of reporting deliverables) and prepare yourself as best as possible in order to benefit from the mentorship in every session.

Confirmed mentors for the Startup NEXT Fall Edition 2014 in Barcelona are:

Stay tuned because this list is still growing!

Startup Next culminates with a local Demo Day at itnig HQ (C/Àlaba 65, 5-2) on Friday, December 5 (this date may vary). Each team will pitch its project in front of itnig’s partners, local business angels and representatives of other local accelerators. The opportunity to get into a top accelerator and/or to find your first business angel will have never been so close!

You can already submit you application through f6s. Don’t forget to attach a team video! It is important to show that you consider this program a real opportunity to take your startup off the ground, and that you are able to find the time to do it. Don’t think twice, the deadline for applying is on Friday, October 17. Not so far.

Once you have submitted your application, if you are one of the lucky ones and get accepted, you have to pay a fee – 200€ per person – that basically covers the organization costs (including the mentors’ fees). There are discounts available for the first 3 teams accepted (25% off) and for the second 3 teams accepted (15% off). If you are one of those early teams, itnig will send you the discount directly. Otherwise, email barcelona@startupnext.co.

At a global level, once the program is finished, Startup NEXT teams that have demonstrated their readiness and progress will have access to a number of valuable resources from the Startup Next global team.

+ info:

> About Startup NEXT Barcelona

> About Startup NEXT

> About itnig