Want A Behind The Scenes Look at On Deck’s Founder Community? Check out our Open House!
The first ODF cohort kicked off in June, 2019
Over 160 companies incorporated across first 3 cohorts
Over $80M raised in Pre-Seed/Seed funding during ODF
The On Deck Fellowship creates an incredible community around a cohort of experienced founders and talented individuals in the formative stages of starting a company.
Meet co-founders, early hires, and accelerate through the most formative early days of building a company via a series of expert-led breakouts, virtual dinners, 1:1 matching, social gatherings, hackathons, access to our alumni community, and more.
Anyone can build software. What's elusive & scarce today is getting that initial network of connected early-adopters to commit to a product.
Tap into the collective intelligence of hundreds of entrepreneurs, all with deep subject matter expertise – short circuit your feedback loop.
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Conventional wisdom holds that founders should know each other or have worked together before. We believe this to be false: we engineer this serendipity at On Deck.
Fellows typically fall into two broad categories, which we’ve taken to calling “Explorers” and “Builders.”
On Deck programming plays an important role in fostering culture and relationships. With the success of ODF3’s collaborative virtual “breakouts”, and taking inspiration from top MBA programs like Stanford’s GSB, we’re excited to introduce a full elective “curriculum” tailored to each of these two groups.
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Applications for the June cohort are now closed. We'll automatically consider your app for our August cohort.
A few of the talented people who have joined us on their journey
Friends of On Deck include some of the best minds in Silicon Valley. 50+ mentors, advisors, and experts contribute time and knowledge during the course of the Fellowship.
Applications for the June cohort are now closed. We'll automatically consider your app for our August cohort.
Starting a company is hard. And worse, the lack of adequate resources and infrastructure available at this formative stage makes it even harder.The goal of On Deck is to help amazing people that are "on deck" for their next thing find the following:
The On Deck Fellowship is an invite-only 8-week program, designed to bring the very best talent from across the On Deck network together to connect over a series of digital gatherings, expert workshops, 1:1 introductions, and more.
The goal of the Fellowship is ultimately to help more people build better companies by forming stronger, better aligned founding teams; fast-tracking early hires; and helping founders construct a community around themselves at the very earliest stages. We have several cohorts per year. For more information, see our ODF4 announcement post
Joining the Fellowship costs $1,490 if paid upfront, or $400 per month over 4 months.
We believe great founders don’t need funding to get started building a company. Indeed, many in our community come from high paying senior engineering and product roles, and/or have had past success as founders — people for whom personal runway is no problem — but giving away equity too early doesn’t make sense.
The program fee covers:
1) Your admission to the 8-week program, with hundreds of hours of live programming and curriculum.
2) Lifetime access to the online community and access to the On Deck Directory. Nearly 40% of ODF1 and ODF2 alumni have been active daily on Slack during ODF3.
3) Lifetime access to the content library and archive
4) A three day in-real-life retreat (scheduling to be determined due to COVID-19, see below)
5) $50k+ worth of value from our partners (i.e. $10k AWS credits, $20k Stripe credits, and discounts with 20+ products/services you’ll actually want to use)
And ultimately: the life-changing opportunity to build relationships with a group of high potential co-founders, early hires and lifelong collaborators, in your cohort and across the alumni community.
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Scholarships Available
Our goal is to make the Fellowship accessible to the absolute best talent, no matter what their situation.
While many eligible applicants do have the means to support themselves, many others don’t. We’re excited to be able to offer scholarships to join the Fellowship, and have made a budget available to people who have been adversely affected by COVID layoffs and startup shutdowns.
We also have a number of fully sponsored places available thanks to the generosity of alumni and partners, and are working on other options to provide further assistance to those without means to support themselves.
There are no fees to apply so please submit an application to be considered for the fellowship — you’ll have the option to request financial assistance if you receive an offer to join ODF4.
You should join the On Deck community:
The Fellowship is geared towards those looking to start companies. Outside of that, we built Via, a referral-based hiring platform where top talent can request introductions to companies they're interested in.
As of cohort 3 the On Deck Fellowship has gone entirely digital and we're keeping it that way for cohort 4! Read more in our ODF4 announcement post.
Participation is held in strict confidence. Even if you’re happy to share, you are requested to respect the privacy of other members who aren’t ready to make their plans public.
We’ve developed a framework for assessing candidates on at least one of the following:
1) Raw entrepreneurial potential and network
Previously founded or was early generalist employee of a notably successful company, and is now moving on to a 2nd/3rd/etc venture.
2) Technical excellence
Has advanced degree and/or recognized as a research leader within applicable technology fields (e.g. machine learning, STEM).
3) Product leadership
Held senior roles at notable companies, and can point to examples of products they’ve built/scaled to hundreds of thousands of people.
4) Industry experience
Worked in X industry for Y years, and has developed + can speak to unique insights or unfair advantage they possess vs. all others.
5) Exceptional promise
None of the above, but shows exceptional promise and has referral/reference from a trusted source.
We heavily prioritize those that are early along in the process. Some may have a few ideas floating around, others may be looking for co-founders, and most haven’t started fundraising.
We feel the formative stages of a company are the most critical, and that they set the foundation and trajectory for the journey ahead. We want to ensure founders at this early stage have the adequate resources and infrastructure they need to succeed.
Historically, roughly 40% came into the fellowship with a specific idea but were open to changing, 35% were openly exploring or looking to latch onto others' ideas, and 25% had some initial MVP/prototype or were getting ready to fundraise.
Roughly 200 world-class people from all over the world.
In addition to the upcoming cohort, we have an Alumni community of 450+ founders (and growing) that we love to keep engaged with the community and to have opportunities to interact with the new cohort.
We're entirely digital so you can be based anywhere and participate.
We believe that it has never been more important to be deeply connected in San Francisco, but never less important to actually build your company here. During the program you'll be deeply immersed in SF tech even if you're halfway around the world!
Thanks for being upfront. The community works best when members are all at similar stages of planning to found a company or transition into something new in the immediate future. If you think you’ll be a bit longer, come back once you feel the timing is right.
On Deck lives by four core guiding values, crucial to the culture we strive to foster in the community:
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