Alright Europe, listen up: you have 1 week left to apply to the Founder Institute’s Spring programs in Berlin, Brussels and Paris. Applications for the 17-week startup mentoring program are due March 6th.
But this time, Adeo Ressi‘s Founder Institute is going to kick off it’s European program a little differently with a 3-day European Bootcamp in Berlin for all the European participants. From Friday, March 25 through Sunday, March 27, all entrepreneurs enrolled in the upcoming Spring sessions will meet former graduates and some of the institute’s top mentors, including Evernote’s Phil Libin and Gamification pioneer Gabe Zichermann.
The program for the European Bootcamp includes your usual orientation, networking and whathaveyou. And there’s even a bit of sightseeting scheduled in there too. Personally, I think that promoting more collaboration between European entrepreneurs can do nothing but good for local entrepreneurship.
Naturally, the Founder Institute is one of the many mentoring programs available to European entrepreneurs. New programs seem to be popping up left and right these days, including Seedcamp and Startup Bootcamp that are definitely spreading throughout Europe. Still, the Founder Institute is one of the few programs that is designed for wannabe entrepreneurs that have a full-time activity on the side; in other words, you do not need to quit your job and move in order to take part in the program that offers night sessions once per week.
So far, it seems that Paris is the European city that has attracted the most applicants – but that could just be because the Founder Institute has been present in this city the longest. And while I would’ve assumed that Berlin would be gaining momentum, it seems that Brussels is actually in second place.
In addition, the Founder Institute has also launched an initiative to encourage more female entrepreneurship via the Female Founder Fellowship program. The institute has committed itself to graduating 175 female entrepreneurs from around the globe in 2011. In order to do so, certain female applicants will be able to participate in the program free of charge (the program usually costs €900). So far, 11 of the Founder Institute’s companies have been female founded, including one in Europe: MySweetsBox, founded by Regine Harr in Berlin. So ladies (as well as gents), if you are sitting on a good idea, definitely consider applying for the upcoming session of the Founder Institute.