Monday is the first day of school at TheFunded Founder Institute, a four-month crash course that aims to help entrepreneurs build companies. TheFunded Founder Institute is the latest brain-child of Adeo Ressi, the founder of TheFunded.com, who has invested $150,000 of his own money to get the incubator up and running.
"Very few universities offer quality training courses around entrepreneurship," Ressi tells The Deal. "Most of the lessons learned in entrepreneurship are by trial and error. Trial and error as a means of learning is highly wasteful."
The 75 entrepreneurs accepted into the program will be taken through practical company building assignments each week led by experienced CEOs, including Mahalo.com founder Jason Calacanis, Meetup Inc.'s Scott Heiferman and Zynga Game Network's Mark Pincus.
The entrepreneurs in the program will also learn about best practices from professional partners, including Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ:MSFT) BizSpark program and Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Topics will range from idea definition to incorporation, and sessions will be held during the evening in the San Francisco Bay Area, while also being available online. Of the first class, 50 are located in the Bay Area, with the rest scattered around the country.
"You don't have to quit your job to start a company," says Ressi. "I never started a company when I wasn't doing something else. I started the Institute while running TheFunded. I started TheFunded while running Game Trust."
Ressi sold Game Trust, a casual-gaming software company, to RealNetworks Inc. (NASDAQ:RNWK) in 2007. Previously, he founded Web developer Methodfive, purchased by Xceed in 2000 for $88 million, and co-founded Total New York, which was acquired in 1997 by a joint venture of AOL and The Tribune Co. (renamed AOL Digital City).
Passionate about entrepreneurism, Ressi has spent the last couple of years trying to restore the balance of power between founders and investors through TheFunded.com, which invites CEOs to share their experiences with venture capitalists under the cloak -- and security -- of annonymity.
TheFunded Founder Institute is the latest step in Ressi's ongoing mission "to make a better environment for entrepreneurs." - Mary Kathleen Flynn
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