A bit more on Frontier
Our new founder residency for those navigating the idea maze.
Two weeks ago, we announced Frontier, our new residency for founders.
Frontier, at its simplest level, is about people. It exists to supercharge ambitious founders at the earliest stages of their journey. Since launching the residency, we’ve received many questions. They mostly fall into two buckets: 1) why are you doing this? and 2) what are you looking for?
We’re still figuring out much of this, but I wanted to share some thoughts.
Why are we doing this?
This part is simple. There are two key things we’re solving for:
The earliest stages of company building are the loneliest, and they can be significantly accelerated when you’re surrounded by a small group of high quality peers. We felt this was a gap in the ANZ market and wanted to solve it.
We often see highly capable people spending too long working on the wrong problem. Being in the wrong market can feel like pushing a heavy rock up a hill. Being in the right market is like surfing a wave. It’s not easy, but at least you have momentum. The process of finding product market fit is often described as luck, whilst scaling product market fit is viewed as an execution problem. With Frontier, we want to help more Aussie and Kiwi founders get lucky.
To do this, we offer capital ($250k uncapped, MFN SAFE), credits (for major labs and cloud providers), and most importantly, a small community of other founders at similar stages. We think the transfer learning that comes from being surrounded by others navigating the idea maze will be the most valuable accelerant. There are no strings attached to Frontier, but of course, some companies in the program will go on to raise further funding. We would hope to be a continued part of their journeys.
What are we looking for?
We don’t have a precise rubric, but at a high level, we are looking for people who can efficiently move through the idea maze. In order to do this, you probably have some combination of the following traits:
You have hypotheses about certain problem spaces, and have a plan to validate/invalidate these
To do this, you probably need the intensity and commercial instinct to learn from customers and iterate based on market pull
You have the technical proficiency to build early versions of the product
You have a high rate of learning, such that you are constantly becoming an expert in disparate fields
You are obsessed with understanding what good looks like, and throughout your life, have made an effort to surround yourself with people who raise your own bar
To get to know you better, here are some questions we may ask:
What companies do you take inspiration from?
What are some areas you’ve gone deep on recently?
If we don’t fund you, what’s your next step?
Part of building a company is knowing what great looks like. Who do you learn from?
What types of customers are you passionate about serving? This can be as broad as “consumers” or as niche as “trades businesses with 50-200 employees”
If you’re interested in Frontier, I’d encourage you to submit an EOI. We’ve loved reading all the EOIs since launching two weeks ago, and are excited to meet many more of you over the coming weeks and months.