Levelup - Sports Revolution

What’s really attractive about these programs is that for a relatively small amount of equity you’ll get startup cash and a group of mentors that have a lot of experience helping companies like yours. Also, you’ll be in a group (batch) of 10–12 startups, with whom you’ll share this experience together. Let’s say you want to score a similar investment with a business angel: be ready to give up 25–33% of your business and fight for the attention one very busy guy…

An accelerator’s best resource is the network that it provides to entrepreneurs, composed not only by the list of mentors and advisors but also an ever-growing number of alumni, who often give the best advice to the newer startups. This is why the Silicon Valley-based YCombinator is the best accelerator in the world. It’s not the money nor the content of the program, it’s the fact that you are one degree of separation from the founders of Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox.

We’ve applied to YCombinator multiple times but didn’t get selected. It was then that we decided to adjust expectations and look for a European accelerator. What was appealing about SWG is that they’ve been through 11 batches already and they focus on B2B startups (we are one of those). Also, I previously met with the person running the program, Cristobal “El Patrón” Alonso who’s infectious passion and candor helps him to sell, inspire and sometimes intimidate people around him. Back in September — approaching the selection days — we didn’t quite realize that we’d soon get a taste of this and that it would eventually cause our team to crumble.

The Selection Bootcamp
People are surprisingly good at bullsh*tting themselves and that’s exactly what my co-founders and I did. Being two undergraduate software developers, they just enrolled to the IT University of Copenhagen to continue their education in a Master program. In Denmark, the government pays you to be a student, so this (or unemployment benefits) always served us as a backup plan, while working on our entrepreneurial venture. On paper, this sounds like a good idea, but truth be told — as the dependence from any government program — it’s a Faustian bargain.

Having that comfortable cushion makes you ignore how you are going to pay yourself a salary and build a sustainable business. Even if there is a reasonable degree at which to rely upon public money, we’ve certainly passed that. And so there we were — along with many of our European counterparts — in a zombie state, living off government subsidies, never fully in and never fully out. This had to stop, hence our efforts to join an accelerator, which is an entry to the world of private capital and a precursor to building a self-sustaining business.

We went into Selection Bootcamp with the following delusional plan: if we get selected, I’ll attend the accelerator full-time while my two co-founders stay in Denmark attending their MSc. Since they would be working on projects during the semester, they could pick our company as a case, and effectively work in the company as part of a university assignment. Not only that, but them being enrolled in an IT university would help us to spot talented developers who we could later hire into our company.

Now, we have done this semi-successfully before, however, there are two things that we didn’t take into account: (1) the IT University of Copenhagen is far more demanding than the University College of Northern Denmark, (2) the SWG people would most likely not approve this plan (technically they only prohibit you to hold a job elsewhere, and not per say being enrolled as a student, so it’s possible that we could’ve gotten away with something like this, selling to them our aforementioned rationale).

However, none of this really mattered after the first day. Cristobal “El Capo” Alonso kicked off the event with an inspiring welcome speech that included the words “f**k”, “kill” and — surprisingly — “machete”, after which we immediately understood that our little game was over. Don’t get me wrong, the speech wasn’t so much intimidating as it was inspiring. It was about a person telling us that he put his heart (and own money) into this program, and in return expects you to do the same. This wasn’t any longer a matter of negotiation and politics, but ethics and moral. We just couldn’t do this them, what’s more, we couldn’t continue to do this to ourselves anymore. Once we understood that we can’t go into this program with half an ass, we faced a simple but tough decision: who is in and who is out.

Time to decide
The Selection Bootcamp lasted for three days. Cristobal’s speech at the beginning set us up for an existential quest that would go on until the very last moment. My stance was clear: I’m going all in. Not that I had much of a choice; I already finished my education and it wasn’t possible for me to return to unemployment. The only way for me was forward. My co-founders, however, had more to lose. Not only they would have to give up their education, but their leases in Copenhagen and move to Tallinn for the duration of the program. We would at least have our salaries secured until January, but nothing was guaranteed after that. They could potentially give up their established lives for nothing.

Since this idea was death at arrival, we reached the following compromise: they could stay in Copenhagen, while I attend the program in Tallinn. However, they would still have to go full-time in the company and quit their MSc, plus fly in for some important events. This was going to work both for me and presumably the organizers since strictly speaking, I was the only person who had anything to do with the theme of the program, except for one week, that focuses on product development. However, this proposal still wasn’t going to work for my co-founders, as they found their Master program valuable, not something that they would off-handedly throw away.

I argued that any dipsh*t can get a Masters degree (for the record: I’ve got mine) and our startup is a far more meaningful pursuit. By the third day, it all came down to this: one of my co-founders was going to talk to the university’s administration and ask if it’s possible to postpone a semester. If this was an option, they were in. The call confirmed what we already suspected: at this university, this is not an option, pregnancy being the only acceptable reason. After getting a definite no from both of them, the only thing left to do was to inform the organizers that we have separated and that I’d be the only one entering the program, as a solo-founder. The silver lining in all this: my co-founders promised to help me carry the product to its public launch and support whatever transition necessary to a new software developer.

And so it happened that around 11 AM (roughly 20 minutes after my co-founder’s decision and one hour before the deadline to sign the program’s entering agreement) I called Cristobal aside and informed him about what just happened. I told him that I’d sign the agreement and I’m willing to figure things out, leaving it up to them to decide, if this is acceptable this or not.

One week later I received an email to my inbox saying that LevelUP got accepted into the program. This was roughly a month ago, since then, I found a new CTO and we figured out a satisfactory transition plan with my ex-co-founders, who will continue to be involved as part-time employees.

Find your steel
I want to end this story on a more personal note because I believe it contains a message that can be universally applied. One thing you need to keep in mind is that during the Selection Bootcamp I wasn’t just dealing with my team falling apart, I had to sell ourselves to the organizers of the SWG program and all the mentors they brought to evaluate us. The three days were basically a series of 20 interviews, back to back. Each of these structured into 15-minute-slots, where we had to convince the counterpart that we should be among the 11 startups that get selected to the program. The mentors had an evaluation form they needed to fill in after each interview, and their feedback would be eventually used by the organizers when the time came to select the startups.

While I was handling the implosion of our team, I had to keep my composure, sound convincing and answer with a straight face to questions like “so who’s in your team?”. I was able to do this because understood that this is not the time to be sentimental nor introspective. This is not where you start thinking about the fact that the people you’ve been working together for three years are leaving you, nor the implications of it. This is the moment where you need to find your steel. The point where you remember that line from Season 1 of House of Cards:

Only when you understand that there is no cushion (there is that word again); it’s just you and whatever little dose of courage and wits that you’ve got in this otherwise indifferent world; only then will you be able to stop looking for excuses and take matters into your own hand. Because you will understand that it’s nobody else’s job. Are we really alone in the universe? My idealist side certainly hopes not. However, when facing a desperate situation in life, become a pragmatist, look inwards and find your steel.

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