The key to success lies in a pathway to greatness. Without proper education, you can’t succeed in a way consistent with your business. Furthermore, a lack of funding guarantees that your startup will be dead in the water before you even launch. That’s probably why Fullstack Academy, the Y Combinator-backed coding bootcamp, has announced an alumni investment fund that will provide capital to startups created by their graduates.
Dubbed the Fullstack Fund, this investment fund is modeled after the Y Cominator Fellowship Program, which similarly helps graduate startups to evolve in the market through mentorship and funding. Fullstack Academy plans to provide $20K in seed capital, a co-working space on its New York City campus, and mentorship in areas like product design and growth hacking.
“Students who complete our software engineering program go on to work for great companies like Google and Amazon, but some have opted for the entrepreneurial startup environment,” said David Yang, CEO and co-founder of Fullstack Academy in a press release. “So we asked ourselves — how can we better support alumni with a strong entrepreneurial slant? The Fullstack Fund will empower some of the amazing teams and products that are coming out of our school.”
Much like the Fellowship Program at Y Combinator, startups can expect to spend 8 weeks in the program at the NYC Fullstack Academy campus. The goal of the program will be to secure a second round of funding through angel funding rounds, bootstrapping methodology, and acceptance into a top-tier accelerator. As is standard in most agreements like this, Fullstack Fund will take 1.5 percent equity in a convertible note.
“We’re launching Fullstack Fund as an experiment and funding it ourselves initially, but we plan to open it up to outside investors before the end of the year,” said Nimit Maru, CTO and co-founder of Fullstack Academy in the same press release. “We expect to grow the initial fund to $10MM, so that these investors can get access to the engineering talent and ideas coming out of the #1 coding bootcamp in the U.S.”
This is a good thing. While the exclusivity of this action may seem a bit unsettling, the benefits of the top ranked coding bootcamp providing funding to graduate startups seems fairly obvious. Not only will investors enjoy an automatic culture fit, they will also be familiar with the way business gets done. Plus, having a few friends in high places can go a long way in getting a budding startup off the ground.