We’re excited to start accepting applications for Surge 02. Since the application volume for Surge 01 was far greater than we expected, it led to a very intense and short selection process. So we are going to do a “rolling acceptance” for Surge 02 with the intent that it will give us a chance to engage startups early. This means we will meet founders and offer funding terms to strong startups before the final deadline on July 15. Surge 02 will also now offer a flexible investment amount of USD$1M to $2M, versus a fixed amount of USD$1.5M per startup in Surge 01.
We’re excited to start accepting applications for Surge 02.
Since the application volume for Surge 01 was far greater than we expected, it led to a very intense and short selection process. So we are going to do a “rolling acceptance” for Surge 02 with the intent that it will give us a chance to engage startups early. This means we will meet founders and offer funding terms to strong startups before the final deadline on July 15. Surge 02 will also now offer a flexible investment amount of USD$1M to $2M, versus a fixed amount of USD$1.5M per startup in Surge 01.
It’s been an incredible journey so far; we’ve learned a ton along the way and have received some helpful and insightful feedback from our ‘founding’ group of Surge 01 entrepreneurs.
As we kick off Surge 02, we aim to implement those learnings and improve on the ‘product’, so we can keep our promise of offering a completely founder-focused program to the early-stage ecosystem.
Our initial idea in providing a standard Surge round of US$1.5 million was to simplify the process for the founders. But we realized that different companies had different funding requirements and objectives for their seed rounds. The size of rounds in Surge 01 ranged from $1.5M-3.3M based on co-investor participation. We have decided it is better to be more flexible to allow us to appropriately size the round for the stage of company and co-investor interest in the round. We hope this will simplify an already fast process for founders and allow us to move even faster, and collaborate quickly with co-investors. We expect the startups to raise the same average dollars in Surge 02 as compared to Surge 01.
One additional highlight: we are continuing to waive the program fees for Surge 02, which we expect will kick off in September 2019.
As we have said in the past, Surge is our very own startup. We often tell founders it’s important to get early feedback during the ‘zero to one’ journey, and to iterate along the way. And we are walking the talk.
We are so lucky to have such extraordinary founders and startups in Surge 01. As we embark on the journey to select the next set, we are looking for exceptional individuals who will, yet again, blow our minds with their passion and ambition.
Are you ready to Surge?
