If the idea of getting paid to build out one new product or service per week sounds exciting, then keep reading and act quickly.
“We are seeking founders who want to create great companies here in Nebraska,” said Scott Henderson, managing director of the NMotion Accelerator, a gener8tor program.
NMotion is launching a monthlong virtual Venture Residency program to help 10 recent college graduates push themselves to develop entrepreneurial skills and an innovation mindset. Selected participants will have a shot at going on to the NMotion Accelerator Studio, where they would receive $100,000 of investment capital and 16 weeks of intensive mentorship and assistance to transform their ideas into real-life startups. The deadline to apply for a Venture Residency is Monday, Oct. 5,
The program seeks to identify founders with special talents willing to work 40 hours per week with NMotion from Oct. 16 to Nov. 16 developing the ideas of the future, Henderson said. Venture Residents will have access to gener8tor’s huge network of mentors, investors and corporate partners, as well as the practical knowledge acquired by both NMotion and gener8tor over the years.
“Our team has helped build 52 companies here in Nebraska and hundreds more across the country,” Henderson said.
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Not a recent college graduate but still want to launch a startup?
There’s still a chance to get your idea off the ground by applying directly to the NMotion Accelerator Studio. Applications for that program are due by Monday, Oct. 26.
The Accelerator Studio combines the investment strategy of a venture studio with the cohort-based structure of a startup accelerator program and is designed to build five brand-new startups from scratch over the course of 16 weeks each year. Acceptance into the Accelerator Studio is accompanied by a $100,000 cash investment. Once accepted, studio participants become the full-time Founder, CEO and majority owner of their own startups.
At the end of the Accelerator Studio, Henderson said, participants experience “an investor swarm.” Each founder has individual conversations with at least 85 different investors.
Local investors and funders in this new venture capital model include Ameritas, Assurity, Invest Nebraska, Greater Lincoln Chamber Foundation, Lincoln Partnership for Economic Development, Nebraska Angels, Nelnet, Union Bank & Trust and the University of Nebraska – Lincoln.
Past startups that have gone through NMotion have received major funding. This past June, for instance, Merck Animal Health acquired agriculture tech startup Quantified Ag for an undisclosed sum. While in NMotion, Quantified Ag developed LED ear tags that light up when cattle are sick, quickly alerting farmers to potential health issues within their livestock.
Henderson said that both the Venture Residency (Oct. 5 deadline) and the Accelerator Studio (Oct. 26 deadline) are seeking founders with multi-faceted skills and deep domain expertise who can also build digital tools quickly.
For those looking for more guidance, Henderson mentioned fintech, insuretech, agtech, foodtech and sports marketing as promising verticals. But those aren’t the only markets NMotion/gener8tor aims for.
“We’re industry-agnostic and want to leverage the natural advantages this ecosystem, our partners and our founders have to offer,” he said.
While this is the first Venture Residency program to be coordinated by NMotion, gener8tor has already launched residencies elsewhere, to glowing reviews.
“The Venture Residency with gener8tor was an awesome chance to take a complete step back from what I had been doing and focusing on ideas I wanted to bring to life,” said Daryl Holman, a 2020 venture resident based in New York.
During his virtual residency, Holman led a crowdfunded campaign to buy back and eliminate over $55K worth of consumer debt in less than a week. The up-and-coming serial entrepreneur is currently in the ideation phase of his unnamed next venture.
“We’re so early in our journey, but I’m eager to see the impact of all of the ideas I and my fellow residents came up with, and how it will shift our world,” he said.
Henderson reinforced the notion that Holman’s rapid growth as a founder comes down to the intensive, coordinated nature of gener8tor’s program.
“An entrepreneur can find a customer, they can find investors, they can find corporate partners, but what we do is offer a very efficient way to do all of that at once, in an integrated fashion,” he said.
For more information on the NMotion Venture Residency program and to apply by Oct. 5, visit the program page and application portal here. Aspiring founders have until Oct. 26 to apply to the Accelerator Studio.
