Our philosophy
Select for talent. Then test the idea. Then invest.
Most programs pick a business plan and hope the founder can execute it. We do the opposite, in that order — because in displacement the CV breaks long before the person does.
We start by finding exceptional people.
The bootcamp is the widest door we can build: one month, online, open to anyone with experience of forced displacement, anywhere in the world. A hundred and fifty people get in.
At this stage we are not judging the business. We are judging the founder — because a displaced person's résumé is a record of what a border interrupted, not of what they can do.
Then we put the idea under pressure.
The top of the bootcamp is invited into the accelerator: an intensive week in New York City, Washington DC, Toronto or Berlin led by business school faculty, alongside founders and investors who have done it, then months of virtual programming.
The work is customer research and market testing — deliberately unglamorous. Ideas that do not survive contact with a real customer are supposed to fail here, cheaply, while there is still time to change them.
Only then do we write a check.
Founders graduate by pitching for investment of up to $100,000, in equity or grant form, depending on what the business actually needs.
By that point we have watched them work for six months. We are not underwriting a pitch deck; we are underwriting a person we have already seen change their mind in public when the data told them to.
