GoodCompany Ventures

2010 Incubator Application Process Update

Posted on 16. Apr, 2010 by Garrett in 2010 Incubator

Good news for applicants, we’ve decided to drop our requirement that applicants pay a processing fee.  Our ambition is to keep the program free for participants because it is fundamental to our goals of attracting to the best ideas and building a community and culture of service that we have no financial interest in our entrepreneurs.  We thought that imposing a fee on the application process would make a contribution toward the cost of serving the participants but, more importantly, would spare our scarce organizational resources from following up on applications from entrepreneurs who had not thought through their commitment to the program.

The unintended consequence is that we have created a financial incentive for applicants to contact us directly to explore their prospects for selection before applying.  We try to be pretty accessible and this has led to a lot of wasted time and mutual frustration as we can’t offer much guidance without a reasonably complete application and an evaluation by our selection committee.  The most undesirable consequence is the case is when we have some concerns about the viability of a potential applicant, but have to request that they submit an application.  We are uncomfortable extracting fees from applicants who don’t have a realistic prospect of acceptance but yet we don’t want to tell them not to apply based on a brief conversation.  Our goal is not to evaluate applicants on the floor of an event or over the phone, but to have them considered by the subject matter experts that have volunteered for our selection committee and compared to other applicants in their sector.

We’ve concluded that we are going to abandon the fee requirement as an idea that caused more harm than good.  Of course, we will refund the fees of those that have already applied.