Highroad Launchpad is a unique value-based acceleration program for early-stage startups that truly understands the entrepreneurs. We do this through a tailor-made hands-on process, while also providing the startups with initial capital, office space, expert office hours, critical services, access to clients and strategic investors, and much more.
The program is 6 months long and takes place in 2 annual cohorts.
It starts with setting the goals we’re looking to achieve during the program and build a tailored program plan designed to get you there. We then execute this plan throughout the program. By the end of the cohort, you’ll get the opportunity to present your venture to a group of handpicked exclusive investors and strategic partners at our demo event – the Highroad.show.
We focus on early-stage startups (from pre-seed up to around round A), with innovative technologies that truly disrupt various aspects of people’s daily lives.
The startups we are interested in partnering with are innovative companies, run by a team of at least two passionate and committed, full-time entrepreneurs, where one of the founders has the requisite technical capabilities.
Operating a startup is very challenging, but with Highroad, you don’t need to go at it alone. When joining Highroad Launchpad, you gain comprehensive support from mentors, domain experts, and your new Highroad community. We provide direction, experience, knowledge, and access to the hive-mind that is formed by other program founders, just like you.
We are the sum of years of varied experience and skills that each of our mentors and team members have cumulatively gained. This concentrated form of information allows you to speed your startup’s development. Instead of reinventing the wheel, you are assisted in the leveraging of years of accumulated wisdom to launch your startup in a much more calculated, strategic way.
Our program focuses on teaching you the skills that are essential to running a business, such as sales and marketing, communications, finance and select technical skills. We will also help you share your skills with other founders in your cohort and in a wider urban tech innovation network, providing a great testing ground for disseminating your skills forward to your own team.
Alongside the potential funding Highroad may execute, we will connect you directly to potential investors within our network of friends and colleagues. We create opportunities for one-on-one meetings and matches with relevant investors throughout the cohort, help prepare you to woo potential investors, and provide you the tools and techniques you need to win over any networking opportunities. Our end-of-program “Demo Day” is yet another way to expose you to various angels, investors and partners.
We wish to help you validate your startup’s direction and create a timeline for you to work toward, so you remain focused and customer-centric ahead of your launch. The prospects you interact with during Demo Days or via other channels can form the start of an important database of leads, and give you a head start on brand development and recognition. We seek to leverage our network and directly expose you to potential clients and strategic design partners.
Every entrepreneur fears the risk of failure. We will help you identify and minimize potential risks within your innovative concept, as pertaining to product development, pricing, technology, operations, customer service, marketing, finance and HR management, so that each of these elements can be cohesively executed.
Our mentors will help you foresee any complexities that may develop within your company as a function of time and guide you towards successfully transcending each challenge as it surfaces. We will ask the questions that get you to think about the bigger picture and what it should look like for your startup. We will also suggest tools and tactics to help you realize your long-term goals.
Being a founder can be lonely – and being part of a collaborative and supportive environment to keep you going and moving forward is essential to your startup’s success. We facilitate interactions with other portfolio company founders, to keep you motivated and on course. When you hear about others’ self-doubts and challenges, they will not only resonate with you, they will also remind you that it is possible to overcome these doubts and challenges, especially as a cohesive unit.
All Highroad Launchpads portfolio companies can benefit from the knowledge and connections made possible from a wide variety of activities designed to enable urban tech development success: meetings with mentors, feedback sessions, “Demo Day” presentations, networking opportunities and social activities. There is a lot of information to glean from these events and even more to apply directly to your startup.
You will always remain a part of the Highroad community. This is a long-term relationship, which can also potentially lead to investments in your company. We also support an active alumni network and encourage you to leverage its collective wisdom and share thoughts, inquire about talent, seek investors or obtain feedback, as you keep elevating your startup.
