MuckerLab
by Parker · 32 things on Twos
- https://www.mucker.com/muckerlab-accelerator/
- Provides capital and support for startups outside Silicon Valley
- 200+ mentors: the brightest entrepreneurs and executives in Silicon Valley and beyond
- No three-month bootcamp. No demo days. Just heads down company-building for one year—or however long it takes
- 10-20 companies per year. Annual cohorts
- Invest earliest stage of a company's lifecycle "pre-seed"
- Helps entrepreneurs validate and iterate on the original hypotheses of their core business concept
- Helps companies achieve product-market fit in preparation to raise institutional venture financing
- Revamp strategies, increase their addressable market opportunities, accelerate revenue growth to become a high-growth, venture-fundable business
- MuckerLab companies have raised over $8B from Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Floodgate Fund, Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint Ventures, and Spark Capital
- Mucker is inspired by Thomas Edison's vision of creating a place where brilliant entrepreneurs and hackers can work together to create new and better products that either disrupted existing industries or created entirely new markets. The men who worked with Edison in his labs – Thomas Edison’s “muckers.”
- HQ is in Los Angeles because of the innovation, entrepreneurs and technology there
- The MuckerLab program helps entrepreneurs take their products to market, find the right customer/user segments, implement the right business model, generate revenue and user growth, develop scalable/profitable distribution channels, augment their teams with complementary skills, and when appropriate, raise venture capital from investors who believe in their vision. MuckerLab helps entrepreneurs build great, category-leading companies.
- MuckerLab is not a business plan competition
- The most beautiful presentation and pitches comes from companies with thoughtfully executed products, loyal and delighted users, reference-able customers, scaling business metrics, and passionate founders
- MuckerLab companies are run by exceptional entrepreneurs with successful scaling businesses in large and underserved markets.
- Customer satisfaction is key to long-term success
- We need to be convinced that we can add value significantly above and beyond our equity ownership in the company
- They can help us find product-market fit and grow our scale and users to help the most people stop forgetting things and live better lives
- We have founded numerous companies, operated companies at all stages, and helped scale some of the most successful companies in the Internet industry. We earned our stripes as product managers, marketers, engineers, and general managers. We have built companies from scratch, recruited co-founders, raised hundreds of millions in capital, and sold our ventures. We’ve been there before and we are not afraid to get our hands dirty and leverage our past experiences and networks to help MuckerLab entrepreneurs succeed
- Deep ties to the tech communities in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley
- Our mentors are experts in diverse industries from media, entertainment, payments, eCommerce, adtech, social, mobile, local and more
- Companies only “graduate” from MuckerLab when they have achieved mutually agreed upon business, customer, and financing milestones.
- We tell entrepreneurs to treat us as part of their founding team
- MuckerLab typically invests between $100,000 to $175,000 in exchange for an 8% to 15% equity stake
- We look for passionate, 100% committed entrepreneurs of any age and experience level with disruptive ideas who are willing and able to take the risk of turning their ideas into reality.
- We have a strong preference for fully formed teams of “builders,” with the skills and capabilities to build a product and take it to market.
- Consumer product companies would require more proof of product-market fit
- The significant majority of the program is spent on trying to figure out the linear algebra for achieving product-market fit via continuous experimentation around the right combination of customer segmentation, brand positioning, value proposition, product design, pricing, go-to-market channels, and customer acquisition strategies
- MuckerLab is our "pre-seed" investment program. We also invest in Seed and Series A stage companies that typically have more traction and/or more experienced founding teams
- We ask all companies to spend the majority of the program here in our office, either in Los Angeles or Nashville. We can accommodate up to 20% of our annual cohort participants to work remotely. Most founders use some portion of the investment funds to pay for living expenses or to cover travel expenses incurred while visiting one or more of our offices.
- 11/4/21 - MuckerLab Round 3 Interview