Fledge is a global network of impact accelerators and investment funds, helping entrepreneurs create impactful companies and co-ops at scale through intense, short programs filled with education, guidance, and a massive amount of mentorship.
The program runs in many different cities, not all under the Fledge brand. Each city’s program is a bit different from the others’, but all are focused on mission-driven for-profit companies.
Th educational curriculum is based on The Next Step books and online classes, taught to fill in any gaps in the key skills entrepreneurs need to know to succeed: strategy, financials, marketing, sales, funding, etc.
All our cities share a global network of hundreds of mentors, who share their experiences, advice, and connections in 1-on-1 meetings with participants.
Every day, week after week, we push the participants forward, iterating business strategy, financial models, marketing and sales plans, funding options, and investor and sales pitches, plus we put a special focus on storytelling. The result is intense and creates lasting value for years after the companies return home.
We have been refining this service since 2012 and, to date, have helped hundreds of companies from dozens of countries. We’re eager for more. Our goal is to help foster a wave of companies that make a measurable impact in the world, collectively improving the lives of everyone on the planet.
We invest $15,000 (Peru), €15,000 (Europe), or $20,000 (U.S.) into each company we invite to participate, using revenue-based equity, which aligns our interests with the founders, avoids any pressure to “sell out”, and lets us invest in just about any market segment and most any country in the world. Plus, we make introductions to impact investors and make follow-on investments from our family of seed funds.
Being an entrepreneur is hard. The ups and down of startup life are far larger and stronger than most jobs. Working with entrepreneurs isn’t much better, as the empathy is almost are wary. We’ve worked with dozens upon dozens of entrepreneurs at Fledge and most handle these stresses in stride. Sure, they have some sleepless nights and exhaustion, but that is what...
From Beyond Capital: In March, Ben Grozier, our Associate and member of the Beyond Capital Investment Team, met a smallholder farmer working a two acre plot of land in rural Tanzania, who was hoping to sell enough produce this season to feed, clothe, and educate his family. This farmer’s produce cannot easily be brought to market without waste or spoilage, and so he struggles to make a...
From the inside of the startup process, as the entrepreneur, the pass to success seems rather simple. You’ve got a great idea. It’s obvious that it will work. It’s frustrating that others are not simply following along. Reality is that entrepreneurship is complicated. Few ideas truly are great. Most startups fail. Sometimes analogous situations make this far more obvious. Take...
The fledglings are back in Lima, from Monday, July 3rd through Friday, September 1st. Seven exciting startups from five different countries: AESA Foods grows bees in Nicaragua and sells honey and other bee-related products. Nicaragua. www.facebook.com/pg/AESAFOODS AMIntegrated Aerial radically improves agricultural yields in Nigeria and beyond through the use of aerial robotics in crop dusting...
Fledge9 wrapped up less than a month ago, but Fledge10 begins in Lima, Peru tomorrow and before that intensity builds, it seems a good time to wrap-up what Fledge9 did for each of the fledglings in Seattle. Africa Business Radio came into Fledge9 as a two-year-old, bootstrapped streaming radio station with a single stream of content. They left with a plan to create three more streams: East...
Fledge is over five years old, and for that half decade and more the industry has been debating how to measure the impact of a company and a portfolio. Using the Pinchot Impact Index, Fledge is able to not only do that, but also to show how that measure changes from session to session. More specifically, we measure three levels of impact for our portfolio of fledglings: the potential of the idea...
How can one company solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and food safety and all it does is grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Golden Cat is a two year old mission-driven, company doing just that, in Rwanda. Rwanda is a poor, but quickly developing country. 80% of the population are smallholder farmers. Half of the 11 million people are under the age of 18. In order to feed this growing...
Africa Business Radio deems itself a media platform with a purpose, driven to provide content that offers success for business across Africa. One of the 6 startups from Fledge9, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, founder Soji Akinlabi has grown this business from just 1 streaming radio show two years ago to over 15 shows today. Each show strives to ask the question: How will this information...