FAQ

DayOne is a 6-week acceleration program run by Genesis Ventures for startups that want to get their first institutional investment and scale globally. Each cohort accepts approx. 8-12 teams.

DayOne is run by Genesis Ventures (GV). GV is an angel co-investment fund providing pre-seed capital and hands-on support to early-stage founders in Greece, Greek diaspora and SE Europe. Genesis’ founding partners are experienced operators and investors with extensive international experience and networks. The fund is backed by the European Investment Fund and leading angel investors, primarily previous successful founders and family offices. We want to invest in technology startups with strong and visionary founding teams, solving real and difficult problems and operating in large and growing markets. We invest in the concept, pre-seed, and seed stages and partner with angel investors who co-invest with us in every deal.

We are looking for concept and pre-seed startups with founding teams who have either quit or plan to quit their job and go full-time into their startup. More specifically, we are looking for the following traits:

You can enter the accelerator with or without a product and with or without revenues.

To sum up, we are looking for potential coupled with ambition. It’s great if you want to build a good tech business that makes a couple of million per year and employs 20 people. In fact, it’s much more than great. But this is not a fit for DayOne.

Individual, aspiring founders in search of a founding team may apply to enter the venture-building community. If and when you form a team (find one or more co-founders) while in this community, you can enter the accelerator or get assessed for a ticket from Genesis Ventures. Individuals may express interest here.

The program has two phases:

Foundation (one week). This is the 1st week of the program and is an intense week (incl. the weekend), full-time and in-person, where you will be involved in a number of hands-on activities, workshops, and community building, get acquainted with the program and its stakeholders and get inspired by successful founders. We want all members of the founding team to be present in the 1st week

Building (5 weeks). This part of the program runs for five weeks, it is part-time, runs on a hybrid model (both offline and online), and consists of the following:

During the execution phase, the team will set specific goals - jointly with their dedicated coach - and focus on hitting those.

Not all meetings are mandatory; if you think a workshop is not needed at your stage, you can skip it and continue building your business. We expect you to apply your good judgment in deciding what to attend.

Yes, this program is designed to help teams get their first institutional investment(s). Yes, this program is designed to help teams get their first institutional investment. The first ticket is €150,000 for 12.5% equity in your company (at an implied post-money valuation of €1,200,000). Of this, €100000 comes from Genesis Ventures and another €50,000 from private business angels, who may come from the Genesis network (family offices, experienced founders, and industry veterans) or your personal network.

Further investment may occur depending on your team’s progress during and after the program.

NB! Your participation in DayOne does not guarantee investment in your company. We would like to fund all teams participating in our program; however, investment is always subject to certain prerequisites, the first being passing our Investment Committee (consisting of Genesis Partners).

In order for a startup team to receive the first ticket of €150,000, you‘ll need to:

All the above may happen as early as your team’s admission to the program (before the program kicks off) or as late as the last day of the program.

Further investment of €100,000-€200,000 may be given within 3-6 months after the program is completed and upon hitting certain pre-agreed milestones (dependent on the startup’s business and again with private business angel co-investment).

After that, we have the option to follow on later rounds of investment (seed, series A, etc.) led by other (later-stage) VCs.

Besides the investment, you will get the following out of DayOne:

The entry process (end-to-end) may take 1-2 hours of your time and consists of the following steps:

After that, you will get a decision on whether you are admitted to the program

We accept teams that are headquartered anywhere in the world.

Companies that have received an investment may continue benefiting from a) coaching support (idea validation, product development, go-to-market strategy, fundraising, hiring, and other crucial areas for early-stage founders), b) connections to angel investors, later-stage VCs, enterprise customers, etc., and c) potential follow-on investment. Also, all teams, regardless of whether they received investment or not, shall remain part of the DayOne community of founders.

Yes, if the team is not making sufficient progress, or a participant does not behave like a team player and/or does not respect the community’s code of conduct. But there will be a warning first.

DayOne accepts both teams with full-time founders and part-time founders. There are two main differences between teams with full-time and part-time founders:

€150,000 will get you 12-16 months of runway for 2-3 people (or similar, hopefully, depending on where the team is based) if you’re not very lavish. Done right, this buys you enough time to validate your hypothesis and find the next investor (which might be Genesis Ventures).

A 12.5% equity puts the company's value at €1.2 million post-money valuation, which is fair for a company that’s just starting. More importantly, it doesn’t dilute you, the founding team, excessively to make it prohibitive for subsequent investors to enter.

No, you can be admitted to the program without having a legal entity formed. Having said that, if your company is incorporated and is not in Greece, you will need to set up a Greek entity, too, in order to receive investment from Genesis Ventures.

Yes, in the case you receive investment from Genesis Ventures and angels you will be charged 5% of the total ticket size as a program fee*. To illustrate, consider the following examples:

*The team will not be paying any charges on any angel investment sourced from their own circle

DayOne 5th cohort has the following important milestones: