How Beta Boom supports startups
Beta Boom makes equity-based investments in the most promising early-stage software startups that either have a founder from an underrepresented group or are seeking to build a company around software for good.
Our focus is on helping portfolio companies hone in on product-market fit and grow their customer base– two critical challenges that pre-seed startups must overcome. We do so by pairing each portfolio startup with dedicated UX and growth coaches to work with your team in a weekly sprint format.
Beta Boom invests incrementally through a two-stage competitive model:
- Stage 1 – $50K investment and a one-month, in-person growth program.
- Stage 2 – $150K investment in the top one-third of the teams coupled with a five-month growth program that occurs mostly virtually.
Dedicated growth and product experts to help you grow
Advice is nice, but we have found that the most impactful support comes from founders getting their hands dirty with experts by their side to help iterate on product and implement an effective go-to-market strategy.
Each startup that we invest in gets a dedicated product and growth team that works alongside the teams in weekly sprints to implement and test iterative enhancements.
Incremental Investment
We choose the most promising startups to join us for a month-long growth program in Salt Lake City. Each startup receives a $50K investment in exchange for equity. The program provides a UX coach, growth marketer, and managing partner to work closely and intensively with the startup on strategy, product-market fit, and growth. At the end of the initial program, we make an additional investment in the most promising one-third of the teams.
The top third receives an additional $150K in exchange for equity and teams continue to work with a dedicated UX coach, growth marketer and managing partner even more intensively to improve their product and grow their business. We also help each startup develop their pitch to seed-stage investors and make tailored introductions to hand-picked venture capital firms and angels in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Who we’re looking for
Our startups are chosen from an open application process. Our focus is on for-profit startups that are building a high-growth, software business. Many already have a prototype or product in the market, but it is not a requirement. Above all, we seek to support deeply committed founders that are solving a massive problem.
There are three critical characteristics that we seek out in our teams:
Creativity
We look for teams of entrepreneurs with exceptional imagination that have a product, prototype, or vision of their product that addresses a real, pressing challenge.
Grit
The startup journey is not for the faint of heart. You need incredible grit and cleverness to both weather challenges and find imaginative solutions to overcome them.
Expertise
We want to see that you have extreme market knowledge, direct experience and a reasonable plan for developing a product and building your business.