Frequently Asked Questions

No - Founders is designed for participants to join as individuals, and meet their co-founder from our carefully selected cohort. You'll have the opportunity to ideate with leading talent from a wide variety of backgrounds to find the right person with a complimentary skill set.

No - you don't need an idea to apply to Founders. If you do have an idea, that's great, but it won't affect how we assess your application.

Yes - approximately 50% of our cohort is non-technical, but may have some other commercial background or domian expertise that is relevant to building a high growth startup.

Yes - the Founders team will work with you to help develop core founder skills every step of the way.

You are still eligible to apply if you have taken a very small amount of investment or been awarded a grant. However, we deal with these situations on a case-by-case basis and you should email apply@joinfounders.co for more information.

Founders' programme is designed first and foremost for individuals to find a co-founder they wouldn't have otherwise met. Therefore, Founders might not be the right place for you if you're already in a team, but if you do still wish to apply, we ask that you and your co-founder apply separately to the programme.

Yes - Founders is based in CHQ in Dublin's Docklands. People we select relocate to join us, anyone who has the right to live and work in Ireland.

We currently do not offer visa support.

No - When taking part in our programme we ask you to commit full time so that you can move as fast as possible, and focus your energy on working with your co-founder. We provide a monthly stipend to support everyone to focus on our programme without the need to work elsewhere.

Yes - Our first cohort deadline is Sunday June 18th. Missed out on the application window? Contact us at apply@joinfounders.co.

If we make you an offer, we'll invite you to cohort meetups before you start, and a login to the Founders Slack.

Founders funds you as an individual from Day 1, and if you form a company, we are your first investor. To start we will pay you €2,000 per month for the Formation Phase.

No - the startup magic is all up to you. We will facilitate co-founder matching and ideation sprints to find product-market fit.

The company you create does. We do not own any IP that belongs to your company, and do not take a proportion of your profits. If you have further questions about IP or a current project you're working on please contact us at apply@joinfounders.co

We are sector agnostic but are particularly interested in companies that are solving problems in the following areas: Health, Education, Sustainability, and Financial Services; particulary using AI to unlock these solutions.

At the end of Phase 1, there is the opportunity to pitch for pre-seed investment from the Founders Investment Committee. Rolling up the stipends paid to the team in the first part of the programme, the funding is topped to a total of €100k. For example, if you have two founders, who each initially received €6k in stipends, your startup will receive a further €88k investment to top up your total funding to €100k