Welcome to the Program!

[Founder]

Meet your fellow founders and the Accelerator team! Learn everything you need to know about what's in store for the next 10 weeks!

Welcome "Brunch" & Cohort Get to Know You

[Founder]

Inviting our twelve founders to lunch as we kick off the Google for Startups: Black Founders community. We know you are superhuman; but, you still have to eat! Therefore, we are sending each of our GFSA: Black Founders a sponsored lunch gift card on us for this session.

OKRs - Lab with Zack Ross 

[Founders + Team] 

OKR Basics Training Webinar: History, Creating OKR, OKR Success Factors.

• Why OKRs (Challenges they can help you overcome): Helps participants see that OKRs impact many parts of your operating environment
• Definition and examples: Overview of OKRs basics including examples from our clients we can discuss as a group 
• Characteristics of effective OKRs: Here we go deeper into both objectives and key results to ensure participants understand what makes for an effective OKR.
• Generating alignment with OKRs: Both strategic (vertical) and horizontal (facilitating cross-functional collaboration) 
• The OKRs creation process: 7-step method for creating OKRs 

OKRs | Working session with Mentors 

[Founders + Team] 

Prepare a draft of your program OKRs with the help of your dedicated Google for Startups Accelerator mentors. 

Startup Showcases (+ Lunch)

[Founder] 

Hear from three (3) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders and the companies they have built over lunch!

We know you are superhuman; but, you still have to eat! Therefore, we are sending each of our GFSA: Black Founders a sponsored lunch gift card on us for this session.

OKR Office Hours & Feedback session with LJ Erwin 

[Founders]

Join for OKR Office Hours & Feedback session led by LJ Erwin.

LJ Erwin is the Chief of Staff at YouTube TV and Sports. Prior to joining YouTube, LJ led founder and VC engagement in Silicon Valley for Google Cloud for Startups. Before Google, he helped lead early stage sourcing and founder engagement as a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. 

OKRs Presentations 

[Founders]

“If no one ever knew your OKRs, did they really happen?” We conclude the content of the week with a final presentation of program OKRs by each of our startups... because #accountability.

Startup Showcases (+ Lunch) 

[Founder]

Hear from three (3) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders and the companies they have built over lunch!

We know you are superhuman; but, you still have to eat! Therefore, we are sending each of our GFSA: Black Founders a sponsored lunch gift card on us for this session. 

Mocktail Challenge 

[Founder]

Get ready for Mixology Hour & Virtual Pitch Your Drink! Which pitch will reign supreme? We'll find out LIVE on Thursday! Here’s how to get ready for Thursday, August 13 @3:30pm ET: Cocktail Ingredients: Your happy hour will feature two daiquiris by Erin Ivey, a top mixologist at DC's La Vie. You have been shipped a full mocktail kit complete with ingredients, glasses, and tools. The kit includes everything you need for this mixology hour other than ice. [If you're making cocktails instead of mocktails, please BYO white rum for the event. Recommended brands are Bacardi, Angostura, and Plantation. If you've received your kit and have any questions, please shoot a note to april@happied.co.] Setting the Stage: Get camera setup ready! Everyone will be on screen at some point. To set up your virtual bar, make sure you have good lighting and have your table top and tools in view. Grab some ice and get ready to shake up some fab mocktails! Food: Feel free to use your UberEats lunch gift card to grab an extra something tasty to snack on during Mixology Hour!

Product Labs: Roadmapping 

How to develop a Product Roadmap - with Sol Chea 

[Product Leaders] 

This session will be focused on Product Roadmaps, defining what they are, what purpose/audience do they serve and going through practical examples of how to build and evolve your roadmap from scratch.

Startup Showcases (+ Lunch) 

[Founders]

Hear from three (3) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders and the companies they have built over lunch!

We know you are superhuman; but, you still have to eat! Therefore, we are sending each of our GFSA: Black Founders a sponsored lunch gift card on us for this session 

Product Labs 

[Optional - Office Hours] 

Want a little more time with our facillitators? Join us for Office Hours!

UX Labs: Design Thinking for Startups - with Dr. Deana Anglin

[Product Leaders] 

UX Labs: Design Thinking for Startups

"Focus on the user and all else will follow.” Building great products first requires getting a deep understanding of the people you are designing for and the challenges they face. Following a people-centered approach to design allows you to build empathy and find innovative and effective ways to meet the needs of your users. This session will teach you the principles of Design Thinking and Google’s approach to innovation. 

Startup Showcases (+ Lunch)

[Founder] 

Hear from three (3) of your fellow Google for Startups Accelerator: Black Founders and the companies they have built over lunch!

We know you are superhuman; but, you still have to eat! Therefore, we are sending each of our GFSA: Black Founders a sponsored lunch gift card on us for this session.

Design/UX Labs: Office Hours - with Dr. Deana Anglin 

[Optional - Office Hours] 

Want a little more time with our facilitators? Join us for Office Hours! 

[Product Leaders] Product Labs: Byteboard "Taking Your MVP to the Next Level" - with Nicole Hardson-Hurley

Nicole will share how her team went from a very scrappy MVP to a more scalable v2 and will discuss some the key product learnings they discovered along the way.

Tech Labs: Cloud 101 + App Dev (Firebase, Kubernetes) with Alan Ranciato

 [Technical Leads] 

In this session, we will cover Cloud 101 and Application Development - leveraging Firebase and Kubernetes.

Tech Labs: App Dev/Infrastructure (Office Hours)

[Optional] 

Have any questions for our experts? Sign up for Tech/ML office hours on the Program Hub. 

Tech Labs: Data Management + Cost Optimization with Alan Ranciato

[Technical Leads] 

In this afternoon session, we will talk about data and data management tools, followed by a session on cost optimization of your infrastructure.

Tech Labs: Intro to ML - Cloud AI - with Karl Weinmeister 

[Technical Leads]

ML Labs introduce startup participants to a design-thinking approach to framing even the most complex machine learning problems facing their business / product. In this first session, we will explore Cloud AI Services: What they are and how to use them.

Tech Labs: Designing Human-Centered AI Products with Di Dang, Alex David Norton, Thryn Shapira, and Roxanne Pinto  

[Technical Leads]

Curious about designing human-centered AI products? Our People + AI Research (PAIR) team will share insights from the new People + AI Guidebook, a toolkit for making AI product decisions. We’ll walk through a real case study of how a product team used the Guidebook to design a new AI-driven feature, and you’ll learn how to assess whether a problem is a good fit for ML, collect representative training data, and help users understand how to interact with AI systems.

Tech Labs: Applying ML - Qwiklabs Quest - with Karl Weinmeister

[Technical Leads] 

In our final session, we will combine hands on labs and group discussion to explore practical application of Cloud AI / ML technologies.

Part 1 - Tech Labs: Product Breakouts 

[Optional] 

Specialized Product Breakouts and Office Hours for Android / Play, Voice / Assistant, and other Google technologies. 

Part 2 - Tech Labs: Product Breakouts 

[Optional] 

Specialized Product Breakouts and Office Hours for Android / Play, Voice / Assistant, and other Google technologies. 

AI SharkTank with Peter Norvig - Dir. of AI Research, Google

[Technical Leads / Founders] 

AI SharkTank", each founder / technical lead team will select one (1) representative to present a 3-min overview of their proposed AI/ML solution / use case - followed by 3-min of Q&A / feedback from Peter Norvig. Peter will focus his feedback on actionable insights from his experience and takeaways for each of our founding teams to refine their implementation of AI/ML. 

Growth Lab: For Uncertain Times - with Azeez Soetan

 [Growth / Marketing Lead] 

Session showcases the world of digital marketing, introducing the startups to Google's offerings and how they can utilise them to achieve their marketing goals.

Leadership Lunch Series: featuring Torrence Boone

 [Founder] 

We know you are superhuman; but, you still have to eat! Therefore, we are sending each of our GFSA: Black Founders a sponsored lunch gift card on us for this session

Growth Lab: Google Analytics

Knowing Your Customer: Google Analytics - with Nick Pirog, Saumya Venkatesan and Charles Omoregie 

[Optional] 

As a founder you've invested countless hours in validating that your offering solves a problem for your customers. Learn how to continue that process with Google Analytics so that you can uncover how your customers are engaging with you, and how to more efficiently reach them.

International Expansion & Export Accelerating Growth by Expanding Internationally - with Kirsten Thibault

[Optional]

Join Kirsten Thibault as you walk through a framework for international expansion including a walk-through of new Google tools, best practices and case studies. Opportunity for live Q&A following the content to answer any questions you may have about entering new markets.

Building your Brand through Digital Marketing - with Goldy Bardin

[Growth / Marketing Lead] 

Goldy Bardin will share several tips and guidance on how to effectively build your brand through your most important channel: digital. She will go through the different aspects of brand guidelines and how to adapt these to the different digital platforms and media in order to keep a strong, unified online storytelling. 

GFS Sales Academy - with The Accelerate Performance Sales Consulting Team and Heather Clancy

[Sales Leadership] 

Google for Startups Sales Academy focuses on preparing your sales leadership for excellence. With sessions tailored to the Accelerator cohort, these sessions will focus on helping you to achieve your startup’s upcoming sales targets. 

GFS Sales Academy - with the Accelerate Performance Sales Consulting Team and Heather Clancy

[Sales Leadership] 

Google for Startups Sales Academy focuses on preparing your sales leadership for excellence. With sessions tailored to the Accelerator cohort, these sessions will focus on helping you to achieve your startup’s upcoming sales targets.

Leaders Lab: Effective Founders - with Jeremy Neuner

 [Founders] 

Leaders Lab helps founder explore their leadership style and understand why it's never too early to think about leadership, culture, and values in your startup.

What makes an effective founder? To kick off Leadership Week, Jeremy will lead a discussion on what we’ve learned in helping hundreds of the most promising startup founders across the world deal with their toughest people challenges.

Leaders Lab: Protecting Your Team - with Lucero Tagle

[Founders]

Leaders Lab helps founder explore their leadership style and understand why it's never too early to think about leadership, culture, and values in your startup.

Protect the team from distractions. While CEOs are typically seen as distracted by new ideas, the best ones create focus. They’re able to build momentum for the team which fuels even better performance and great morale.

Leaders Lab: How to Win Demo Day - with Jonathan Lowenhar & Lesley Ross

[Founders] 

How to Win at Demo Day You’ve dedicated yourself to learning as much as possible during your time in the accelerator. You’ve obsessed about the little stuff, the big stuff, and everything in between. You polished your business where you could and swept other parts out of the way for now. And, of course, you did this all with an eventual goal in mind - to court investors. Welcome to Demo Day! Demo Day is a right of passage for any founding team. Show up well and it can serve as an accelerant for the months and years ahead. It's a prime time to meet investors, partners and new recruits. But show up unprepared and it could become a regret you’ll carry with you straight to the therapist’s couch.

But what does prepared mean? In this session, we will cover the critical components for every great demo day pitch that best leads to an evocative, memorable performance. The goal of Demo Day is to earn meetings. And to earn meetings you have to make a positive, compelling impression.

And of course, at Enjoy The Work we try and make even dry topics fun. So for the masochists among us, we will also share tips for creating an absolute dumpster fire. If you want to fail spectacularly at Demo Day, we’ll show you how to do that as well.  

Leaders Lab: Expectations of Co-founders - with Tony McGaharan

[Founders] 

Leaders Lab helps founder explore their leadership style and understand why it's never too early to think about leadership, culture, and values in your startup.

Hold consistent expectations of co-founders. Invisible and unmet expectations are at the heart of co-founder conflict. Our data suggests that founders tend to have a minimalist definition of their leadership role. Effective founders hold consistent expectations with themselves and co-founders 

Actionable Ideas for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

[Founder + Team] 

This session walks you through a philosophy and action plan for creating inclusive teams and products.

Leadership Luncheon - featuring Marian Croak

[Founder] 

Marian Croak sharing her personal experience as a leader of a large technical organization in a casual, Ask-Me-Anything lunchtime session.

Community Building Activity: Founders Circle - with Tony McGaharan

[Founder] 

Founders Circle. We will close out Leadership & People Week with our Founders Circle Community Building Activity. While most would expect self-confidence to grow as expertise develops, our data suggests that the most effective founders are not nearly as self-confident as the least effective. It's important to know how to ask for help and be vulnerable about weaknesses.

Virtual Demo Day - Prep

 [Founder] 

Time for the Founders to prepare for the long awaited Google for Startups Accelerator Black Founders Demo Day!

Media Relations & Spokesperson Training with Shannon McLoughlin and Julie Case

 [Founder] 

This session will provide insights into the current media landscape, best practices for engaging with reporters and tools for how to navigate tricky interviews. Our session hosts from Nectar Communications will share actionable advice on how to prepare for speaking with the press and build strong media relationships.

Virtual Demo Day - OKRs: Final Debriefing

[Founder]

Final Debriefing & Retrospective of Program OKRs - Review Scoring, Assess Learnings, and Celebrating Wins.

Fundraising: Raising Series A with Jonathan Lowenhar & Lesley Ross 

[Founders] 

How to Prepare to Raise Your Series A Round

Raising capital is a discipline that, when mastered, can fuel a startup’s potential; and when ignored, can doom a venture before it starts. Contrary to most of what a young entrepreneur reads, there is a method to the madness of fundraising... and it involves a great deal more than just a pitch deck.

Enjoy The Work has guided more than 100 fundraises totaling north of $350M of venture capital. Our group session will cover revealing topics such as the “the 28 questions all investors ask” and what represents a “minimum viable investor funnel.” We will discuss and provide the frameworks from which to construct a successful raise, no matter if your startup is barely off the ground or well beyond product-market-fit.

Virtual Demo Day

[Founder] 

Our long awaited Google for Startups Accelerator Black Founders Demo Day! More details to come!

Graduation

[Founders + Team] 

And with that, the inaugural Google for Startups Accelerator Black Founders comes to a close! Join us for some final celebrations, well deserved callouts, and an overview of how you can stay connected with Google ongoing.