Welcome to the Program!

[Founders]

Meet your fellow founders, startup teams 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 + Startup Showcase

 [Founders] 

 Hear from your fellow founders and the companies they have built over a meal! 

OKRs Lab

 [Founders + Team] 

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

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. (Please set up time with your dedicated mentors for OKR drafting - to be scheduled ideally during this block / before feedback session.)

Meal Time! (ft. Startup Showcases) 

[Founders] 

Hear from your fellow founders and the companies they have built over a meal!

OKR Office Hours & Feedback

[Founders]

Breakout Structure (3:45 - 4:45 EST)

In roundtable fashion, one team will present & review their OKRs

OKR Presentations + What's Next

 [Founders + Team] 

“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. We will then discuss the following 10 weeks of the program and how to ensure you and your team success in achieving your OKRs. 

Meal Time! (ft. Startup Showcases) 

[Founders] 

Hear from your fellow founders and the companies they have built over a meal!

Community Building Activity [Optional]

[Founders]

We know that we’ll have spent plenty of hours together by this point, and y’all have businesses to run, so our community building activity is entirely optional! For those who join, we will connect and get-to-know the cohort, mentors, and leadership team!

Product Labs: Roadmapping and Data Storytelling

[Product Leads] 

How to develop a Product Roadmap

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. 

Product Labs: Office Hours 

[Optional] 

This is a HOLD for GFSA: Climate Change - Product Labs: Design/UX Office Hours. 

Design / UX Labs: Leveraging UX Frameworks to Prioritize Features

 [Product Leads] 

"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 translating these learnings into actionable insights that enable product decisions. In this workshop, we will cover 4 topics and lead activities that will cover:

• What is UX and how you can leverage it
• Why UX success is essential and how it can help unblock you
• How to use UX frameworks to prioritize features
• Tips & tricks to conducting UX research to uncover product opportunities 

To maximize this workshop, take 30 mins and complete this pre-work

Product Labs: Office Hours 

[Optional] 

This is a HOLD for GFSA: Climate Change - Product Labs: Design/UX Office Hours. 

Product Lab: Evidence Based Designs for Sustainability

[Product Lead] 

To address climate change, we need innovative solutions that meet people where they are, using the power of emotional appeals, social incentives, and choice architecture as we apply economics and policy.

This workshop highlights examples of design best practices that have been tested for positive impact. 

How To Become a Great Startup Storyteller

[Founders] 

Simply put, storytelling is an essential skill for any founder or CEO. A story is evocative and clear, blending passion and relevant information. It’s one that helps the listener understand how the world has shifted, the opportunity that has been created, and how we uniquely solve it.

Design/UX Labs: Office Hours

[Optional]

This is a HOLD for GFSA: Climate Change - Product Labs: Design/UX Office Hours.

Raising Your Next Fundraising Round 

[Founders] 

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.

Leadership Lunch Series with Jason Titus, VP of Engineering at Google

[Founders] 

Jason Titus, VP of Engineering at Google, sharing his personal experience as a leader in sustainable technology in a casual lunchtime session. 

Leadership Lunch Series with Audrey Zibelman, VP of Electric Grid Moonshot at X

[Founders] 

Audrey Zibelman - VP of Electric Grid Moonshot at X, sharing her personal experience as a leader in sustainable technology in a casual lunchtime session.

Tech Labs: GCP Cost Optimization + Cloud IoT

[Technical Leads] 

In this two part session, we will talk about cost optimization of your infrastructure, followed by an introduction to Cloud IoT and embedding ML in Edge devices.

Tech Labs: Scale, Share, Measure, and Report on your Organization’s Climate Impact

[Technical Leads] 

In this afternoon session, we will review several use cases using no-code tools (e.g., Google Sites, Data Studio) to scale, share, measure, and report on your organization’s climate impact.

Tech Labs: Applying ML for Climate Use Cases

[Technical Leads] 

In our afternoon session, we will combine hands-on labs and group discussion to explore practical application of Cloud AI / ML technologies for use cases in the climate space. 

Tech Labs: Introduction to Cloud AI/ML

[Technical Leads]

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

Office Hours

[Technical Leads]

This is a HOLD for GFSA: Climate Change - Tech Labs: Office Hours. 

Secrets to Taking Moonshots with Karen Roter Davis

[Product Leads / Founders] 

In this session we will hear the inside scoop on how to tackle large scale challenges like climate change with moonshot-sized solutions. In the final 15 minutes, there will be time for Q&A.

Office Hours

[Technical Leads] 

This is a HOLD for GFSA: Climate Change - Tech Labs: Office Hours.

Leaders Lab: How to Win Demo Day 

[Founders] 

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. 

Leadership Lunch with John Platt, Director, Distinguished Scientist, Google

[Founders] 

John Platt, Distinguished Scientist at Google, sharing his personal experience as a leading scientist in the field of climate technology in a casual lunchtime session.  

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

[Technical Leads / Founders] 

Peter Norvig is a Director of Research at Google; previously, he directed Google's core search algorithms group. He is co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field, and co-teacher of an Artificial Intelligence class that signed up 160,000 students, helping to kick off the current round of massive open online classes. He is a Fellow of AAAI, ACM, the California Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 

Fundamentals of Advertising on Google

[Growth/Marketing Leads] 

Fundamentals of Advertising on Google - This interactive one day training covers digital marketing fundamentals, and how to use Google Ads and Analytics products to reach your business goals. The Growth Lab is led by product experts from the Google Business team, and covers growth marketing fundamentals, paid search, YouTube, apps, analytics, and mobile strategy.

AMA Session on Carbon Credits

[Founders/Team] 

Lee Jestings will share a 15 minute presentation on participating in the carbon credit marketplace as a climate tech startup. This presentation will be followed by a 30 minute Q&A panel with Kelli Wright, Carbon Associate with Google Sustainability, and Kendal Smith, Program Manager of Fleet Optimization & Resource Efficiency at Google.

Google Analytics

[Growth/Marketing Leads] 

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.

Market Expansion & International Export 

[Growth/Marketing Leads]  

Join us as we 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

[Growth/Marketing Lead]

We 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:  Client Centricity

[Sales Leads]  

In this training you will learn and practice how to think and communicate in a way that's most focused on your clients' interests. You will also learn and begin to apply the THRIVE sales process.

• Click here to watch the short training video. In this short video lesson you're going to learn FBB (feature-bridge-benefit). FBB is a simple formulaic approach to help you communicate in a benefit-oriented way that makes sense for your customer.
• Click here to access the worksheet that accompanies the training video. Please complete the worksheet prior to the live training.
• Click here to access the live training workbook for Thursday's training. We will fill this out during the live training session.

Note: When you click the links above, it will force you to make a copy of the worksheet and workbook so you can edit it during the training and save it for later reference

GFS Sales Academy: Handling Objections with VALIDATE 

[Sales Leads]  

In this training, you'll learn and practice how to work WITH clients that share objections, rather than AGAINST them. This is the real art of closing.

• Click here to watch the short training video. In this short video lesson you're going to learn an effective approach to handle resistance and work with it, not against it after the ILLUMINATE step.
• Click here to access the worksheet that accompanies the training video. Please complete the worksheet prior to the live training.
• Click here to access the live training workbook for Thursday's training. We will fill this out during the live training session.

Note: When you click the links above, it will force you to make a copy of the worksheet and workbook so you can edit it during the training and save it for later reference

Leaders Lab: Effective Founders 

[Founders] 

Leaders Lab helps founders 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. 

Leadership Lunch with Kate Brandt, Google Sustainability Officer

[Founders] 

Kate Brandt, Google Sustainability Officer, sharing her personal experience as a leader in sustainable technology in a casual lunchtime session.

Leaders Lab: Working Session

[Founders] 

Blocking off time for you to complete some independent exercises and reflection before our Day 2 sessions

Leaders Lab: Expectations of Co-Founders

[Founders]

Leaders Lab helps founders 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. 

Leaders Lab: Founders Circle

[Founders]

We will close out the second day of 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.

Actionable Ideas for Building Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

[Founders + Team]

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

Community Building Activity - Startup Trivia

[Founders]

Please join us as we look forward to ” what’s next” for each founder and their teammates. Each founder will do a 3-4 minute presentation to discuss what's coming next and your "asks / offers" for after graduation."

PR & Spokesperson Training

 [Founders] 

For startups looking to build their public profile, this session will teach the basics of public relations including how to pitch media, how to nail an interview, and key strategies to create and deliver your company’s key messages.

OKRs | Working Sessions with Mentors

[Founders + Team] 

Grade your program OKRs with the help of your dedicated Google for Startups Accelerator mentors. (Please set up time with your dedicated mentors for OKR grading - to be scheduled ideally during this block / before feedback session.)

OKRs: Presentation + Final Debriefing

[Founders] 

We conclude the program with a final Debriefing & Retrospective of Program OKRs - Review Scoring, Assess Learnings, and Celebrating Wins.

Virtual Demo Day Viewing Party

[Founders + Team] 

We are excited to have you join us for our DEMO DAY VIEWING PARTY! No need to join if you'd prefer to watch on our own, but for those of us who'd like to enjoy watching the session together - let's tune in and enjoy a fun time behind the scenes together!

Graduation

[Founders + Team] 

And with that, the Google for Startups Accelerator Canada cohort 2 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.