Welcome to the Program!

The first edition of the Google for Startups Immersion: Black Founders program is starting this week and we hope you are as excited as we are to kick it off! The program will kick-off with a welcome session on September 7th where you’ll have the opportunity to hear from Google for Startups Head of the UK Marta Krupinska (three times founder) and learn about the inspiring journey of Jewel Burks Solomon, Head of Google for Startups US (founder and VC). You will hear more about the program framework, agenda and all resources available to you by the program team and ultimately, you will meet your cohort - 12 brilliantly founded startups by +20 impressive founders.

Startup Pitches

This is an opportunity for you to introduce yourselves, your team, and your amazing businesses. Tell the rest of the cohort your superpower, and your areas of expertise (what you can help everyone else with)!

OKR Workshop

Welcome to your first workshop on setting the right goals with OKRs!

Studies have shown that committing to a goal can help improve employee performance. Furthermore, research reveals that setting challenging and specific goals can further enhance employee engagement in attaining those goals. In practice, using OKRs is different from other goal-setting techniques because it allows us to set very ambitious goals. This workshop will help your startup learn the foundations of the OKRs methodology and create your own OKRs to help your startup prioritise work, gain focus, and stretch outside of your comfort zone. You will learn how to create your own startup’s OKRs for the upcoming quarters, and you will review together with a Googler based on Google’s best practices for goal-setting. It is more important than ever to make sure to shift your focus to the right objectives and adjust your key results in accordance with the current circumstances and your specific business challenges.

The session will be led by LJ Erwin - Chief Of Staff, YouTube TV, Sports, Video Infrastructure & Identity. This session will set you up for success on the GFS program.

Please review the following OKR framework resources prior to the workshop to familiarise yourself with the concept and ask any outstanding questions.

OKR Follow Up Session

Welcome to the OKR recap session, we hope you've managed to hone in on your OKRs over the past couple of days!

In this session we will recap, review and share our OKRs with the rest of the cohort, to get valuable feedback. The session will be split into the following:

Introductions (10 minutes):

• meet the advisors
• recap on what we learned on Tuesday

Breakout Sessions (60 minutes /w 10 minute break - 4 startups per session):

• Each team will present and review their OKRs
• Feedback from the group (please take notes)

Recap Session (15 minutes):

• Review of the main takeaways from the breakout sessions
• Sharing of additional resources
• Guidance on what's next for your OKRs

Similar to the first workshop, this session will be led by LJ Erwin, with two additional OKR advisors - Marta Krupinska and Mariama Boumanjal. 

Founder Friday's

Every Friday, we aim to come together with you, a cohort of brilliant founders from across the UK, France and the Netherlands. Founder Standup is a fundamental part of every single one of our programs as it connects founders into facilitated support networks in which they can candidly share their challenges, creatively problem solve, provide emotional support to one another and come up with solutions that will help their businesses survive and thrive in these times of rapid change.

Our goal is to empower founders to help each other in a simple, replicable format, and create scalable support networks that will work together and pass the impact forward to others. To create an open and honest discussion, this session will be led by Andy Davis and will focus heavily on the fundraising challenges. We hope you find these sessions useful.