When Pwn 4 Food wanted to access financing to support its online 3D game, it applied to HYPERDRIVE, a tech start-up incubator program with a global focus and over $30 million available to seed, fund and grow new businesses.

The company was one of seven selected into the first cohort and its CEO, Ivan Lukianchuk, described the experience as “awesome.”

“HYPERDRIVE is unique. It’s a two-year program that’s front-ended with a three month sprint plus demo day,” said Doug Cooper, managing director of HYPERDRIVE.

As applications from the third cohort that will start in April 2013 get underway, CanadaOne caught up Cooper to learn more about their program and how entrepreneurs can apply for future cohorts.

What is HYPERDRIVE?

HYPERDRIVE is a $30-million+ tech startup incubator program with a global focus to seed, fund and grow new businesses. The program features leading investors, world-class mentors, international soft landings and full lifecycle support. HYPERDRIVE’s goal is to grow early-stage tech start-ups from seed to Series A-ready VC funded companies within 24 months.

Who can apply to your incubator?

HYPERDRIVE is open to all early-stage technology start-ups from any geographic location. During the three-month sprint portion of the program, participating companies must move into the Communitech Hub in Waterloo Region, Ontario.

A closer look at the application and selection process

For its first cohort HYPERDRIVE received over 100 applications, in which applicants were asked to provide both an online application and a team video showing who they are and what makes them special.

A maximum of 15 could be accepted into the program and the initial review of applications enabled HYPERDRIVE to create a semi-final list of about 35 applicants. Criteria used to create the short list included looking at whether the application was complete, whether the team was structured for success, whether the team itself was complete, and more.

The semi-finalists then participated in two rounds of face-to-face interviews, the first with HYPERDRIVE’s Executives in Residence (EIR), and the second with the investment community. Review panels included from 5 to 12 people. Doug Cooper noted that the two rounds of interviews are important, because the EIRs have a good understanding of what it takes to create a business while the Venture Capitalists – the funders – know what it takes to be a fundable company.

The first cohort was selected and included 7 companies of which 5 received follow-on funding, which was excellent given the goal of any accelerator/incubator is for companies to obtain funding. Cohort companies had weekly reviews, including accountability sessions for what had been achieved that week and what was planned for the next week. The companies also had regular meetings with investors, coaches and mentors. At the end of the program they have an opportunity to get a $150,000 convertible note from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

Passion, drive common characteristics in CEOs accepted into incubator

When Ivan Lukianchuk, CEO of Will Pwn 4 Food, was accepted into HYPERDRIVE’s first cohort his company was looking to address the competitive gamer market with its online 3D game which allows players to compete and win big prize money for playing video games. He was not disappointed with the experience.

"HYPERDRIVE… literally lived up to its name as an accelerator as we'd never moved so fast before!” said Lukianchuk.

Another participant in the first cohort was Incentivibes, a company that takes the idea of crowdfunding and applies it to rewards and incentives. The company has devised a way to help smaller companies collaborate so that they can tap into the benefit of offering incentives.

Adeel Vanthaliwala, CEO and Co-founder of Incentivibes, appreciated the market connections that HYPERDRIVE helped him establish.

"Their excellent network of mentors, investors and head coaches was essential in helping us accelerate our business toward the path of revenue generation and additional funding,” said Vanthaliwala. “Looking back now, joining HYPERDRIVE was the best decision we've ever made for our business."

Their business models and markets might be different, but both CEOs share a few things in common.

“Both are hustlers, they know what it takes to make a company and they work hard to get more customers into the boat,” said Cooper. “They are articulate about what they do and they come across as being very passionate, which always goes over well with investors because they want people who are 100 percent invested in their idea.”

Incubator shares lessons learned

Cooper noted that there were four key lessons learned with the first cohort.

1. Validate customers. “We learned to validate that there is a customer for a cohort company’s product early in the process,” said Cooper.
2. Need for a minimum viable product. “We also learned that because we provide equal parts funding and mentoring, if companies spend the full three months just developing their app, they are not going to get value out of the mentoring piece of it,” said Cooper. “So we’ve learned that companies really need to come into the program with some sort of minimum viable product, something that they can demonstrate to a customer and which can validate early on that there is customer value.”
3. Prep pitches early. “It was also important that we start the companies early on their developer pitch; you couldn’t wait until it was the last month, you can’t be changing it in the last month or you’re really jeopardizing the whole endeavor,” said Cooper.
4. Consider number of founders. “We learned that it is important for a company to have more than one founder,” said Cooper.

“In terms of gauging the success of HYPERDRIVE, we definitely consider it a success that five of the seven first cohort companies were funded, and we were pleased with that,” said Cooper.

Applying for an upcoming intake at HYPERDRIVE

HYPERDRIVE’s second cohort is now under way, with a suite of 11 companies announced on January 31, 2013. Applications for the third cohort get underway with another intake in April.

“We’re accepting applications from companies all around the world,” said Cooper. “We had an applicant from Australia this past cohort as well as three companies from British Columbia in the current cohort, so we accept both national and international applications.”

The best way to apply is through the HYPERDRIVE website. When applications are open a notice to this effect will appear in the upper left hand corner. Click on that link and follow the application process.

HYPERDRIVE also accepts recommendations. If you have people in your network of mentors that would put in a good word for you, Doug Cooper strongly recommends that having them contact or reach out either to himself or anyone else on his team.