Hotbed Overrules

Hotbed is excited to announce, Overrules, our new programme designed for women-led startups worldwide.
Overrules is a FREE 10-week programme created by women founders for women founders.

We’re offering:
Workshops led by domain experts & scaleup founders
Live pitch feedback sessions & investor intros
Community activities to help you expand your network
Content designed to accelerate your growth

Who are we looking for?

Overrule is for you if:

• You are a women-led startup.
• You have a product launched or soon to launch.
• You are growth focused.
• You are Community-Driven.
• You are fundraising or soon to fundraise.

What you will learn?

Each week, we’ll host a mixture of workshops, live pitch clinics, and peer to peer sessions. Speakers and workshop hosts are a mixture of angel investors, VCs, Domain Experts, and scaleup founders.

• WEEK 1: WELCOME AND PREP
  Meet the community, set goals for the next 10 weeks, work on a 360 assessment of your startup & more.

• WEEK 2: THE HARD NUMBERS
  Valuation, Fundraise Amount, Total Addressable Market, Unit Economics. What are the industry averages, how do you benchmark so you’re not selling yourself short, and how do you ensure your numbers are going to win over VCs?

• WEEK 3: THE BIG OPPORTUNITY
  What problem are you solving, how is your solution addressing the problem, and what opportunity does this present to an investor? How do you communicate this opportunity in a concise and enticing way?

• WEEK 4: SPEAKING WITH USERS
  How do you communicate with users / potential users to ensure you’re building something they will use? How often you should be speaking with users, and what info should you track? How much user validation do investors want to see?

• WEEK 5: YOUR COMPETITIVE STRATEGY
  What’s your Go-To-Market strategy? What’s your pricing strategy? Who are your competitors, and why are you better? How do you sell both your grand vision, and your initial steps?

• WEEK 6: TELLTALE TRACTION
  What are the telltale signs of early product-market-fit? What metrics do investors care about at this stage, and what are vanity metrics? What are you benchmarked against, and how do you standout from the crowd?

• WEEK 7: SELL LIKE A BOSS
  Storytelling for influence, narrative building and pitch deck creation and delivery. How do you use your narrative to win over investors, advisors, the best team members, and customers?

• WEEK 8: TERMSHEET DEETS
  How do you know what terms to look out for? What are investors’ rights? What can you negotiate? What’s normal to be asked, and when do you put your foot down?

• WEEK 9: BUILDING A WINNING TEAM
  How do you fill your skills gaps, find talent, structure equity and vesting periods, hire in the most efficient way (contractor vs. FT employee) so you’re set up for scale.

• WEEK 10: DEMO DAY
  Taken all you’ve learned. It’s time to pitch live to an audience of investors, founders and ecosystem supporters.