Today, Fullstack Academy announced the launch of Fullstack Fund, an investment fund for startups created by the program’s graduates.
The fund will provide startups with $20,000 in seed money, a co-working space in its New York City campus and mentorship in areas such as product design and growth hacking. Admitted startups will work for eight weeks on the Fullstack campus. From there, Fullstack aims to help these startups either secure another round of funding, get accepted into a top accelerator or figure out how to bootstrap. In exchange, Fullstack will take 1.5 percent equity in the company.
“Students who complete our software engineering program go on to work for great companies like Google and Amazon, but some have opted for the entrepreneurial startup environment,” said David Yang, CEO and co-founder of Fullstack Academy in a statement. "So we asked ourselves — how can we better support alumni with a strong entrepreneurial slant? The Fullstack Fund will empower some of the amazing teams and products that are coming out of our school.”
Fullstack Academy launched out of Y Combinator back in 2013 and has become a leader in the coding bootcamp space. Back in March, the company acquired Chicago’s The Starter League. Last year, the company also launched an all-female coding school, Grace Hopper Academy, where the company pays the student’s tuition until they get their first job as a software engineer. The Fullstack Fund is also focused on increasing the diversity of founders, since graduates from Grace Hopper Academy will be eligible to participate in the fund.
This new program is modeled after Y Combinator’s Fellowship Fund, which started out as an experiment in funding very early-stage startups.
“We’re launching Fullstack Fund as an experiment as well, and funding it ourselves initially, but we plan to open it up to outside investors before the end of the year,” said Nimit Maru, CTO and co-founder of Fullstack Academy in a statement. “We expect to grow the initial fund to $10 million, so that these investors can get access to the engineering talent and ideas coming out of the number one coding bootcamp in the U.S. At that point, we expect to be making larger investments into each company, and participating in follow-on rounds alongside other investors — including angels and early-stage VCs.”
Ultimately, Fullstack Academy wants to become an all-encompassing resource for non-technical founders to learn how to write code, build their product while in school and get seed funding upon graduation.
“There’s an age-old question that millions of entrepreneurs around the world ask themselves — How do I find a technical co-founder? The hard reality is that your odds are low,” said Maru in a statement. “It's rare to find a technical cofounder who cares as much as you do about your product or startup. Why would they? It's not their idea. With the launch of Fullstack Fund, what we're saying is this — stop trying to find a technical co-founder. Instead, empower yourself and become one.”
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