Sawmill Society Ventureship

The Sawmill Society Ventureship is a paid opportunity for Rose-Hulman students to live on campus during summer break with access to institute resources to launch their startup projects. Interested Rose-Hulman students can submit their application below.

Sawmill Society Ventureship Application

Company name

Company URL, if any

If you have a demo, what's the url? Demo can be anything that shows us how the product works. Usually that's a video or screen recording.

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

Contact

Personal email address of the founder who is filling out this application.

Phone number/s

Founders

Please provide the personal email addresses of the other cofounders in the startup. No need to add yours again. Founders must have at least 10 percent equity in the company. We will send an email to each founder to fill out additional information about themselves.

Please enter the url of a 1 minute unlisted, not private, YouTube video introducing the founder/s. This video is an important part of the application. Follow the Video Guidelines at https://www.ycombinator.com/video.

How many founders are on the team?

Progress

How far along are you?

How long have each of you been working on this? How much are you working on this per week? Please explain.

Are people using your product?

Yes No

Do you have revenue?

Yes No

If you have already participated or committed to participate in an incubator, 'accelerator' or 'pre-accelerator' program, please tell us about it.

Idea

Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making?

What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet or they don't know about it?

Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?

What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

How do or will you make money? How much could you make? We realize you can't know precisely, but give your best estimate.

How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won't be attractive to users till it has a lot of users e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network, and how will you overcome that?

Equity

Have you incorporated, or formed any legal entity (like an LLC) yet?

Yes No

Have you taken any investment yet?

Yes No

If you have not formed the company yet, describe the planned equity ownership breakdown among the founders, employees and any other proposed stockholders. If there are multiple founders, be sure to give the proposed equity ownership of each founder. This question is as much for you as us.

Please provide any other relevant information about the structure or formation of the company.

Legal

Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? If so, please explain.

Who writes code, or does other technical work on your product? Was any of it done by a non-founder? Please explain.

Is there anything else we should know about your company? e.g. Pending lawsuits, cofounders who have left, etc.

Curious

Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. The answer need not be related to your project.

What convinced you to apply? Did someone encourage you to apply?

How did you hear about us?

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Sawmill Society Ventureship

Sawmill Society Ventureship Application