Find out what you can expect from the Venture Acceleration Program.

This six-month program was designed to support committed entrepreneurs who are ready to take their business to market through mentorship and training.

The program is an initiative of Innovate BC and stands apart from other programs offered by Accelerate Okanagan because of its unique cohort model. These cohorts start four times a year, allowing participating entrepreneurs to build life-long relationships with their peers as they work together through the startup process, receiving one-on-one mentorship and participating in curated group workshops.

Here is a closer look at the VAP experience and what you can expect to learn over the 6 months:

MONTH 1

Goal Setting | Build and implement a goal-setting framework that will help create a strong connection between your operational plan and the entrepreneur’s vision.

• Identify your goals
• OKRs & Quarterly goal setting
• Quarterly business reviews

Leadership Assessment | Understand business opportunities and risks through an analysis of team and business model.

• Financial feasibility model
• Assess your own skills and honing in on how to be an effective founder

MONTH 2 

Business Hypothesis and Customer Discovery | Start with a handful of guesses and learn how to transform them into customer-validated facts.

• Set your business hypothesis
• Create your customer discovery plan

Learnings & Retargeting from Customer Discovery |  Creating space for reflection will allow for an initial analysis of active customer discovery and provide an opportunity to iterate.

• Analyze customer discovery results
• Introduction to positioning statements
• Retarget customer discovery

MONTH 3

Market Analysis Positioning | Better analyze your ideal customer through the use of market segmentation, market research, and competitive analysis.

• Introduction to market segmentation
• Identify your ideal customer/niche
• Identify your competition

MONTH 4 

Minimum Viable Product | How to understand the development of your product through market analysis and customer discovery feedback.

• Define your initial MVP
• MVP quality and testing plan
• Determine outcomes or MVP

Financial Feasibility | Understand how to create a financial forecast and tell a story using a cash flow model and accrual basis.

• Introduction to Financial Feasibility Model
• Understanding economic viability

MONTH 5

Product Testing & Marketing | Create testing plan for your MVP and identify performance indicators for a successful launch.

• Evaluate initial marketing plan
• Build and develop MVP test plan
• Identify key success metrics

MONTH 6

Sales & Pitching | Help you develop an effective sales plan that targets the early adopters who will want to pay for your product.

• Develop sales plan
• Describe and pitch your business

Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, this cohort will be facilitated virtually. However, we are structuring the program to continue bringing the mentorship, training, and networking that has proven to be so valuable to VAP’s education process.

Learn more about the Venture Acceleration Program