What Makes a Good Vogt Award Candidate?

by Lisa Bajorinas, Vogt Awards Program Director 

The Community Foundation of Louisville’s Vogt Awards program is the longest-standing startup accelerator of its kind. Uniquely, it provides founders with $25,000 in grant funding allowing them to retain full ownership of their business in addition to 10 weeks of startup education and mentorship to accelerate their startup growth. 

We’re looking for coachable founders and entrepreneurs of promising startups ready to take their business to the next level. They’re solving a big problem and want to disrupt their industry with their solution through innovation, customer acquisition and strategic partnerships.  

More specifically, the Vogt Award candidate’s business model is being developed, validated and refined, and may pivot as needed. We highly prefer at least 1 full-time founder and ideally a co-founder. Key development work is often outsourced at this juncture with the initial product version in active development. The startup may have a Beta or prototype available or an MVP (minimum viable product).  The maximum lifetime revenue is $100,000 to be eligible and ideally unit economic targets are understood.  The candidate is beyond the idea phase and in the customer discovery phase, willing to pivot until Problem-Solution Fit is found. Financing to date is less than $500,000, generally from grants, accelerators, seed investors and friends and family. 

Selection to the Vogt Awards accelerator is an early signal that you’re solving a big problem you’re passionate about and one that we want to support. You’ll join the ranks of past Vogt Awards alumni including Forecastr, FreshFry, Inscope Medical, Unitonomy, Stinger Equipment and WeatherCheck to name a few.  You’ll also enjoy the mentorship of CEOs of scalable startups and the camaraderie of the founders in your cohort. To cap it all off, you’ll present the progress of your startup at this year’s Demo Day and 20th Anniversary Celebration.  Don’t miss the opportunity for consideration for the 2020 Vogt Awards program. 

We encourage you to apply and tell us about your startup by May 31, 2020.