Enrollment now open for Startup Fundamentals!

Learn what to do to bring your business idea to life

  • 6 modules with videos and materials to download

  • Self-paced learning with email support

  • Peer support in the SheFund community

  • Bonus: investor pitch guide with step-by-step examples

The journey from idea to reality

You're finally ready to launch that idea you have been daydreaming about. You're excited to take the leap because you really believe in it. You've heard that you need a business plan, funding, and a go-to-market strategy - and you're on your way! Not so fast... there are a series of steps you need to get right to increase your chances of success. For instance, have you considered:

  • Whether there's a market for your idea
  • Funding requirements
  • How to protect your assets and ideas
  • How to find a partner
  • How to split the ownership with partners 


Finally, there are important personal considerations to think about in launching a startup - risks, long hours, instability, uncertain payoff. These need to be carefully thought through beforehand.

Startup Fundamentals

Act now and receive a free trial subscription to the SheFund community, a $100 value!

Learn how to start a business the right way

So many promising startups fail due to lack of planning and awareness around who should do what and how they should share in the rewards.

Let me tell you the story of a client. Let's call her Haley. She had a brilliant idea for a medical practice management startup, helping patients communicate better with their doctors. The first thing she did was to team up with a doctor for subject matter expertise - so far so good. In her words, all he had to do was "some doctor things" and he also invested a modest sum of money.

Being inexperienced as a founder, she gave him a 50% of the company ownership because it seemed "fair." What she didn't realize was that she had given away too much control to her partner. The two co-founders used the doctor's lawyer friends to prepare the operating agreement and she went along with the management powers that they chose. Effectively, her partner had to agree with everything that she wanted to do on the company's behalf, even though she was the CEO. This basically gave him veto power over everything, including raising capital.

While they were aligned on the company's mission and even how make it a reality, they were unable to agree on one thing that really mattered: raising capital. They sought help through mediation but were unable to break the tie and could not move the company forward. Ultimately, the company failed. Her first mistake was agreeing to a 50/50 split of the equity. This is almost never a good idea or even fair because usually one founder is bringing more to the table than the other(s). Her second mistake was not fully understanding the rights of each founder in the operating agreement. Our startup fundamentals course will show you how to navigate these kinds of situations so you don't suffer a similar fate to Haley.

What you'll learn in this course

  • Do your homework

    First things first: validate your idea using the Leanstack framework, evaluate the competition, create your minimum viable product. Form a team, identify knowledge and personnel gaps.

  • Business plan

    Using a Lean Canvas, we will show you the most important features of a business plan and why they matter to investors. You will identify the riskiest assumptions, estimate the required funding, and map out the milestones you need to hit to secure funding.

  • Ownership

    Splitting the equity pie fairly is one of the hardest and most important decisions you will make as a founder. We'll give you the tools to approach this in a logical way that makes everyone feel valued.

  • Protect yourself and your assets

    From the type of corporate structure to set up to trademarks, IP, licenses, and digital assets - launching a company has legal as well as financial implications.

  • Funding

    Funding comes in many forms. We will help you understand how to raise, when, and what type of funding you should consider. This module will tie together all the previous ones with the key goal of helping you understand what investors want.

  • Personal considerations

    Startup life is full of personal sacrifices and uncertainty. We'll look at the payoff of a startup vs a job, bootstrapping, side hustles, and support structures.

Startup Fundamentals

Act now and receive a free trial subscription to the SheFund community, a $100 value!

Instructor

Founder and Host, SheFund

Nicole Reynolds

Nicole Reynolds is the founder and host of SheFund, a global online community empowering women founders to build stronger businesses, raise venture capital and attract more women into venture capital as investors. She has more than 20 years of experience working in entrepreneurship, finance, global development, sustainability, and digital policy. Nicole has experienced entrepreneurship from all angles as a founder, co-founder, early employee, and intrapreneur. She was formerly an investment banker at Citigroup and corporate strategist GE/NBC. Nicole holds a Master’s from SIPA at Columbia University and is also a certified Leanstack Continuous Innovation mentor.

How do I know if this course is right for me?

  • Who is this course for?

    This course is for anyone who is thinking about launching a startup, including first time founders, founders who didn't succeed the first time, and those thinking about joining a startup.

  • Do you need prior experience in business?

    No! We created this course after working with clients who've made all the rookie mistakes the first time so you can avoid them.

  • What if I don't have an idea?

    If you've never had the idea of wanting to start a company, this course is probably not for you. But if you're curious about becoming your own boss, then this course will help you get clear about what steps you need to take.

  • Is this course only for teams?

    No, absolutely not! Solopreneurs and solo-founders alike will benefit just as much as teams because they face many of the same issues.

  • I'm thinking about joining an accelerator program, will this course help me?

    Yes! This course will help you get started on the right foot, avoiding pitfalls that many early stage companies fall into. This will enable you to build a stronger company and increase your chances of getting accepted into a program.

Testimonials

See what people are saying

Nicole is great helping you understand how investors think

Alvira Fisher, Social Entrepreneur, ThinkPolicy

I joined Nicole’s SheFund Community several months ago. The level of talent and generosity of the members is really amazing, and Nicole has done a great job setting the tone. She has helped me personally think through my own startup journey as a social entrepreneur in South Africa, with all the complexities that entails. She is able to quickly pinpoint what strategy is likely to attract investors and help her client approach them in a way that resonates. She understands the nuances of business in difficult environments and was able to help me understand how investors see the world so that I could attract angel investors to my project.

This course will get you off on the right foot

Suzanne Freyjadis Founder, Soft Landing Society

I highly recommend taking Nicole’s course. She has a tremendous ability to help you find solutions to tough problems by breaking them down into actionable steps that keep you focused on your goals when faced with big decisions on choosing the right business model and investors for your company. She’s an expert at helping you find different options for financing your company beyond the typical venture capital firms. Being a member of her SheFund community introduced me to the concept of “patient capital” which helped me understand how to approach investors for my social enterprise.

Nicole makes complicated topics really easy to understand

Silviana Onisei Researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, aspiring skin care entrepreneur

I joined the SheFund community where I was able to connect with other amazing and supportive female founders. I’ve had an idea for launching a skin care brand for a while and I wasn’t really sure where to start. I’m a chemist by training and not familiar with different types of startup funding, but I know I need to figure it out. After a one-hour call with Nicole, I had a much better understanding of what the different types of funding are and where to access them, as well as what the best business model is for my project. She makes business concepts and strategy so easy to understand that it really gave me the confidence to move forward.

Our clients and partners

Startup Fundamentals

Act now and receive a free trial subscription to the SheFund community, a $100 value!