INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Amid skyrocketing operating expenses, remote work has become an obsession for Bay Area founders looking to have it both ways, accessing
deal was between $40-60 million)
him, Gross is now working to revamp the startup accelerator model for a remote future with his startup Pioneer
told A Technology News Room in an interview
past 18 months since he launched the startup
many female founders as their male counterparts
and mentoring underrated people, many of whom I suspect are female
work and communication tools, but another real enabler is the competitive market for early-stage investing
for accelerators with similar pitches
As the world of early-stage startup investing gets more crowded, investors are having to get creative
For Gross and his investors, Pioneer also represents an opportunity to scout deal flow earlier in the pipeline.Gross has a weighty portfolio
of his own angel investments including GitHub, Figma, Uber, Gusto, Notion, Opendoor, Cruise Automation and Coinbase.An earlier structure
gave Pioneer the right to invest up to $100K in startups emerging from the program if they went onto raise, but just 30% of grant awardees
went on to found companies, Gross tells me
In its 2.0 form, Pioneer wants participants to give up 1% of their company to join the one-month remote program
toss some other substantial perks like $100K worth of cloud credits and a roundtrip ticket to San Francisco to inject a bit of face-to-face
time into the process.The biggest evolution is the more formalized investment structure for founders exiting the program
If Pioneer is excited about the progress of a particular startup, they may give it the option to raise directly from Pioneer upon
completion, sticking it in one of three investment buckets and investing between $20K and $1 million.Gross acknowledges that Pioneer will
largely be making bets closer to the $20K mark as the accelerator scales its portfolio
Pioneer is relying on an undisclosed amount of early funding from Gross, Andreessen and Stripe for both its investments and operating
to raise too much too early
Y Combinator invest $150K in startups for a 7% slice of equity, by comparison, a $20K investment from Pioneer will cost founders 5% of their
company plus the 1% they gave up to join the accelerator in the first place
