Launching a startup in the market takes more than just ideas and passion. You need skills, training paths, and networking.
To be a successful founder, you need creativity, vision, the ability to identify needs and provide solutions, and solid financial and management skills. Then come passion and determination—personal traits that are often innate. Entrepreneurial skills, however, can be acquired. And the number and quality of training programs for founders are growing year by year.
Training for aspiring entrepreneurs goes beyond traditional learning. Startups don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to long hours in classrooms filled with slides and theoretical business cases. Founders need immediately applicable tools for their projects.
Programs and Pathways to Launch a Startup
- Mentoring: Personalized support from highly experienced professionals in the business world who can also open commercial and/or technical opportunities through their network.
- Workshops: Practical sessions that teach the basics of product-market fit, customer acquisition, and fundraising.
- Networking: Interactions with other founders, mentors, investors, entrepreneurs, and experts. These encounters often lead to opportunities to meet potential co-founders, business angels, and professionals who are essential to growing the startup and acquiring new skills.
Global Accelerators
Worth mentioning: Techstars and Seedstars.
- Techstars selects over 500 early-stage startups annually for its three-month acceleration programs, investing $120,000 and providing hands-on mentoring and access to their network. In Italy, Techstars launched an accelerator in Turin in 2019, based at OGR in partnership with Compagnia di San Paolo, CRT Foundation, and Intesa Sanpaolo.
- Seedstars invests in startups in emerging and frontier markets across Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia (excluding China).
These programs, even before the pandemic, have operated in hybrid mode—both online and in person—so founders can stay close to their customers and teams while learning from international mentors, networking, and participating in workshops to gain essential business-building skills.
Startups are hubs of innovation and experimentation. Human capital—more than technological capital—is the key factor that enables success in competitive markets. It must be nurtured through continuous education, which doesn’t stop after an accelerator program but should continue throughout the entire entrepreneurial journey.
RestartHer
The RestartHer online training course was created in response to the need for entrepreneurial training among women who left the workforce during the pandemic or for family reasons, or who are going through a professional transition and want to start their own business but don’t know how.
Isolation, lack of tools, and not knowing where to turn are common barriers that hinder women from taking entrepreneurial action.
RestartHer is a concrete response to these challenges. It’s an online course designed so that every woman, regardless of where she lives, can participate. The course is highly practical and, in just six weeks, helps participants launch a business project, validate its assumptions, and build an innovative, customer-focused strategy.
With RestartHer, we aim to give every woman the chance to start her own business, develop a profitable project, and achieve financial independence.
Learn more about RestartHer – the online training course dedicated to women entrepreneurs
