Neo Accelerator's magical first month
Our month-long retreat in Oregon was magical, if your idea of paradise is to be stuck in a remote place with 50 other tech geeks working night and day on their startup ideas.
We just finished an awesome month with Neo Accelerator founders and mentors in Sunriver, Oregon. Four weeks of living and working alongside each other boosted our productivity, enabled collaboration, and forged a powerful sense of community (a welcome contrast to the Zoom events of recent years).
Each week, a diverse group of exceptional mentors and VIPS visited us to host workshops, talks, and office hours with founders. Some highlights:
Scott Forstall, product guru and legendary creator of the iPhone, spoke about the importance of design in a fireside chat and in 1:1s with startup teams.
Camille Ricketts, Notion’s Head of Brand Marketing until recently, shared insights on how to stand out in today’s oversaturated digital landscape.
Through meals and curated office hours, visiting VCs like Reid Hoffman, Alfred Lin, and Lan Xuezhao gave founders honest feedback and connected on a personal level.
In between long nights in the shared working space, founders and mentors bonded through meals, weekend excursions, and weekly bonfires, as well as impromptu socials, workouts, and visits into town.
The founders’ feedback on the program thus far has been inspiring.
Through their conversations with mentors,
“…mentors gave us incredibly actionable feedback that fundamentally changed the course of our company.”
feedback from each other,
“My biggest takeaway from this experience is probably the level of detail and attention people put into each other’s companies.”
and a motivating environment,
“I can’t remember a time where everyone I’ve been around is really smart and thoughtful, and just good people as was the case this last month.”
which pushed everybody to be the best versions of themselves,
“I realized that being in a cohort like this is not normal where I come from… [It] showed me just how high we should be reaching, and that was really inspirational.”
it's clear that Neo has already impacted these founders immeasurably.
“As more time goes by, I think the memory of this experience will keep increasing in value. I’m super excited to see where everyone is going.”
This is just the beginning, and we’re more excited than ever about the future of Neo and of this wonderful cohort of startup founders.