CEED | LaunchPad Program
CEED LaunchPad: Where Challenges Meet Solutions
Solve, Launch, Succeed with CEED LaunchPad
Are You Ready to Propel Your Tech Idea Forward?
Navigating the early stages of a technology-based startup can be daunting, especially if you find yourself outside the typical support frameworks of major incubators or aren’t yet ready for advanced programs.
If you’re feeling stuck or unsure how to proceed, CEED LaunchPad is here to help you break through the barriers and accelerate your progress.
What Is It?
This self-paced, one-on-one advisory program is designed to address your specific challenges and guide you toward key foundational milestones. Rather than following a fixed timeline, the program adapts to your current stage, builds on your progress, and helps you achieve your next startup milestone.
If you have an innovative technology-based business idea but don’t meet Volta’s residency requirements, aren’t ready for Invest NS programming or any other industry-specific organization, or simply feel stuck, the LaunchPad program can help you move forward.
The program is demanding and requires a strong commitment to complete each milestone successfully.
Why Choose LaunchPad? Action Your Ambition
Adaptive Guidance: LaunchPad isn’t a one-size-fits-all program. We offer personalized, one-on-one advisory services that address your unique challenges and guide you towards key foundational milestones. Personalized, one-on-one mentoring that adapts to your unique situation and startup stage.
Milestone-Driven Progress: Focus on key achievements with flexibility in pacing and planning according to your startup’s growth. Our program adapts to your current stage and builds upon your progress, with no fixed timelines that pressure you unnecessarily.
Comprehensive Support: From refining your business idea to securing your first paying customers, LaunchPad covers every critical phase of your startup journey.
Program Structure
The program consists of 8 milestones that can be summarized as follows:
- Founder Readiness Assessment: This is a mandatory step for all participants and will help identify your unique strengths and weaknesses as an aspiring founder.
- Problem that your Idea/Concept aims to solve: If you have done this already, we capture the required artifacts in your works folder. If not, or if we believe it still needs some work, we will help you refine and revise your idea or concept before moving towards the next milestone.
- Industry and Marketing Positioning or Your Idea/Concept: Once your idea or concept has been defined, the next milestone is to determine and illustrate how it fits into the overall industry and marketplace. By applying Systems Thinking, you analyze how industry elements such as competitors, suppliers, customers, and trends interconnect. Instead of viewing your idea in isolation, you assess the broader ecosystem for perceived opportunities, risks, and leverage points.
- Designing your Lean Canvas: If you have done this already, we capture the required artifacts in your works folder. If not, or if we believe it still needs some work, we will help you refine and revise your Lean Canvas before moving towards the next milestone.
- Getting ready for and conducting Customer Discovery: If you’ve done some interviews already or have potential clients, we will capture that in the required artifacts. If not, or if there is room for improvement, we will help you revisit your assumptions and hypotheses and assist you throughout the customer discovery process. For those founders who are immigrants, we will help you find solutions for easing your way into your customer discovery process.
- Defining your Commercial Concept: Your commercial concept is the foundation of your business idea and defines its value, target market, and feasibility before you start developing your Minimum Viable Product (MVP). A well-defined commercial concept will ensure that when you build your MVP, it is aligned with discovered and validated customer needs and has a clear path to commercialization. Your commercial concept will also form the foundation for any start-up competition, grant application, or commercialization programming.
- Developing your MVP: You can either decide to continue with the CEED LaunchPad program in helping you develop your MVP or apply to any of the industry organizations.
- Customer Acquisitions: The final milestone of the CEED LaunchPad program is to help and guide you in finding your 1st paying customers.
What To Expect
Depending on your idea or concept and how it develops throughout the LaunchPad Program, by milestone 6 or 7, you can decide to either re-apply to Volta, Invest NS or any other technology-specific industry organization or continue through the final milestones with CEED.
Time Commitment & Workspace
Although we don’t put a specific timeline behind each milestone, we do expect to see weekly commitment and progress.
Ideally, we would want you to progress from idea to revenue generation in 12 months.
Once you’ve been successfully accepted for the CEED LaunchPad program, you will receive a CODA invite (all you need is a free account) and a CEED link to your LaunchPad personal works folder. Your personal works folder holds all the artifacts that you need to complete per milestone
