company building immersion for outlier founders
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Applications for the Fall cohort will open in July.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
GUEST SPEAKERS
JESS LEE
PARTNER AT SEQUOIA
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
Founder and CEO of Klarna
Kevin Systrom
Founder of Instagram
Lynn Jurich
Co-Founder and former CEO of Sunrun
ROELOF BOTHA
PARTNER AT SEQUOIA
Miki Kuusi
CEO of Wolt and Head of DoorDash International
Alfred LIN
PARTNER AT SEQUOIA
SUMAIYA BALBALE
Operating Partner AT SEQUOIA
Ilkka Paananen
CEO of Supercell
Derek Muller
Creator of Youtube Channel, Veritasium
ALUMNI
“As a founder, you don't know what you don't know. Arc provides years of learnings from some of the most brilliant people in the space, condensed down to these short lectures full of golden nuggets. Seven weeks may feel like a lot, but it's actually a very time efficient way to learn all of these things.”
“While my career provided the insights to build Meeno, Arc helped me uncover my personal motivation to solve the loneliness problem, which gave rise to a more holistic approach to product development and storytelling. The program also helped us gauge new benchmarks for product-market fit in a post-generative AI world, thanks to introducing a community of founders who I can trust to be open with.”
“Participating in Arc was a transformative experience that perfectly aligned with our process of exploring what to build. We leveraged the weekly learnings to iterate faster, and we discovered how to be practical about finding product-market fit—removing the emotion and celebrating learning from failures to quickly move on.”
Now empowering creators everywhere with Flagship.
“As founders, it’s easy to get pulled in the day to day and try to just get the next thing done. Arc taught me that, sometimes, we need to take a step back to leap forward. We should not mistake motion for progress.”
“What you learn in Arc is applicable from day 1 and is grounded in pragmatism. Sequoia partners and operators helped us navigate the product-market fit journey and provided frameworks that we continue to revisit as we scale. The Arc community is also unparalleled.”
“Arc redefined how we think about company building. My co-founders and I have lots of insights from building PayPal, YouTube and more, but Arc helped us intentionally lay the right foundation. We learned how to be more empathetic about the people we’re serving, which informed our company culture, our product and how we go-to-market.”
FAQ
- 01/Who should apply to Arc?This company building immersion is for pre-seed and seed-stage founders actively working on an idea, product and company. You can come to us with an idea and no lines of code or just an MVP site. Arc alumni come from a variety of backgrounds: some are first or second-time founders, while others have helped scale top tech companies.
- 02/Why did Sequoia create Arc?We created Arc to discover the next generation of outlier founders and help increase their odds of success. At Sequoia, we aim to meaningfully change the trajectory of every company we partner with. We see the greatest potential at the earliest stages, when the smallest degrees of difference compound into massive transformations. Arc is meant to help pre-seed and seed-stage founders get to product-market fit faster and lay the right foundations as early as possible.
- 03/What dates will Arc take place this year?Arc Spring '24 will run from April 22nd - June 5th. We will host another Arc cohort in the Fall, which will run from September 30th - November 13th. Applications for the Fall cohort will open this summer.
- 04/Can companies from both the Americas and Europe apply?Yes. The Arc Spring '24 cohort is open to companies headquartered in the Americas and Europe.
- 05/Is Arc in person?The first and last week of the program, along with a mid-program field trip, will be in person. The remaining weeks will be held remotely via Zoom.
- 06/Is travel required?Yes. For Arc Spring '24, expect to spend the first week in New York City, the fourth week in Los Angeles, and the last week in the Bay Area.
- 07/What is the weekly schedule?Arc is a hybrid in-person/virtual experience. The three in-person weeks will have 2.5 days of programming per week. The four virtual weeks will have four hours of programming per week.
- 08/How many companies are in the program?Each Arc cohort will consist of ~10-15 companies. All co-founders of a company are strongly encouraged to attend.
- 09/Do companies that participate in Arc receive funding from Sequoia?Yes. Companies that are invited to Arc receive funding from Sequoia. Each Arc cohort consists of pre-seed and seed companies we discover through the Arc open application process and early-stage companies we recently partnered with.
- 10/What are the terms?Every new pre-seed or seed stage partnership with Sequoia is unique. As such any terms are company specific.