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The Future Founder Program was created with a clear objective: to train entrepreneurs capable of navigating the market without illusions. No theoretical lessons on how great it is to be a start-up, but an immersive and concrete course, led by someone who has been through many start-ups, for better or worse.
Because creating a start-up can be one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences there is, but it is also complex, exhausting and sometimes painful.
The Future Founder Program is designed for those who want to become a founder, even without a team in place, and who want to really understand what it takes to turn an idea into an entrepreneurial project. A hybrid course with face-to-face sessions in Milan and online, it is open to all aspiring entrepreneurs and completely free of charge.
The extraordinary program director is Augusto Coppola, co-founder of InnovAction Lab and managing partner of Cloud Accelerator, who returns with a program that spares nothing for the participants - neither the enthusiasm and the adrenaline, nor the difficulties and inevitable falls along the way. We asked him what makes this initiative unique and why it matters. Here is what he told us.
I have been involved in start-ups for over twenty-five years. I started my career as a founder of international start-ups, working with customers, partners and investors in Europe, America and the Far East. During those years I experienced both great success - where investors made excellent returns - and failures where I lost a lot of money.
Since 2010, I have changed my perspective and moved to the other side of the table: I dedicated myself to venture capital, focusing on start-ups in the early stages of their lives. I have worked with hundreds of teams, helping them through the early years, which are often the most critical for the survival of an innovative company.
Today, I continue to work in the start-up world and from March I will be Programme Director of B4i's Future Founder Programme.
I love working with early stage start-ups because it keeps me in touch with the innovations that will shape the future. But most of all, I love the kind of people who embark on this adventure: a mix of ingenuity, genius, commitment and enthusiasm. For those like me who are fascinated by the human side of entrepreneurship, it is an incredibly inspiring world.
To answer this question, let me take a step back. In the early 2010s, I co-founded InnovAction Lab, an initiative aimed primarily at university students to help them pursue entrepreneurial careers. The programme was so successful that the J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation recognised it as one of the most impactful initiatives in the world.
What was special about this program was that it did not just glorify the start-up world, but let the participants experience all its challenges, including the difficult moments. We didn't just want to motivate, we wanted to give people a real experience. And more than ten years later, many former participants are now successful entrepreneurs or have gone on to high-level management careers.
When B4i asked me to design a new program, I wanted to keep the same spirit: the Future Founder Program was created to give people an authentic and complete experience, without filters. Because if you want to do startups, you need to know what you are getting into, for better or for worse.
Augusto Coppola It is a question that is often asked and many answer with words like determination, vision, empathy. All important things, of course, but I think the key quality is discipline: the ability to do what needs to be done, at the right time, in the right way, even when it is difficult, even when you are tired.
If I had to add another quality, I would say strong ethics. I like founders who don't go into business just for personal fulfilment, but because they really want to help change the world. It takes a clear-eyed view, without a naive, romantic idea. It takes a willingness to get your hands dirty, to enter the complex and imperfect reality of the marketplace and work within it to try to change things, even if only a little.
Failure is part of the game. The important thing is not to let it get you down. Let me tell you about a personal experience. I was part of a team that launched a very successful start-up. After that experience, we launched another one, but this time it failed. Not because of technical problems - I still think the idea was very good - but because of a mental error: success had made us arrogant. We thought we knew everything and stopped learning, stopped listening to the weakest signals.
I learned a lot from that experience. Too many founders focus on compliments and vanity metrics instead of asking the real question: is anyone buying my product? If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to understand that at the end of the day, only two things matter. One: someone buys your product. Or two: someone explains why they are not buying it.
The bad ones, of course. I think I am the person who has been called the most bad words in the Italian startup world. Joking aside, the team that Bocconi has put together for the program is made up of young, smart, brilliant and very nice people. My role will be to challenge them, because I believe that smart people need to be challenged. I won't be the person who tells you how great it is to do start-ups, but the person who helps you find out if you really have what it takes.
And I already know that you will hate me at first. Then, if everything goes the way it should, they will change their mind.
future founders program