Announcing The Second Edition Of The Blume-U Velocity Program

In August 2020 we launched the Blume-U Velocity program — a seven week program for our early stage portfolio founders. We have always believed that a structured learning program, specially crafted and engineered for our early-stage founders, has immense value. This therefore was the first step in that direction. The idea was to help our founders get strategic / tactical advice on running key org functions (like Product, Design, Marketing, Sales, Technology, HR and Fundraising) from seasoned entrepreneurs + operators + industry experts – who have been there, done that.

We wanted to build a highly engaged community through mentor interaction + peer learning. Founders love interacting and learning from seasoned founders, operators and their peers — and the idea was to do exactly that with this programme.

We are excited to announce the second edition of the Blume-U Velocity Program.

Companies participating in Blume-U Velocity this year include:

When startups are young, they have smaller team sizes and most of them do not have CXOs. Almost all Founders double up as the CMO, CHRO, CSO etc., and end up managing all functions of the company till they expand their team. Velocity is designed to bring in knowledge from experienced leaders in the industry across key startup functions like product, design, growth, marketing, sales, technology, finance and HR. 

We believe that a founder can empathise and learn the most from another founder who has been through a similar journey. Keeping this in mind, we have tried to bring in as many founders as possible for the sessions at Velocity. Some of the experts for the sessions include: Sidu Ponnappa of Gojek, Anant Goel of MilkBasket, Krishna Depura of MindTickle, Ashish Goel of Urban Ladder, Abhishek Patil of Cred, and Anirban Das from Dunzo, among others. These experts will share their learnings, tips and tricks around GTM strategies, hiring, product, marketing, fundraising etc.

The seven-week long curriculum includes 2 sessions per week for B2B & B2C startups. Startups spend ~3 hours per week, and ~27 hours in total going through this curriculum along with a cohort of 10 B2B startups and 10 B2C startups.

The format of these sessions will be a mix of talk / presentation + Q&A and Fireside chat + Q&A.

We believe that these sessions will groom our founders to manage various functions of a company, prepare them for their next round of fund raise, and help them get the focus and support needed to build a business that matters. 

Founders need a wide breadth of management and leadership skills to succeed in their ventures. Through Velocity — we’d like our founders to walk away (at the end of seven weeks) with a broad mastery of skills that will help them build, grow, and sustain their startup.