Willem Van Lancker, co-founder of Terrain, discusses the applicant pool and demographics for Terrain's equity-free founder incubator program, Free Agency.
“So we've had hundreds of applicants already. You know, these have been engineers and designers and companies like OpenAI and Databricks, SpaceX, Ramp, you know, like you name it. We have a Gen Z creator who has millions of followers more research focused people like, you know, from DeepMind and then some successful repeat founders both in our network and kind of entering, you know, from the application.”
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More from Willem Van Lancker
Insight
Van Lancker: Founders cannot outsource conviction to investors with misaligned portfolio incentives
“That investor or that angel investor is going to place who knows how many bets, and you're gonna place one during this period of time. You are an investor of your time, and that is one thing that you can do during this period, and you have to take that really …”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 12:51Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Opinion
Van Lancker: VC pushes capital onto founders before they are ready
“The venture industrial complex tries to, you know, give you capital and, you know, quite frankly, perhaps before you're ready and make those commitments and those decisions before you're ready.”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 2:50Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Insight
Van Lancker: Upfront VC stipends diminish founder urgency and hurt decision-making
“The reason to not attach capital to it is one, both for that point of commitment and restriction, but the other is I think it makes you make decisions differently. I think that you either, if you have that stipend and you're hanging out in the offices and you'…”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 6:55Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Insight
Van Lancker: Customer polling is obsolete for breakthrough startups facing funded competitors
“In the environment today where software has eaten the world, and you should assume that if you're onto something interesting, there are two or three other competent, well-funded, You know, good people going after it as well. It has to be, you know, from that k…”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 10:33Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Opinion
Van Lancker: VCs Piling Into Incubations Will Make Mistakes
“I see a lot of VCs piling into it, I think for the wrong reasons and are going to make some mistakes. I think there's a real alchemy that it takes to get it right.”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 14:30Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Disclosure
Van Lancker: Terrain's Free Agency program has no cohorts or equity strings
“With free agency, what we're doing is we're unbundling that from selecting your idea and taking capital. So there's no strings attached. There's no cohorts. There's no demo day. There's no kind of deal that you have to take. It is really this period of open ex…”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 3:02Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
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