Request for proposals

We don’t believe the virus can be contained; our lives will be massively impacted for at least a year. If that is true, we’ll need to unleash our creativity to solve problems such as:

• Social interaction, especially for elderly
• Homeschooling for kids
• Remote education tools
• Remote collaboration
• Remote health and home workouts
• Safer childcare solutions
• New approaches to vaccines & treatments
• Medical devices
• Distribution of supplies to those in need
• Faster ways to produce medical supplies
• Better ways to fund small businesses
• Better ways to support workers in lockdown
• Improved monitoring of illnesses & quarantines
• Spreading patient load across hospitals
• Improving hygiene and sanitation
• Protective clothing
• Telemedicine
• Any other idea we didn’t think of that could save lives…

Some of these startups may help our immediate crisis. Others may help us be better prepared for the next one.

In times of great need, the next generation of great startups is born.

The Challenge

The challenge is simple: take your ideas to tackle the coronavirus and turn them into reality, as fast as possible. You’ll be in an online community with other motivated founders working around the clock.

Get a $50,000 investment now

Each startup we accept will receive $50,000 in immediate funding, with an uncapped MFN SAFE. We charge no fees & 0% equity. It’ll run April through June. We hope you will attend Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 cohort next.

Race alongside other founders

As Y Combinator alumni ourselves, we’ve been indoctrinated with the YC ethos: talk to users, build your product, and ruthlessly iterate as fast as possible. Our program will encourage velocity. There is no time to waste.

• Personal Mentor. Each startup will be paired with a mentor who will hold them accountable each week, help solve bottlenecks rapidly, and ruthlessly focus on ‘the most important thing’.
• Online Wine & Cheese Fireside Chats. Every Tuesday, we’ll interview a super-experienced founder on Zoom while we drink wine, and then open it up to questions. (One of us will have a fireplace on Zoom!).
• Expert Office Hours. We know someone who can help tackle any problem.
• Community Slack. A private Slack channel for founders, mentors, and alumni.
• Video Game Night. Isolation gets hard. Once a week, we’ll play an online game together – consider it “founder therapy”.
• Post-Vaccine Celebration. Whenever this is over, we’ll invite you to an in-person celebration somewhere around the world – and pay for food & lodging.

Raise up to $1M with an online demo day

Our mentors will help you work on your investor pitch.

Whenever your startup is ready (even as soon as now), we will help you raise up to $1M from Wefunder’s 400,000+ investors. (All investors are aggregated into one entity on your cap table.)

Apply Here:

https://wefunder.com/fight-the-virus

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