Founder Friendly Labs (FFL) is the equity-free startup accelerator for experienced professionals.

 

Peer Mentoring & Credits

As part of our equity-free startup accelerator, startups get access to valuable resources like peer mentoring, 100% discount off the first year of Carta's Build or Grow plan w/ 409A valuations and 83(b) electronic filing, and AWS credits. We understand founders are busy, so we offer a low-commitment experience.

200+ Startups

Since 2011, over 200 startups have been through FFL, including Carta (Andreessen Horowitz, Goldman Sachs, and USV), Moloco (Tiger Global and Samsung Ventures), Osmo (Accel and Upfront Ventures), ClipMine (acquired by Amazon), Aviate (acquired by Yahoo), and Pixelapse (acquired by Dropbox).

Experienced Professionals

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Our founders include veterans from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, Netflix, HP, Cisco, Oracle, IBM, and Sequoia Capital. They are experts in AI, Machine Learning, Marketing, Productivity, Marketplaces, Deep Learning, IoT, NLP, VR, Financial Planning, Insurance, and more.

Our founders are experienced professionals

Graduated from elite universities

What our founders have to say

“I owe FFL a lot. I’m not sure [Carta] would exist without you guys.”
— Henry Ward, CEO and Co-Founder at Carta and has worked at Secondsight and Trilogy
“FFL is a great forum to meet a community of founders and share challenges and solutions in a group that has or is walking the walk.”
— Audrey Walby, Founder and President at SAFIO Solutions and has worked at BuySeasons and Nine West Group
“The peer mentoring session with other founders was really useful, and the cloud credits are a major benefit for startups looking to scale fast.”
— Lars Bakke Krogvig, Co-Founder at Nansen and has worked at Unacast and BearingPoint
“I’ve met incredible fellow founders through FFL! The community is really supportive.”
— Jason Liu, Co-Founder & President at Peblla and former Engineering Manager at Google
“It’s exciting to be a part of this diverse group of experienced founders. Each one brings to the table a unique set of skills and varied levels of experiences in different markets. This sets the ground for a tremendous amount of sharing and learning!”
— Arpita Raveendran, entrepreneur and has worked at Talking Yak, Johnson & Johnson, and Teach For India
“We could not imagine a better place to start our company. We’ve gotten great product, design, and PR advice and learned from other first class start-ups.”
— Paul Montoy-Wilson, Co-Founder at Aviate (acquired by Yahoo!)
“FFL was an amazing way to kickstart Quettra.”
— Ankit Jain, Co-Founder at Quettra (acquired by SimilarWeb)
“The FFL teams have been so supportive and the experience has been very beneficial in our development. THANK YOU!”
— Ann Scott-Plante, Co-Founder at Wello (Acquired by Weight Watchers)
“It was excellent, great training, networking opportunities and advice to accelerate success! Secured equity-free cloud credits!”
— Alexandra Bidoli, entrepreneur and has worked at BossaNova and American Express
“Getting into FFL helped us focus our company and accelerate its growth.”
— Mehul Shah, Co-Founder at Amiato (acquired by Amazon)
“FFL is a great community of entrepreneurs and business leaders. We thoroughly enjoyed our time as a part of their program.”
— Tyler York, Co-Founder & CEO at Achievable and has worked at Anaplan, Glu Mobile, and Electronic Arts
“If you are a first-time founder, Founder Friendly Labs is the BEST founders’ community that you want to be part of!”
— Michelle Zhou, Co-Founder at Juji and spent 15 years at IBM Research and the IBM Watson Group

Our startups have been acquired by great companies

Join the community