Ambitious Founders can now apply for Founder Institute Brussels, a twelve-week training program for both new and seasoned entrepreneurs with -predominantly male- mentors such as Aaron Patzer, CEO of Mint (see photo).

Headquartered in the Silicon Valley, the Founder Institute now operates in 10 cities worldwide and since Spring 2009, it has graduated 112 companies; more than 25% have closed a round of fundraising (as compared to 4% average for start-ups receiving funding).

The Institute is looking for passionate people to apply, whether you are thinking to launch a new technology company or running a startup that's less than a couple years old in a wide range of industries, including digital media, software, biotech, cleantech, ecommerce, advertising, consumer electronics, and the internet.

In the programme weekly sessions are guided by renowned CEOs from both the US and Europewith the aim to 'breed' disciplined, networked founders ready to lead meaningful and enduring technology companies.

US Mentors for the Fall 2010 Brussels semester are recruited from a pool that includes:

Aaron Patzer (Mint.com, money-management software, acquired by Intuit for $170m)
Jason Calacanis (Mahalo, human-powered search engine, funded by Sequoia Capital, Elon Musk, etc.) Michael Robertson (mp3.com, legal music-sharing platform, acquired by Vivendi for $372m)
Phil Libin (Evernote, capturing and organizing info across multiple platforms, raised $25.5 in VC)

Confirmed European Mentors include:

Sebastien de Halleux (Playfish, social games developer, acquired by EA for $400m)
Lars Hinrichs (Xing, original European business networking site, first Web 2.0 IPO)
Bart Decrem (Tapulous, leading iPhone game-maker, 30 million users, #1 on the App Store 5 times)
Dries Buytaert (Drupal, back-end system for at least 1% of all websites worldwide)

Program Structure & Results
Sessions are held on Monday evenings in the Fall 2010 covering the following topics:

Vision and Values
Startup Research
Naming and Branding
Revenues, Costs and Profits
Hiring, Firing and Cofounders
Startup Legal and Incorporation
Product Development
Partners and Suppliers
Intellectual Property
Marketing and Sales
Presentation and Publicity
Fundraising

Criteria
In order to be accepted as a Founder, the budding entrepreneur needs to be passionately driven to build scalable technology companies.

A Founder can enter the program with a stand-alone concept or with a company that is:  < two years old, < 500,000 euro revenue, < 250,000 euro in angel funding.  Sessions run from 6:30 – 10pm on Monday nights, and Founders should expect to spend an additional 10 hours per week outside of class.

Founder course fees are 800 euro. In addition, all graduating companies contribute 3.5% warrants (non-voting) into an equity pool. This pool is allocated among Founders, Mentors, and the Institute to create aligned incentives for success.  Finally, a company that raises over 200,000 euro pays a one-time 4,000 euro “tuition” to support the ongoing operations of the Institute.

Applications are open July 6th till July 18th.
So female entrepreneurs: Apply! And add to your application that you wish to see some female mentors to the programme...