We have helped more than 300 teams design new products and bring them to market, including those at Slack, Uber, One Medical Group, YouTube, Phaidra, Fathom, Flatiron Health, Gusto, and Google.
The Foundation Sprint is our new method for accelerating progress toward product-market fit, and it’s the one we use most with founders in the Character Capital portfolio.
Join us April 22-23 for an exclusive in-person workshop where you’ll learn our best techniques for the early days of company building and run a Foundation Sprint with our team.
At this event in SF, you'll work directly with our team: Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, creators of the Design Sprint and Foundation Sprint, bestselling authors of Sprint and Click, and former design partners at GV; and Eli Blee-Goldman, our co-founder and general partner leading all investments at Character Capital.
We’ll personally lead you through a Foundation Sprint on your company or product, and we'll be available for 1:1 and small group coaching throughout the two days.
Every new product is just a hypothesis until you test it. The world’s best founders identify a crisp and opinionated hypothesis for their new product or company, then rapidly test it with realistic prototypes and real customers.
We’ve created techniques for executing these steps at a high level and packaged them into a proven system for founders, based on our work with some of the world’s most successful startups.
At the Foundation Sprint Workshop, you’ll run a full two-day Foundation Sprint with our team.
On the morning of day one, you’ll define the essential basics of your project, then, in the afternoon, you’ll craft radical differentiation to help you stand out from the competition. On day two, you’ll evaluate multiple options and choose an approach to your project.
By the end, you’ll have a Founding Hypothesis: a clear statement of what you believe that can be proved (or disproved) with Design Sprints.
You can read more about the Foundation Sprint at Lenny’s Newsletter.
Our new book Click shares this proven system for building products that click with customers. Inside are ten important lessons, a step-by-step playbook for the Foundation Sprint, and memorable stories from Nike, Google, Slack, and Character portoflio companies at the frontiers of artificial intelligence.
Click will be published on April 22 (the day of this workshop!!) and you'll receive a copy of the book with your registration.
Fifteen years ago we created the Design Sprint at Google. After hundreds of sprints with teams like Gmail, Chrome, Slack, Uber, and Flatiron Health, we introduced this method to the world with our book Sprint. Since then, the Design Sprint has been adopted by Airbnb, Amazon, LEGO, MIT, Mercedes-Benz, OpenAI, Harvard Business School, the University of Oxford, and many other organizations.
Three years ago, for the first time since Sprint, we created a major new sprint method based on our work with these companies and more: the Foundation Sprint.
We know this process works — it helps founders find product-market fit sooner — and we use it with nearly every startup in the Character Capital portfolio.
We want to share the Foundation Sprint with more founders. For the first time ever, we’ve created an opportunity for founders to sprint with us without raising money from Character.
The Foundation Sprint Workshop is free and equity-free for founders: There are no fees to attend, and we take 0% of your company.
All day April 22 and 23 in San Francisco. We'll share the complete agenda and event details after you register.
The Foundation Sprint is a structured, two-day process designed to accelerate progress toward product-market fit. It’s based on our work with some of the world's most successful startups, and helps founders:
You can read more about the Foundation Sprint at Lenny’s Newsletter.
We designed this two-day workshop for:
Yes. When you apply, you can tell us about co-founders or other team members you'd like to invite.
If you're a founder or early startup employee, we'll review your application and get back to you within a week. We will accept founders on a rolling basis, so please apply early for the best shot at securing a spot in the workshop!
If you buy a ticket, your registration will be confirmed immediately.
No. This is a live, in-person workshop designed for real-time collaboration and transparent discussion. We may capture photos and videos for marketing purposes, but we will not record any of the content.
No. But if you have a specific challenge or question, bring it! We’ll have time for live coaching and discussion.
Please email ops@character.vc and we’ll be happy to help.
If you're a startup founder or early (first ~5) startup employee, you can apply to attend for free.
Free with application
Only 35 spots available
Product, design, and innovation leaders can buy a ticket and register to attend immediately.
$2,499
Only 15 spots available
