Ah, Miami. Beaches, vice, and MONEY, baby.
What other reasons do you need to launch a 500 Distro Program in this hub of hubs for the Latin Americas innovation ecosystem?
Our Miami Distro Program brings 500 staff and mentors from Silicon Valley, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, together to throw one big investor / growth marketer beach party that’s going to rock Miami for 10 straight weeks.
The past couple of years have seen the Miami and LatAm startup ecosystem continue to mature, with more companies emerging in the region, and more money to fund them.
There are plenty of ways to spend your investors’ money, but in our highly biased opinion, nothing beats the ROI on growth marketing: scaling customer acquisition, retention and revenue.
That’s why we’re launching the 500 Miami Distro Program — to help LatAm startups 10x their reach with world class mentorship, hands-on guidance, and funding to power growth experiments.
With the support of program partners the Knight Foundation, the Simkins family fund, Softlayer and Building.co, a new collaborative space for tech companies in Brickell where the Miami Distro Program will take place, we’ll be rolling this program out to our first invitation-only batch starting September 28.
Target companies will be post-seed teams from South Florida, or startups looking to expand regionally across Latin America, as well as throughout the Spanish-speaking market in the U.S. and beyond.
About the Distro Program
The Miami Distro Program is a 10-week growth-focused training and implementation program for companies who have previously raised at least USD$150,000 in funding from other investors.
The Miami Distro Program will be led by Bedy Yang and Juan López Salaberry on the investment team along with Susan Su and Dominic Coryell from the 500 Distro team.
They’ll be joined by an additional crew of badass growth marketers from around the world, including regional mentors with a track record of blowing up customer acquisition in Latin America, Spain and beyond.
Participating companies will receive between $150,000 to $250,000 in funding from 500 Startups, with $50k allocated to the Distro program fee and another $50k earmarked for growth spend.
The Distro Program Experience
MOAR mentors:
Distro Program will be staffed with 4-6 mentors on site, and additional topic-specific mentors available remotely throughout the program.
MOAR accountability:
500 Distro mentors will be kicking ass and taking names throughout the program with twice-weekly check-ins on key performance metrics, and a low team-to-mentor ratio. No slacking, and no leaky buckets.
MOAR channels and coverage:
The Distro Program focuses on “growth as a mindset.” Growth marketing isn’t a set of hack-tics, but a process of experimentation that builds growth into the structure of the organization itself.
In addition to proven customer acquisition strategies, the Miami Distro Program will cover emerging and geography-specific channels like mobile, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and MOAR.
MOAR ecosystem building:
Experts and mentors coming to Miami from all over Latin America and from Silicon Valley, and 500 Startups will open up selected mentors sessions to the local startup community.
Hands-on implementation:
500’s Miami Distro Program is 10 weeks of expert-guided implementation — learning by doing, not by listening to a bunch of talks.
Who It’s For
The Distro Program operates as an investment vehicle for 500 Startups, so getting in requires that you’d qualify for an investment from 500 Startups.
What we’re looking for:
- Traction: It’s a post-seed investment, so you should have closed a previous round of financing, and demonstrated product-market fit.
- Founder Mindset: We’re looking for founders and teams who are committed to growth as a mindset. This means you’re willing to spend resources (aka MONEY and TIME) on growth marketing to take your company to the next level.
The Miami Distro Program kicks off on September 28, 2015 at BUILDING.co in downtown Miami. In order to be selected, post-seed companies with demonstrable product-market-fit and measurable traction will be identified through recommendations and introductions from our network of 3,000 founders and mentors worldwide. At present, we are not planning to accept applications.
BUT, we’re making many of our live growth programs available to the public on our YouTube channel, so stay sharp and stay tuned.
Header artwork design by Yiying Lu, based on original image from “Miami Vice” by Universal Television NBC Universal Television Distribution.
Recent press coverage:El Economista, The Miami Metropolis, Tech.co, Phoneia.com, HiperTextual, WebAdictos, Comunidades de Lideres, ThinkandStart.com, Xataka.com, PulsoSocial
