How do Sting’s startup programs work?
About our coaching, ways to customize the program, and payment.
How does Sting’s coaching work?
A hybrid learning and development environment
We keep bragging about our experienced coaches and mentors. However, don’t forget that you will be among other carefully selected, driven and talented entrepreneurs. To take full advantage of the peer-to-peer learning, we are facilitating our activities live in our office at A-house in Stockholm. But you will still be able to join most of our sessions remotely so that you can decide what hybrid work environment suits you the best.
Having said that, we believe that the advantage you get from interacting with your peers face-to-face is hard to replace with a screen so we do encourage you to work from our co-working space.
This week at Sting
Every Monday morning, all Sting companies gather for breakfast and a 30-minute weekly meeting to share their progress, challenges, experiences, and contacts.
Workshops
On Mondays and Tuesday, we have workshops hosted by Sting or by external experts covering a wide range of business topics.
Investor of the Week
Once a week, a venture capital investor joins us for a brief introduction of their company and investment philosophy, and he or she is available for one-to-one meetings.
Individual coaching
As a Sting Incubate company, you have meetings with your coach up to 4 hours per week. As a Sting Accelerate company, you have weekly 2 hour meetings with your coaches.
Community events
We facilitate regular Happy Hours for all our companies to come together and have a casual pizza, beer and chat about business and life. Our Office Manager Violet will spoil you rotten with regular fika’s, breakfasts and wafers on “Våffeldagen”.
And more.
Additional thougthleader sessions, events and investor meetings are also available throughout the semester. We also organized tailored activities for specific industry verticals such as Healthtech and Sustaintech.
Sting coaches
The coaches are closely involved in all major developments and always know your status in important activities such as sales, financing, marketing, product development, recruitments, etc. You can also schedule meetings with other coaches on the Sting team when you need their input.
External Experts
In addition to the coaches at Sting, you get access to external experts in specific niche areas. You get 30 hours to spend with them, divided however you want, and get CTO coaching, metrics and analytics, product design (UX, UI), growth hacking and user acquisition, digital marketing strategies and much more.
Industry Mentors
You also have access to mentors; experienced entrepreneurs and investors, with expertise in specific industry verticals, such as e-commerce and marketplaces.
Can you customize the program to fit our needs?
Of course! We always customize the program to fit your needs and help you find solutions to your specific challenges.
Together with the coaches, you decide what to focus on in each sprint and select which resources to take advantage of. One great example is the 30 hours you get to spend on Sting’s external expert coaches to get support in specific niche areas. You choose how to divide the hours between the different coaches.
What coaching methods do you use?
Our coaching approach is best characterized as “lean” and iterative. The main methods and tools are “Lean Startup” and “Lean Canvas”.
We believe in “fail fast, fail forward”. Dare to try things that don’t work perfectly! Create a prototype (MVP), measure user behavior and compare results to quickly move toward the operation and business models that work. Speed is key.
Our coaching is always based on “pull” rather than “push”, i.e. rather than telling you what we think you should do, it’s the coach’s job to help you find the answer and decide what is the best way forward, the right focus and priorities etc. You are always in the driver’s seat.
How long is the program and what time commitment is expected?
Participants are expected to spend the majority of their time on location in order to enjoy the full benefits of the program.
How many office places do we get?
Up to 5 team members per startup may have flex seats at our office in A-house. Fixed seats with screens cannot be guaranteed, however, depending on the availability Sting can allocate up to 2 fixed seats per startup.
Will our IP be protected?
We treat the proprietary information our companies share with us with 100 percent confidentiality, whether they declared it confidential or not. We could not do what we do if we didn’t.
We don’t sign NDAs because we meet so many cases that it would be impossible to keep track of all the NDAs and the related information.
We are used to handling confidential information and never share anything about our companies without their consent. Sting’s success comes and ends with our companies’ success, and we cannot afford to be sloppy.
Will Sting invest in my company?
If accepted onto one of our programs, you can receive 500 000 SEK investment from Propel Capital – Sting’s own investment company.
Startups in the Sting Accelerate program automatically receive investment from Propel Capital. A selection of Sting Incubate companies can also receive investment after an evaluation period.
Learn more about Propel Capital here.