As I was reading through some blog posts by Daniel Gross, I stumbled up an app/community he helped build, called Pioneer. Pioneer is both an app and a community. It helps founders track progress, get advice, and get funded. In a nutshell, the way it works is members compete in the weekly Pioneer Tournament:
Step 1 - Join with your project
- Register, fill out a profile about you as a person/founder
- Fill in a detailed profile about your startup project or business
Step 2 - Compete in the Pioneer Tournament
Each week, there's a process that takes place
- Sunday, submit a progress update on your project
- Monday
- Our update gets reviewed by 5-10 other Pioneer members who give feedback
- At the same time, we review updates submitted by others and give our feedback; this is an interesting process, as we review updates in pairs and indicate whether "Player A" or "Player B" gave the best update that week
- Tuesday
- Leaderboards are updated with latest rankings, based on feedback from players and "experts" (presumably Pioneer employees or advisors)
- We each review feedback we received and rate the top three comments
- At the same time, our feedback to other players is reviewed by them; If someone "stars" our feedback for them, we earn 25 points
- We can earn up to 100 points each week, and retain up to 400 points over the last four weeks that contributes to our score that week
- Thursday
- A select group of Pioneer Players are invited to a zoom call, where we break out in small groups to discuss challenges we're working through
Step 3 - Reach the Global Top 50
- The goal is to become on of the top 50 players in the Pioneer Tournament
- Of course, most don't achieve that, so they complete to be one of the top players on the regional leaderboards: US East, US West, Americas (Non-US), Europe, Africa, Asia & Oceania
Step 4 - Get selected by an expert to become a Pioneer
- For Pioneers who are recognized as one of the top players, they occasionally receive the Pioneer Offer. For a 1% of your company, you receive access to a network of elite founders. a 2-month remote startup accelerator program, and a whole bunch of other perks
I've documented all my submissions so far, along with top feedback comments at GreatAlbum Involvement in Pioneer Community.
Journey Tag