Jeff Morris Jr. has launched ‘Product Club’, a startup accelerator designed to give limited amount of new business ventures a kick start.
The former Tinder VP created the program to invest in new startups, but is planning to keep it small and extremely focused. Other accelerators normally expand as the new investments increase.
The first Product Club batch will be made up of just three companies. There’s an expectation that this number will grow in the future but Morris doesn’t see it exceeding 10.
He told TechCrunch: “I’ve spoken to a lot of people who’ve built accelerators and have said ‘There’s no way you’ll find a winner with class sizes that small,’. But I’m kind of okay with that if it means we can be more hands-on.”
Product Club will invest $100,000 in each company, taking 5% equity in return.
In addition to investment, the program will provide one-on-one mentorship with a different mentor each week, with each session “100% focused on product development”.
Mentors include former Tinder CPO Brian Norgard, former Uber CPO Manik Gupta and former Product Lead at Twitter, Snap and Facebook Sriram Krishnan.
Since leaving the dating app, Morris has continued to work on his other investment company Chapter One Ventures. The fund specialised in working with up and coming cryptocurrencies.
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