#startfast

My name is Robson, I'm 26 years old and I'm from Brazil, I'm gonna the Syracuse, NY, at the next May 20th. I'm gonna be staying for 3 months and that is the opportunity that I need to improve my English.

I'm gonna participate to Startfast, a program of Venture Accelerator for startups and probably I'll probably do the ELS (English as a Second Language) program. 

My closest mentor and friend Nasir Ali, Co-founder and CEO of Upstate New York's Venture Acceleration Community called Upstate Venture Connect, just launched his own accelerator called StartFast,a mentorship-driven startup accelerator designed along the TechStars model. Accepted applicants can decide to come to either NYC or Syracuse. After sitting down with him today at Grey Dog's University Place location in NYC, I learned the inner workings of New York State's next big thing. Along with Chuck Stormon, a successful serial entrepreneur who has led companys through acquisitions totaling $100 Mil+, and Martin Babinec, another successful entrepreneur whose past company had $100 Mil in annual revenue, Nasir will be spearheading the program. The program comes on the heels of Chuck's new book, "Start Fast!", a guide on how to accelerate your software/internet/mobile venture which the program draws some of its ideas from. 

The crown jewels of the program is its amazing list of mentors from all around the world! Names people will recognize come from TechStars as well as some other great programs, but that's only the beginning. And of course, the notable Brad Feld is among them. The 100-day program will be awarding 10 software/internet startups with a maximum of $18,000 per company and $6,000 per startup founder. Another key amenity includes up to $85,000 per company in free and discounted services from partners like Amazon Web Services, Apple, Microsoft, Paypal, Rackspace hosting and many others.

In exchange for complete access to the program, Nasir and his team are asking for only 6% of the company's common stock. This is a small price to pay for unparalleled access to all of NYS's startup resources as well as a global network of mentors. When Nasir was telling me all of this, I could feel the excitement he had for the program's potential. You can definitely count that I'll be the first one to show up on their initial demo day. Who knows, maybe I might be lucky enough to count myself among their world-class mentors some day. ;)