Laid off from your tech job? Day One wants to give you $100,000 to start a company • TechCrunch

Day One Ventures was founded in 2018 as a venture company with the goal of combining venture capital expertise with marketing and communications support. It has now launched a program specifically for those who have been affected by this year’s tech layoffs.

The program, titled “Funded Not Fired,” will write $100,000 checks into 20 startup teams by the end of the year. Day One Ventures will provide follow-up capital to the top companies in the cohort. They will also guarantee that Day One Ventures will lead their preseed round with a $1,000,000 check. To support founders in turbulent startups, Day One Ventures will allocate at least $5million (and up to $10 million) from its $52.5million fund.

Founder and GP Masha Bucher, who left her former life in Russia as a politician and TV reporter to become a venture capitalist, spun up the program in the wake of Stripe and Twitter’s layoffs over the past week. Her bet? The possibility of a founder involving at least 0.1% or 1% of the thousands affected by tech layoffs in 2018 could be a great opportunity.

The program is essentially a formalized double click on venture’s obsession with mafia founders, aka people who left high-profile gigs at even higher-profile companies to start their own business. The added layer of complexity, however, is the downturn that has somewhat defined tech’s 2022. For example, if I was laid off from my job, I don’t know if my first thought would be to take a bet on myself and start a risky business most likely to fail. Bucher said that such a mindset would likely weed me out of the entrepreneurial world, along with presumably many other laid off tech employees.

“I think if you’re afraid of risk, you’re just not going to be a great founder,” Bucher said. “Don’t get me wrong, starting a company in this time when so many changes have happened over the last three years,” is hard, she added, saying that it definitely makes sense if people want to find a job or work with founders instead of become one. Other examples of programs spun up to help activate the next generation of entrepreneurs includes Z Fellows and Cleo Capital’s former fellowship for laid-off workers. 

She made sure to emphasize that the program is “not charity” and that folks from Stripe and Twitter would not get preferential treatment when pitching Day One Ventures (even though they were the inspiration for the program).

Aspiring founders don’t need an incorporated company, or even a fully flushed out startup idea, to apply to the program. The form asks for founders’ background, top ideas, metrics and the why behind their journey into entrepreneurship. For the accelerator to qualify, at least one cofounder must be recently laid off. The founder must work full-time for the startup, and they must be able to provide three references.

Deadline to apply is November 25, 2022. Final decisions will be made December 20, 2022.

“Compared to all other VCs who are taking time off until next year, we’re going to be working until December 31st — which is totally fine,” Bucher said. “I just feel like times like this are just a perfect opportunity for us to do a little more, to go the extra mile, to not take time off and just hopefully back some companies which in the future will be the size of Coinbase, Airbnb and Stripe.”

I’d love to hear about your experience if you were laid off or are starting your own company. E-mail me at [email protected] or DM me on Twitter @nmasc_.